Step 5: Configuring VRAccountant: Owner Fees & Commissions

Map owner expenses from your property management software (PMS) to products & services in QuickBooks Online (QBO)
 

 

This section is only applicable if you use two separate QBO company files: one dedicated to owner/trust accounting, another to your property management operations. 
 

If you use a single QBO company file for both owner and property manager accounting:

1. Select the vendor record you created to represent your property management business from the Vendor dropdown list.

2. Select the Off bubble next to each option listed.

3. Skip to the next step: Configuring VRAccountant: Other settings

About the Owner Fees & Commissions section

In the previous sections, you wrote the rules for where in the trust account financial statements VRAccountant should record different categories of income from a guest's invoice.

In this section, you'll tell VRAccountant where to record three of the most common owner expenses: your management commissions, channel commissions and cleaning fees.
 

From your owners' perspective, your property management business is a vendor providing services which will be paid for from the trust account. Accordingly, VRAccountant can create Accounts Payable Bills in QBO to record commissions and cleaning fees against your owners' income.
 

And the benefits don't stop at automated bookkeeping. VRAccountant records bills for any expenses you configure here on a reservation-by-reservation basis, in real-time, so you always know how much you're owed from the trust account on any given day.
Because you'll have this newfound visibility, you'll also have the flexibility to decide exactly which reservations you'll pay yourself for, and which ones you won't.
 

VRAccountant provides property managers unmatched flexibility.
If you'll be using QBO to produce owner statements, your goal is to optimize the use of (1) QBO's chart of accounts, (2) QBO products/services, and (3) expense configurations in your PMS, to produce complete, accurate, real-time owner statements within QBO: no manual adjustments required.

Selecting the vendor (that's you)

Tell VRAccountant which vendor it should use on the bills it creates for owners' fees & commissions.

Steps
 

 

1. From the Vendor dropdown list, select the vendor record you created to represent your property management business.

Don't see the vendor record you want to use? You may not have added it during your QBO configuration. That's okay - refer to these steps to add it now.
 

Then,

1. Return to the onboarding wizard.

2. Select Save at the bottom of the page.

3. Select Workflow Configurator to return to the onboarding wizard and see your updates listed. 

Configuring management commissions

Where are management commissions calculated? (Management Commissions)

Your management commission is calculated within your PMS. When a reservation is confirmed in your PMS, VRAccountant retrieves the result of that calculation and adds it to a bill in QBO.
 

The settings you configure here apply to all listings. Any listing-specific calculations should be configured directly in your PMS.

1. Guesty users - refer here for more information.

2. MyVR users - refer here for more information.

Steps (Management Commissions)
 

 

1. Select On or Off.

   1. Selecting On will cause VRAccountant to add management commissions expenses to QBO bills

   2. Selecting Off will cause VRAccountant not to add management commissions expenses to QBO bills
       

2. From the Product / Service dropdown list, select the corresponding QBO product/service you want to use to represent your management commissions on QBO bills.

3. From the Channels dropdown list, select the reservation channels you want to record management commissions for. For example, if you do not select the Manual channel, VRAccountant will not create a bill for management commissions on any reservations in your PMS where the channel is Manual.
    

Don't see the product/service you want to use? Refer to these steps to add it now.
 

Then,

1. Return to the onboarding wizard.

2. Select Save at the bottom of the page.

3. Select Workflow Configurator to return to the onboarding wizard and see your updates listed. 

Configuring channel commissions

Where are channel commissions calculated? (Channel Commissions)

Your channel commissions are calculated within your PMS. When a reservation is confirmed in your PMS, VRAccountant retrieves the result of that calculation and adds it to a bill in QBO.
 

The settings you configure here apply to all listings. Any listing-specific calculations should be configured directly in your PMS.

1. Guesty users - refer here for more information.

2. MyVR users - refer here for more information.
    

Steps (Channel Commissions)


 

1. Select On or Off.

   1. Selecting On will cause VRAccountant to add channel commissions expenses to QBO bills. If you pass channel commissions on to your owners, select On.

   2. Selecting Off will cause VRAccountant not to add channel commissions expenses to QBO bills. If you do not pass channel commissions to your owners, select Off.
       

2. From the Product / Service dropdown list, select the corresponding QBO product/service you want to use to represent channel commissions on QBO bills.

