Frequently Asked Questions

The free 30-day trial of our vacation rental software includes everything in the paid version with the exception of credit card processing & listing on Google Vacation Rentals. You can upgrade at any time to a paid account from inside your online VacationRentalDesk.com account.

VacationRentalDesk.com charges absolutely no setup fees for anything. Zip, zero, nadda, $0. Quite frankly, we earn our living on providing vacation rental websites and reservation management software services to you, that's it!

Pricing for our Vacation Rental Desk online booking and reservation management service is shown on the pricing page.

Each rental is designated as a reservable unit and has its own vacation rental calendar of availability. All rental are managed through a single easy to use account. See all of the Features that Vacation Rental Desk provides.

Accepting online payments is safe and secure. Credit card and electronic check processing are standard included features. There are no set up fees, contracts, cancellation fees, or hidden fees.

Vacation Rental Desk service allows one calendar of availability per reservable unit. All reservable units can be easily managed through one VacationRentalDesk.com member account.

Each unit will have its own rental calendar so that you can properly track reservations, availability, and payments for each reservable unit.

For example, if you have a building such as a condominium complex or a beach house duplex/triplex (each with several individually reservable units) you will need to have a property for each unit, and your account will be considered a mutli-property account even though there is only a single physical building location.

If multiple adjacent or nearby units are rented together to a large party of guests, both availability calendars will need to be updated. Simply key-in a reservation for one of the reservable units and then mark dates for all other occupied units as unavailable.

Absolutely not. Vacation Rental Desk comes with free unlimited bookings and does not charge booking commissions or per-booking fees. You pay only a fixed monthly service fee so your expenses remain the same.

Yes. Credit card processing is limited to US-based vacation rental businesses only. In addition, language support is provided our vacation rental websites and secure online booking services, however, the members area and guest communication is in English only.

Vacation Rental Desk is designed for do-it-yourself owners and managers. There is no limit as to how many properties you can have with your account. For paid accounts, we offer bulk pricing if you have a large inventory of rentals.

To notify your housekeeping service of reservations, Vacation Rental Desk includes a special email alert. With just one check of a box an email will automatically be generated and sent to your housekeeping service. Housekeeping emails include details like the reservation's check-in and check-out dates and the reservation order # for reference. This feature saves you time and headaches from having to call or type out emails manually to your housekeeping service.

You can also include the guest's name and telephone number if desired (by default, this information is not sent to protect the guest's privacy). This email can be sent at the time that you screen and accept the reservation order, or later once you've received full or partial payment for the order.

An additional email alert is available if you require a notification of upcoming reservations to a management service such as a community, association, or security guard company.

Yes. Your Vacation Rental Desk account comes with multi-user access, allowing you to create separate logins for housekeepers, management, or other staff that need to access your account on a permission-granted basis. For example, you can limit access so that your accountant can only access specific financial reports, while remaining unable to manage reservations.

Also see the "How Is Housekeeping Notified" FAQ above to learn how housekeeping services are notified of reservations.

No. Vacation Rental Desk provides online booking and reservation management software and website services only. You stay in the driver's seat and manage your own reservations, including decisions about which reservations are to be accepted or rejected, when payments are made, and managing guest communication.

You are in charge from A to Z, including screening and reviewing reservations, collecting payments, and conducting all other business operations as the owner of your own vacation rental business.

We offer service to USA and Canadian residents only at this time (your guests can of course still be from anywhere in the world). To obtain a merchant account, you must either be a U.S. citizen or have a valid U.S. business license and U.S. bank account.

If you live outside of the United States or Canada, we can provide you service if you have a credit card issued from the United States or Canada.

The billing address of the credit card to pay for your account must also match the billing address as recorded on file with the credit card's issuing bank. We perform Address Verification Matches on all transactions.

Our booking service provides no less than 9 different reports!

Reservation Charges Report
The Reservation Charges report is helpful for tax calculation and revenue reporting. It allows you to create a report for line-item reservation order charges including: rent, service fees, booking fees, security deposits, coupons, and tax. Subtotals, grand totals, and order balances are also shown so that the total amount of rent charged, fees charged, security deposits required, coupons applied, and tax charged can be determined.

