Fight Tax Season Fear: Get LiveRez’s QuickBooks Accounting Integration
LiveRez's QuickBooks Integration for vacation rental accounting is approved by the North Carolina Real Estate Commission.
Since the turn of the new year, an elephant has plopped itself down in the corner of every business across America, and vacation rental managers aren’t immune.
That elephant is tax season – that dreaded part of the year when companies really start to realize how good (or bad) their current accounting software really is (if they have software at all). For many managers in the vacation rental industry, they are stuck with the accounting software that came with their vacation rental management platform. Some dislike their software so much, they export their data out of their system and import it into a consumer accounting software product.
At LiveRez, we knew there was a need for great accounting software in the vacation rental industry; that’s why we chose to make our industry-leading vacation rental software integrate with QuickBooks, the world’s most-trusted accounting software with more than 38 million users worldwide.
Yet Another Reason to Rent from Professional Vacation Rental Managers
Last week TODAY aired a segment on a number of vacation rental scams, highlighting the importance of booking your vacation through a professional vacation rental manager.
Just last week TODAY highlighted yet another reason to rent from professional vacation rental managers. The segment (see video below) detailed a number of vacation rental scams where criminals listed and took payment to rent homes they did not own. In many cases, there was no way for the victims to recover their money, especially for those that wired funds or paid with a check.
Incidents like this have been widely reported in the news lately, stressing a growing concern about the security of renting vacation homes. The prevalence of these scams reinforces the importance of renting from professional vacation rental managers.
Steve Trover, CEO of All Star Vacation Homes in Orlando, FL, said that when researching vacation rentals, there are many things travelers can look for to feel confident in booking.
My Mountain Cabin Rentals: Customer Service the Old-Fashioned Way
The ability to take online bookings through its LiveRez-powered website allowed My Mountain Cabin Rentals to cut down their call volume 60 to 70 percent.
My Mountain Cabin Rentals of North Georgia
Location: Blue Ridge, GA
Website: 1MyMountain.com
Quick Quote: “I attribute LiveRez to me being able to keep my doors open. And, more than just looking at green shoots of hope, we’re actually seeing success here.”
It’s a place where deer roam through back yards, where contracts are still based on hand shakes and where people are genuinely friendly and nice -- not because they want to sell you something, but because that’s who they are.
It’s a mountain-top community of about 1,500 acres, lined with cabins boasting amazing views and modern conveniences.
It’s only 90 minutes from Atlanta, GA, but resides in a completely different world, tucked away from the daily grind of every-day life.
It’s called My Mountain.
And if you’d like it to be your mountain for a day, a week or month, you should call Chris Middlebrook.
The LiveRez Owner Logon
LiveRez offers its managers the ability to give their owners a special way to log in to the LiveRez platform so these owners can access information about their properties and make their own bookings.
As a vacation rental manager, you deal with two primary customers: your guests and your owners. So, any comprehensive vacation rental software will need to help you manage your dealings with not only guests, but also owners. That’s why LiveRez’s vacation rental software offers owner logons to help strengthen your relationship with owners and make both your lives and your owners’ lives easier.
What’s an Owner Logon?
You may be wondering what exactly an owner logon is. Simply speaking, owner logons offer your owners a special way to log into your software to see reports on their properties and to make their own reservations. There are many benefits to owner logons:
- Increase engagement with owners by keeping them informed about their properties
- Reducing the amount of time you spend answering questions and concerns from owners regarding information that is now available through the owner logon
- Allowing owners to make reservations on their own time
LiveRez Reporting: The Intelligence You Need, When You Need It
The LiveRez back office boasts a comprehensive set up of reporting functions that give vacation rental managers the intelligence they need to run their property management companies.
One of the crucial components of LiveRez’s back office is its reporting capability. Within the LiveRez system, property managers can access a wide variety of reports that give them a solid overview of how their company is operating in key areas. With this knowledge, managers can make intelligent decisions about how to optimize their business.
Among other things, these reports allow managers to:
- Visually see what properties are booked or available
- View occupancy rates for each property by date range
- Get detailed information about reservations (check-in dates, guest info., cleaning requests, notes, etc.) through custom searching
- Track their current revenue and forecast future revenues
- Track cleaning and maintenance activities
- Pull up a summary of their taxes based on location, tax rate and gross revenue
- Quickly access information on guests and owners
- View reports on Travel Insurance
- Quickly check to make sure each property listing is complete (descriptions, amenities, prices, date ranges, meta information, pictures, etc.)
