Holiday Letting System         

Benefits

This system is designed to help an owner / manager handle the administration involved in letting a holiday cottage.  It has been designed exclusively for this purpose.

A database is kept (on your PC) of all lettings.  The application shows you at a glance which weeks are let, and which are available.  It also displays the booking status, rent and an optional comment.  You can create, modify and delete booking records starting with a single click.  You enter the details of the person booking - and the system automatically enters dates, rent and any optional charges and calculates deposits and balances. As well as recording your booking data in a single database, the application uses these details to create letters and reports for your accounts and records; for example it can produce a list of lettings and income in a spreadsheet compatible format to help you produce the annual accounts. It can also publish the rates and availability of your property to a web file.

A more comprehensive list of benefits follows:

List of Major Features:

• Speed up your administration: Simplifies, speeds up and assists with the administration and management involved in letting a holiday cottage. Fills in prices automatically, and produces automated letters.
• "At a glance" status: Makes it easy to see your letting status, showing which weeks are let, how much each week costs and the payment status - for example you can quickly identify overdue payments.
• Fast Data Entry: Fast entry of the data for each booking, including automatic completion of much information. The system calculates and inserts data, including the rent, duration, deposit and (optional) fuel and linen charges.
• Automated production of letters: Quickly produces letters to send to your customers, for example to confirm a booking. Information like names, dates and costs is automatically inserted. This feature uses proformas that the owner can easily modify; the sample letters, booking forms and web site are a valuable starting point.
• EMail communications: Instead of sending the above letters by post, they can be sent using email, from your preferred email client, or formatted HTML email is also supported using a built in mail client.
• How am I doing? Click a button and you can instantly see the current status for your income and days booked etc. You can find out how your customers found you and what the source of your bookings is. You can compare how your books are going compared to the same time the previous year.
• Prints addresses onto envelopes or labels: direct from the booking records. Saves writing or typing.
• Additional charges: Handles additional charges if you make them: eg for linen, pets, fuel, breakages deposit.
• Handles breakage deposits: You can (optionally) collect a breakages deposit, and the system will alert you when you need to repay this. It also records and accounts for any amount retained to cover breakages.
• Prevents overlapping bookings: Eliminates the risk of taking two overlapping bookings - you are alerted if dates clash.
• Repeat Bookings: For a repeat booking, you can quickly find the records of the previous booking and any notes you may have made, for example, to help avoid letting a second time to a poor tenant. You can also copy the details into the new booking to save retyping - with a single click!
• Reports: Provides printed reports and summaries:
  • Printed Booking Status report showing consolidated summary by week (useful for taking bookings by phone)
  • Quick status report on income and days let for each tax year.
  • Annual accounts - provides list of lets, income and totals as printed report or in standard CSV spreadsheet format.
  • Lists of lettings for your local contacts ( local managers, cleaners etc.)
  • Reports where your bookings came from - find out which methods of letting actually work!
  • Many reports can also be exported in spreadsheet format for additional calculations.
• Web site integration: If you use a Web site to advertise this system can assist in many ways:
• One click will link directly to your site in order to answer queries etc.
• The system will quickly update the local HTML files to show rates and availability status in a table, and then upload this status to your web site.
• The system can assist you operate an online booking system, through a web form, the contents of which can be automatically imported into a new booking.
• Mail Shots: Assists you to send mail shots to your previous tenants either by email or normal post. You can easily omit customers you don't want to write to (for example if you don't want them to stay again.)
• Discount calculator. Works out and enters a discounted rent (for example for last-minute bookings)
• Stores booking forms: You can save copies of customer booking forms submitted online or by paper (when scanned in) on the computer and retrieve them immediately when working with the appropriate booking.
• Data Base: The data is stored in an easily accessible data base - you have only a single copy of the data. This is easily backed up for security.
• Searchable archive: The database of bookings is always available for searching and you can keep as many old bookings as you wish. After a number of years, old bookings are easily removed - but are still kept in an archive, unless you choose to delete this. This makes keeping records (for example for tax purposes) very straightforward.
• Each property is separately configurable: If you have more than one property to manage, then each property can have its own options.  For example, you can have different currencies or different changeover dates for each property. Hence you could manage a property in USA where lets normally start on Sundays and are charged in US dollars, and one in UK, let in pounds sterling.
• Variable tax year: You can set the tax year to end on any date you like - so it can be used by owners in any country. However, at present the prompts and documentation are English only (although letters and notes can be in any language).
• Comments field: Each booking can have a comments field which can be used to record any appropriate information you wish to record.
• Special requirements: A "special requirements" field is available which can record special requirements eg "put extra bed out". This field is included on the report for your local representatives.
• Data Backup, Recovery and migration features are all provided.
• Runs on your PC or Laptop: There is no need for attachment to the Internet (see next item). There are no ongoing usage costs once it is purchased. You don't need additional software such as Microsoft Office although this software is compatible with Word and Excel.
• Broadband services can still be subject to major disruptions. In 2011 major disruptions caused huge numbers of BT customers to have no broadband service for hours, and Blackberry customers suffered disruption for days. In January 2012: Virgin Media broadband was out for over 3 hours due to a "routing failure". In July 2016, many BT Internet users suffered two days of outages. See this Daily Telegraph Article The failures just keep coming, and these are just a small selection. Also note that domestic routers and especially WiFi appear to fail or give problems surprisingly frequently - with this system you can always see availability and take bookings.
• Accounts: Several different accounting reports can be produced, suitable to either owner managers, or different reports are provided for agencies to use and send to their customers. Makes accounting easy!

The system was originally designed for a private owner, rather than a letting agency. However, we now have quite a number of small agencies using it, as all reports can be pulled off by property. Depending on the number of properties managed, there are two different ways to display the booking data ("classic mode" for one or two properties, or "Multi property mode"). Our largest user manages about 40 properties with this system and expects to be managing more soon - performance is fine at this level.

The Holiday Letting System is a simple, easy to use system which is moderately priced for most users. Even a novice computer user should be able to get immediate benefits.

Note: if you purchase the system, your registration payment will entitle you to receive new releases for no additional charge (although we reserve the right to make a charge for a major new version with substantial additional function.)

Frequently Asked Questions:

As users ask us questions about this system we are putting frequently asked questions on the web here. You can look at these questions (also available via the support link), and they may help you understand what the system can do.

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