Comprehensive Fix for Accounting/Quickbooks - develop Roadmap

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Very interested and WhatsApp may be best.  Kristin - Welcome Y'all Vacation Rentals 

Is there anything preventing this forum thread from being used for an ongoing discussion of accounting features?

Sounds like a great idea. I would be fine with either but WhatsApp is probably better. Whatever you choose is OK with me. 

Is there anything preventing this forum thread from being used for an ongoing discussion of accounting features?

Accounting doesn't seem to be a priority and in some cases not even well understood. To me it is really hard to understand how work is being done on stuff like lock integration that is a non-paid feature and there are at least half dozen of services that provide a solution and that effort is not directed towards fixing accounting that is an integral need and extremely time consuming without a robust solution.

There have been several people on the forum that have offered to help and as far as I know no one has been contacted, therefore it seems we have to create an external working group and try to find 3rd party alternatives / work arounds to make this work.

I really appreciate the flexibility and functionality of OR but this really seems to be an area that is lacking.

This is me trying to understand, not pushing back. Do you mind explaining, using examples, what's wrong with the current implementation?

To be clear, I'm not saying there are no problems in the current implementation, but this thread started with concrete examples of missing or incomplete/broken features and potential fixes. As a result, you can see OR folks engaging in this thread on concrete examples and giving their view on potential fixes.

Saying "accounting is misunderstood" is not very tangible...what exactly is broken, and what do you propose to be done to fix it?

Yes, I'm fully aware you started this thread and I do understand the frustration of having no tangible progress. I'm not sure that giving up and moving the discussion elsewhere would solve anything. This is why I go back to: let's work with concrete examples and engage OR folks

I am really interested in these fixes. But I have to agree with Ken - why can't we discuss the needs over here? If we take it offline/elsewhere, this thread may likely become stale. Just compare this thread (which has only 26 votes and 23 replies) vs the lock integration thread (which has 161 votes and 81 replies). Just looking at these stats  the OR team would consider it a low hanging fruit (and I guess lock integration might be easier to implement as well).

So if we were to continue the discussion over here, it would get more eyeballs and possibly more votes - which I hope will translate into getting these issues fixed by OR

So if we were to continue the discussion over here, it would get more eyeballs and possibly more votes - which I hope will translate into getting these issues fixed by OR

100% agree

Here is a WhatsApp Group link and below is a QR code to join the group. Please introduce yourself indicate your OR handle, provide a link to your website, and tell us a little about your main pain points and priorities on the accounting front. I will try to moderate the group to only current OR members. Please let me know if you have any suggestions for the group.

So if we were to continue the discussion over here, it would get more eyeballs and possibly more votes - which I hope will translate into getting these issues fixed by OR

Thanks for everyone's engagement. By no means do I want this thread to go stale. Since my original post, I have found a lot more issues and want to update the post and create an updated working plan, however i would prefer not to do it in a vaccuum. There have been a few people that replied to this thread with both a strong interest and what appears a strong understanding of accounting. I am attempting to create a core group where we can have calls and share screens and try to put together suggestions that are more than one person's views/opinions. Many of these things are difficult and time consuming to outline on a message board. It it my impression that if we create a working group we can actually put more useful and updated content on this thread and hopefully at some point OR will engage with us beyond replies on this group so that we can jointly chart a path forward. The accounting issue seems to predate me using OR and it seems to be a constant pain point -- my guess is that some of these users have either left the platform or given up as some of the people from old posts have gone silent.

i'm also trying to understand how people are running their business with the current tools. There must be work arounds. It cost me a fortune to have to send a whole bunch of different reports to my accountant for them to have people key in or re-format excel files to upload the information. I also had an exorbitant bill for reconciling credit card payments, credits, etc which could all be done electronically.

Before OR i only used VRBO and AirBnB and had a third party tool from a company smaller than OR that did all the accounting perfectly so it is hard for me to understand why this is so hard.

Sorry to rant but I am only trying to help by gathering other's knowledge and seek advice of others in a way that is more interactive so we can summarize and post here.

What is happening? Why are people taking OR feature discussions off the thread and into a private WhatsApp group? What is the purpose of this other than to fragment the discussion?

What is happening? Why are people taking OR feature discussions off the thread and into a private WhatsApp group? What is the purpose of this other than to fragment the discussion?