- And much more!
LiveRez: The Quarterback of Your Maintenance Team
The LiveRez platform makes scheduling and tracking maintenance and cleaning activities a breeze.
The LiveRez Platform is a command center for many more things than just reservation management. Users can use the back office to make changes to their dynamic website through the content management system. They can view a wide variety of reports, and even quickly create custom reports. And, they can even schedule and track property care and maintenance requests.
Today, we’re going to focus on LiveRez’s ability to quickly and accurately schedule and track maintenance and cleaning activities. You can think of the LiveRez platform as a quarterback. It schedules plays (maintenance and cleaning request), hands off the ball to teammates (other staff members), and they complete the play (finish the task). In calling the plays, the quarterback can either take directions from the coach (manager) or make audibles in response to the defense (guest requests).
The best part is this quarterback has a playbook a mile long. These plays are called one of two ways, as you’ll see below.
How LiveRez Gets You More Bookings
LiveRez is designed to help professional vacation rental managers increase their bookings.
One of the key selling points of LiveRez’s vacation rental software platform is its ability to get professional vacation rental managers more bookings. Here are some of the ways LiveRez helps managers increase their bookings:
Rank Higher – LiveRez-powered websites are specifically designed to help you rank higher in search engine results. Simply put, ranking higher in your desired searches means more travelers visit your website.
- Read “Why SEO Should Matter to You”
Convert More Often – LiveRez-powered websites are designed to offer travelers the fastest and easiest way to book a property online. Through our 3-click booking process, travelers can search, shop and book a property – all in just three clicks. This proven process helps create extremely high conversion rates on all LiveRez-powered websites.
Book Online – Travelers want the convenience and security of booking their vacation online, anytime day or night. With a LiveRez-powered website, you can ensure that visitors to your website have the ability to close the deal online. It’s a common fact: once someone books, they stop shopping. LiveRez ensures that you never lose a customer because they couldn’t book online.
Top 10 Ways to Grow Your Twitter Following
Hatching a winning strategy for growing your Twitter following isn't rocket science. Follow a few simple guidelines, and you'll be on the path to success.
Want to get more Twitter followers? Here’s 10 quick ways to spur the growth of your Twitter following.
1. Follow Strategically – Many people will tell you to follow as many people as you can on Twitter because they’re more likely to follow you back. This is partially true, but Twitter has limited how many people you can follow, so you don’t want to waste your time following people you’re not interested in. Besides, if you’re using Twitter correctly, you’ll be using it as much for listening to conversations as spreading the word about your business. I suggest following people key to your industry: journalists, brands, thought-leaders, etc. You’re going to want to listen to them anyways. And, although they’re less likely to follow you back, they have a larger network of followers, and you’re more likely to be put in Twitter’s “Who to Follow” suggestions for the people following them. It’s just like networking in real life; you want to connect yourself with people who share your interests and who are prominent.
2. Share Killer Content – Twitter is all about sharing content. The better content you create and share, the more people will take notice. But, don’t just share your own content. Share content from others, whether it’s through a retweet or just something cool you came across on the Web.
VRBOs Not Paying Taxes Creates Competitive Disadvantage for VRMs
When VRBOs don't pay transient occupancy taxes on their vacation rentals, they can often rent their vacation home out for a lower price, which often creates a competitive disadvantage for professional vacation rental managers and even other VRBOs who follow the law.
Last Friday, The Desert Sun newspaper of Palm Springs released the latest in what seems like a string of articles nationwide about local governments cracking down on individuals operating vacation rentals and not paying taxes. Similar issues have already been raised in Colorado, Tennessee, Florida, North Carolina and more.
But this issue goes much farther than cities collecting the taxes due to them; it goes straight to the heart of a competitive advantage these tax evaders have over vacation rental managers that pay taxes.
Palm Springs Mayor Steve Pougnet told the Desert Sun that the effort wasn’t just about raising revenue from TOT (transient occupancy tax) funds.
“It levels the playing field for rental agencies and hotels,” he said. “It gives the city oversight over who is renting the property and how it's being managed.”
Professional vacation rental managers (VRMs) in the area know this situation all too well.
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- Fight Tax Season Fear: Get LiveRez’s QuickBooks Accounting Integration
- Yet Another Reason to Rent from Professional Vacation Rental Managers
- My Mountain Cabin Rentals: Customer Service the Old-Fashioned Way
- The LiveRez Owner Logon
- LiveRez Reporting: The Intelligence You Need, When You Need It
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