Other Charges

 Adding charges to a reservation can be a great way to make more money and promote your properties with more options.  Charges to a reservation can be automatic, such as a cleaning charge or reservation fee or they can be added to the reservation at any time.

 Get creative and make more money for you and your owners with other charges by partnering with local enterprises and offering your guests more options.  In addition to quality housekeeping and extra linens,  consider cooks, masseurs, spa packages, babysitting, dog walking or dare to offer something completely different.  Once you have come up with some new money making charges, you will need to enter them in your RMS before you can add them to a reservation.

All Charges must exist in the Charges File.  Go to Files>Charges>New.  Give the charge a brief ID and Description.  When creating a charge in the Charges file you may set up the cost of the charge to be per person or per reservation.  Is the charge per night?  Is the charge taxed?  Would you like to assign a seasonal rate to this charge?

When setting up the accounting portion of the charge you will need to choose a GL income account and and Accounts Payable account.  Choose an Income account that best suits the type of charge for use in the GL income field and use the Accounts Payable Escrow for the AP.  If you have already entered a Vendor who would be associated with the charge, assign the vendor to the charge.  It is not required that you assign a vendor.  If you use RMS Advanced Accounting Payable system then you assign a vendor to the charge.  This allows you to pay the income earned from this charge to the vendor during the month end process.

Owners may participate in the revenue from a charge.  This is available with new html owner statements.  If you are sharing charge income with an owner you designate how much as a flat amount, a percent or use the units commission percent.

Other Charges Reporting

The best way to track charges added to reservations is by using the Other Charges/Amenities/Equipment Report.  This report allows you to report on just charges or also the amenities and equipment that was sold during a period of dates.

You will find this report on the Main Reports menu>Management reports>Other Charges/Amenities/Equipment Report.  There are several options to choose from on the report which will change the way it looks such as sorting by type of charge or the GL associated with the charge.  You can include the unit sub total of charges and even the  reservation names.

Cleaning charges will also print on the cleaning cost report.  If you have the cost of cleaning and labor cost entered in the unit inventory file for each unit cleaned, you can compare the cleaning income to the cost on the cleaning cost report.  Who paid for the cleaning, such as the reservation paid or the owner paid is also on the report as well as the sub total and totals.

Changing Owners

When a property in your program changes ownership, the transition is easy in RMS.  First you will want to settle all business with the old owner.  Report all reservations, post any owner miscellaneous charges, workorders or credits to the unit.  Print and finalize the owner statement for the unit entering the last day of ownership for the cutoff dates. 

You may want to print some other reports for your files such as the Unit Nights Gross report or anything else the owner may request.

Enter the new owner in the Owner File.  This owner should have a unique new owner ID.   Assign the new owner to the unit in the Unit File.  Do not delete the old owner.  You will leave the old owner on file until you run 1099's at the end of the year