I have, at last, made some progress with a home-grown system that I believe is very adaptable to differing owner scenarios.
This project arose as an idea from the above thread, was kick started when Brooke (Vrooje) very kindly sent me her source code and I wanted to learn how to write this sort of stuff for the web. With further acknowledgements to Juan (Mon269), who helped me understand what mySQL actually did, I started completely from scratch, and now have something worth playing with.
Its only available on-line at this stage, and I have a limited number of user-slots for access. If you'd like to take it for a test drive, are prepared to commit at least half an hour and give me feedback, I'll be happy to work with you and develop it further to suit everyone's needs.
To make a start, please just send me a PM with your real name and email address. I must have both please !
So, what is it ?
Very briefly, I make no claims that its "better" than any of the other systems available. Its just different - and it suits me. Here is a summary:
PIMS – Rental Property Management System
Your on-line Personal Assistant
This is a system for helping a rental property owner (like me) manage the process of:
Taking enquiries, tracking where they came from to measure the effectiveness of different advertising sources.
For managing enquiries, it will help you
• To respond accurately, safely and with confidence to all enquiries, knowing that all records are up to date and that you will be quoting accurate prices automatically computed, based on any combination of guest requirements and your rules.
When the enquiry converts to a booking, the system will help you:
• Manage all the various tasks that happen along the way, including among many other things:
- help to generate personalised emails
- tracking payments received, with reminders as needed
• Ensure that you do no forget to do something
• Ensure that you do not double book or even take overlapping enquiries !
• Ensure that all the requirements from the guest are met in time
• Display up to date availability calendar, which can optionally be embedded in your own website, customized to your own look n feel and automatically updated.
All of these capabilities are highly customizable and adaptable to your business model and your way of working with customers.
It will not:
• Take bookings or payments directly from your customers. Your customers have no direct access to the system except insofar as you can link your website enquiry form or on-line booking for to this management system to save you entering any data twice.
• Replace good book keeping for tax purposes (it does not keep track of any costs, but it will summarise all your income)