3. From the Channels dropdown list, select which channels' commissions you want to bill your owners for. For example, if you do not select channel Airbnb, VRAccountant will not create a bill for management commissions on any reservations in your PMS where the channel is Airbnb.
    

Airbnb and TripAdvisor "pre-deduct" channel commissions, meaning they already appear as negative invoice items on a guest's invoice.

Accordingly, these particular channels' commissions (a.k.a. Host Channel Fees) have already been "billed" to your owner through the posting of the guest's invoice in QBO.

Do not select Airbnb or TripAdvisor here to avoid hitting your owners for these fees twice.
 

If you do not pass channel commissions to your owners, consider the following:

1. Toggle this expense Off in VRAccountant, and subtract the Host Channel Fee from your management commission in your commissions formula.
   
   For example:
   adjusted_fare_accommodation*.25 - host_channel_fee
    

2. Next, set the Income Account on your Airbnb Host Fee product/service to the same account as your Management Commission product/service. 

The end result is a management commission expense on the owner's statement equal to your commission rate x your commission base (in the example above, this is adjusted_fare_accommodation*.25).
 

Configuring cleaning fees

How VRAccountant bills owners for cleaning fees

VRAccountant leverages the power of QBO products/services to direct the flow of cleaning fees revenue through the trust account financial statements.
 

When you configured your Cleaning Fee product/service in QBO, you selected which income account and which expense account should be posted to when Cleaning Fee is used on a sales form (like an invoice) or an expense form (like a bill). 
 

 

In the previous section, you mapped the Cleaning Fee product/service to the corresponding cleaning fee item from your PMS.
When VRAccountant creates a guest invoice in QBO for a particular reservation, the account you've set in the Income Account field on the Cleaning Fee product/service will increase by the amount of the cleaning fee from your PMS.
 

In this section, you'll dictate what happens with that cleaning fee when VRAccountant creates the owner expenses bill for that same reservation.

If you've configured your product/service consistent with the example above, when VRAccountant creates a bill in QBO for the reservation, the account you've set in the Expense Account field on the Cleaning Fee product/service will increase by the amount of the cleaning fee from your PMS. 
 

Because the same account is used for both the Income Account and Expense Account, you will have effectively increased that account (on the invoice) and decreased that account (on the bill) by the same amount).
This results in (1) zero dollars in cleaning fee revenue to the owner, and (2) a cleaning fee payable to you, the property manager, on the QBO bill. 
 

Key takeaways:

1. Make sure the Income Account and Expense Account you've selected on your Cleaning Fee product/service are the same account. We recommend an income account, like Cleaning Fee Revenue. This allows you to easily make one-off adjustments to the bill amount in QBO, should you need to, and directly affect the owner's income.

2. Make sure the product/service you've mapped to Cleaning Fee in the Owner Fees & Commissions section of the VRAccountant workflow configurator is the same product/service you mapped to Cleaning Fee in the Items/Listings sections.

3. If the cleaning fee paid by the guest is your revenue (not the owner's), do not select Pass Cleaning Fees to Owner on the listing-specific configuration in VRAccountant. If you select Pass Cleaning Fees to Owner on the listing-specific configuration, VRAccountant will exclude the guest's cleaning fee from the bill it creates for owner expenses on reservations on the listing. This is reflected in QBO as income to the owner, and no offsetting payable to you. 

Steps (Cleaning Fees)
 

 

1. Select On or Off.

   1. Selecting On will cause VRAccountant to add the guest's cleaning fee to the QBO bill, payable to you, the property manager. 

   2. Selecting Off will cause VRAccountant not to add the guest's cleaning fee to the QBO bill. If you consistently pass cleaning fees to all of your owners, select Off.
       

1. From the Product / Service dropdown list, select the corresponding QBO product/service you want to use to for cleaning fees on QBO bills.

2. From the Channels dropdown list, select which channels apply for billing cleaning fees to owners. For example, if you do not select channel Airbnb, VRAccountant will not create a bill with cleaning fees on any reservations in your PMS where the channel is Airbnb.
    

The settings you configure here apply to all listings. You control whether or not the guest's cleaning fee is passed to the owner on a per-listing basis in the previous section, Configuring VRAccountant: Items & Listings.
 

Do you pass the guest's cleaning fee to the owner, but charge them a separate amount entirely? You may be interested in our Advanced Owner Expenses add-on. (Coming soon!)

You can proceed to step 6 here.