Property management software has made massive advances in the last ten years. The fully-featured options offer everything you could possibly need to run a sizeable vacation rental company from owner and guest portals to the website and channel management, housekeeping and maintenance scheduling to trust accounting …and much more.

Once you decide you need a PMS system, the challenge is on to find the one that is going to meet your needs not only for now but to be future proof as well. Are you planning on growing the company? Do you really need all the bells and whistles? What are your must-haves?

Today’s guests are in a great position to talk about getting the choice right. Chris Hynes and Paul Waldschmidt are owners and property managers, as well as software engineers – just the right combination of skills and experience to create their own PMS, which they did nearly ten years ago when they launched Owner Rez.

In this episode, Chris and Paul share their thoughts on when you need to start thinking about scrapping the spreadsheets and buying into some technology! They talk about the essential features you should look for and the key questions to ask when comparing systems.

Some of the topics we discussed:

• The reason sooner is better than later when investing in software.
• Why you need to know where you are making money.
• What ‘dog-fooding’ means and how it may be relevant to your choices.
• The importance of the relationship between you and the software provider.
• A brief explanation of vacation rental terms – API, direct integration, OTA and channel management.
• Why forums can give an insight into how support is managed.

Links:

Owner Rez

Capterra

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