Paperless Office
A ‘Paperless Office’, as it pertains to the
Vacation Rental Industry and VRM, is a Vacation Rental Management Company that
does not mail out contracts to its Guest, nor statements to its Owners; it is one that relies on a series of emails tied to reservation events instead
of letters in the mail and pays Owners and Vendors through direct deposit instead of paper checks.
Two of the biggest tools we utilize to to
transform an office into a paperless office are the Guest Extranet and the
Owner Extranet. These two features are
part of the regular VRM package, but have to be configured and turned on for
your company. The process for doing so
is fairly simple, and does include a demonstration of each so we can be sure we
enable the specific features you need.
If you are interested in having the Guest Extranet and/or the Owner
Extranet implemented, please put in a Help Ticket letting us know.
The Guest Extranet is accessible by your Guests from your homepage. Essentially the Guest Extranet is a website
tool created to give your Guests the ability to update their personal
information or information on their specific reservations in a secure, online
environment. Additionally the Guest Extranet provides your Guests with a
way to view information about their reservations (past and future), make
payments, add travel insurance, add the damage deposit waiver, add Guest
charges (Available Extras), sign the lease agreement, and print/email the
reservation confirmation. Having the ability to sign the Vacation Rental
Agreement, as well as receive the Reservation Confirmation through the Guest
Extranet cuts down on the time, and paper needed to mail these items to your
Guests, thus contributing to your paperless office. For more information on the Guest Extranet, please read the Knowledge Base article: 1.6.4 Sign Lease Agreement.
In
addition to using the Guest Extranet and Owner Extranet to move your office in
a paperless direction, we also offer a series of emails tied to reservation
events you can set up to send to your Guests instead of sending letters in the mail. Currently there are 16 different emails. Fourteen are available at the Office level,
and two are offered at the Property level.
The two emails at the property level can be set up to for each property
if there is property specific information you would like to communicate to all
Guests checking in to or out of a property.
For more information on the reservation emails, please read the knowledge
base article: 13.2.10 Reservation Emails.
If you would like to communicate with all of your Owners at
one time, you can send an email to all of them by going to Admin Console ->
Misc -> Manage Emails. These emails are helpful for sharing vital
information to all your Owners regarding things like Spring Cleans,
Winterizing, Rate Information, Statements, etc.
For more information on Owner Emails, please read the Knowledge Base Article: 7.1.0 Manage E-Mails.
A final aspect of what we consider the Paperless Office is
giving you the ability to pay your Owners and Vendors via direct deposit
instead of having to send them a paper check.
We do not charge for setting up this feature; however, please keep in
mind that your bank might charge for the transactions. If you want to start utilizing direct deposit for your
Owners and Vendors, the first thing you need to do is contact your bank and let
them know you want to set up direct depots.
After talking to your bank, the VRM Team can then enter the information you supply from your bank in our system. The final
step that must be taken is that you will need to enter the Owner and Vendor
payment information in your system. We
will provide training on how to set up everything on your side and what the
process is for issuing payments via direct deposit. More information is available in the Knowledge Base on setting up the Electronic File Transfer, Creating an Electronic File Transfer, and Reconciling an Electronic File Transfer Direct Deposit: 13.2.3.1 - Electronic File Transfer Setup Wizard, 6.07.1 - Electronic File Transfer, and 6.5.1 - Direct Deposit Reconciliation for Electronic File Transfers.
The Guest ExtraNet, Owner ExtraNet, series of emails tied to
reservation events, Owner emails, and direct deposit for Owners and Vendors all
come as part of your VRM software package, and when these are configured and
being utilized, we consider your office to be a ‘Paperless Office’. If you like a more enhanced paperless office,
we do offer other tools for an additional cost.
They include Welcome Home and eChecks. If you would like more
information on these enhancements, please contact the Help Desk, or read the articles in the Knowledge Base: VRM's Welcome Home: A User's Guide and eChecks.
Revision 2.5