I have asked OR to organize a discussion group that can have working sessions. Several people have volunteered to help but nothing is happening. It is very difficult to have a productive discussion over threads in a asynchronous manner - That is not how products are developed. Additionally, it seems that there is a lot of people trying to figure out how to keep their books with the current system. If there is interest in having a live discussion great, if not, then no harm.

As I said above, the goal is to list, organize, prioritize what is needed and then post a summary back to this group as the main thread.

When I got involved there was a bunch of incoherent different threads of accounting needs. OR didn't organize it - I had to take the time of going through it all, organizing and clarifying the needs and from what I gathered from the discussion it was very well received. After serveral more months using OR, I have substantial more feedback and suggestions and would prefer not to redo it in a vacuum. I'm also interested in how others are dealing with the current shortfalls. If we can put together a group of people that understand both STR and Accounting we can shortcut mistakes and miss-guided development. The current approach, in my opinion (and I don't know the history) seems to have some gaps in conceptualization or it seems developed ad-hoc at the least.

Credit cards are big part of the financial reconciliation. From what I understand according to OR themselves, Stripe is the most common Processor used by OR members (by far), yet why was syncing of credits developed for Lynbrook before it was done for Stripe? How do we have things prioritized with transparency?

I don't have a background in accounting and the amount of work I have to put in to find all the discrepancies between OR, Airbnb, VRBO and Stripe has been tedious and frustrating since half the issues are how the data gets imported into OR and how it populates in OR, if it doesn't make sense to someone with accounting experience imagine how I feel every month.

I just use excel and create my own end of month report , I would love to be able to use QB with OR and have a group dedicated to making it better and learn how to set it up correctly.

For additional QB integration, I'd love to see this process be possible:

• Payment made creates a sales receipt that categorizes it as Deposits for Future Stay (or whatever category someone chooses, this is what I call it) and classes it according to property
• If there is a transaction or channel fee that comes out of the payment before it is deposited (ie Airbnb), then that line is included and matched to the correct category so that these sales receipts will match the deposits
• After a stay is completed, a sales receipt is created that lists the breakdown of a stay into the correct income categories that have been matched and then adds the total as a negative line coming out of Deposits for Future Stay

We do the same thing. We take multiple data sets to reconcile each month. 

I would really like a Trust Accounting System put in place. That is the biggest reason I am thinking about a different PMS right now. 

Any updates from the OwnerRez team on the Quickbooks roadmap?  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFNq8TMvd7Y

I feel like this topic has been pretty well discussed this thread already, but I wanted to share this youtube video on two methods to record "credit card" (or Airbnb) fees in Quickbooks.  Method 1 is what I've been doing manually with each payment each month, looking up the Host Service Fee then adding a resolving line item with the deposit to make it match the invoice (so tedious), but it seems like method 2 in this video wouldn't be that difficult to add as an option in Ownerrez if a user wanted to enable it.  Just add a setting to move the Host fee (information OR already has) into the invoice and sync it with Quickbooks so the invoice and the deposit in QB match.

Any updates on upgrades to quickbooks integration? 

I just don't bother with the fees until the end of the month, when I do a journal entry for the total fees for that month.  Much easier.  You can even do it annually if the only reason you need the data is for taxes.

None at this time, we're currently focusing on other large updates.

Please spread the word for this feature to get more votes if you'd like to see it prioritized. 

Not to step on what Caleb said, but we do have a large update coming out very soon! 👍

We have been working on a large update that will sync deposits & fees across to QuickBooks.  This will create "to the penny" bank deposits in QuickBooks for the bookings and payments in OwnerRez.

This work is already built and in testing.  Here are some screenshots to wet your whistle!

Payment and Deposit settings are now split:

Payment Settings are now not clearer to only being about payment-related stuff, and require "Undeposited Funds" mapping if you are syncing deposits:

There is a new Deposit Settings tab that maps deposit types (Airbnb, credit card settlements) with Bank Accounts in QB.  This allows you to say, for instance, that "all Airbnb deposits should go to bank account A, but all Lynnbrook deposits should go to bank account B".

Here's what it looks like when you go to change those deposit settings:

And here it is in QuickBooks, after syncing over:

Notice the payments that are included at the top and the fees and adjustments showing at the bottom.  If you have property > class mapping in place, it will maintain that on the lower fees/adjustments.

After syncing, the Deposit in OwnerRez shows a QB flag with a link to click over:

We are still in the early stages of testing this, but it's real and it's coming!! 🎉

This is really exciting news, thanks for the update!  Just curious, will this feature update include tracking refunds as well or is it mainly focused on the service fees?