This report can be customized by showing all reservations made within a specific date range, or all reservations that fall within a specific check-in and check-out date range. In addition, the report can be filtered by order status, including "Accepted" and "Paid in Full" orders. Accepted orders differ from Paid-In-Full orders because they have an outstanding order balance, where a Paid-In-Full order has a balance of zero.

Occupancy Report
Check occupancy statistics for one or more properties by date range. Helpful for end-of-year analysis.

Payment Report
The Payment report is helpful for end-of-year tax reporting and period cash-flow analysis. It will show you all payments made (cash, checks, credit cards, bank transfers, cashier's checks) for a property during a specific time period, such as Jan 1-Dec 31. This report can show both payments (inflow) from guests to the owner, such as rent payments, and or refunds (outflow) from the owner to the guest, such as damage deposit refunds. The net inflow/outflow can be reported to your investors.

Credit Card Transaction Report
This report is available for clients processing credit cards. It summarizes all credit card transactions run through your account's built-in virtual terminal, and can be customized on a per-property basis, or by date.

Guest Report
The Guest Report can be filtered by check-in and check-out date and includes the name of the guest and their contact information which you can download and import into your customer relationship management software, such as Goldmine.

Check-in and Check-out Reports
Quickly view all of your check-ins for a date range side by side. For example, this report is helpful to see who is checking in this week across all of your properties. It is also useful for service companies such as housekeeping or security.

Reserved Dates Report
Visually check reservations for all of your properties at one time side-by-side.

Reservation Income Report
A consolidated report to check reservation income based on check-outs for a given period. Useful for closing out your books at month end.

Absolutely not. Vacation Rental Desk respects your privacy. We will not give out or sell email addresses, reservation information, or personal information collected from website visitors or registered members to third parties.

Please see Accepting Credit Cards for current credit card per-transaction rates.

Accepting online payments is 100% safe and secure. There are no hidden fees, cancellation fee or long term contracts.

Yes, international tranasctions have a surcharge because of currency conversion and additional risk involved in processing international credit card transactions. Please inquire for the exact rate as it fluctuates.

Damage coverage is required for all direct bookings taken through your website. It is not required for orders that are keyed in manually, however it is strongly recommended.

Travel coverage is optional to guests, who are given the opportunity to purchase coverage at the time of booking.

Damage protection claims are paid for reimbursement costs to the property manager whereas travel protection claims are payable to the guest.

The property manager has 15 days after check-out to find and report damage to the rental property and 45 days to resolve the issue and gather documentation (receipts, photos, et cetera) of damaged or stolen property. Claims are adjudicated within 7 days and then paid by check to the property manager.

For Damage Protection, a link is provided inside your VacationRentalDesk.com member dashboard to file a claim. The process is simple and straightforward and will ask you for descriptions as well as photos, receipts, and a police report of the damaged or stolen items.

For Travel Protection, the guest can follow a link provided in their coverage documents, which are emailed to them after coverage is opened.

Travel protection is available for US and Canadian residents only.

We presently support the OpenEdge, KeyInCode, Yale, and Igloohome door locks sold at RemoteLock.

For AirBnB hosts we recommend the KEYINCODE 4500 lock so that you can utilize Airbnb Host Assist to automatically generate guest codes. For more information about how electronic door locks work with Airbnb, read about Airbnb Host Assist.

Payments must be sent and received through PayPal's website at PayPal.com. PayPal cannot be used to process credit cards through Vacation Rental Desk. The reason for this is that PayPal accounts only allow you to send and receive money (credit card or electronic bank transfers) to and from other PayPal members. This limits the number of people that will be able to pay for your vacation rental's reservations.

In order to accept credit cards from the public and process them using Vacation Rental Desk's built-in Virtual Terminal, you will need to apply for a merchant account through our merchant services partner, at which point you will be able to accept VISA, MasterCard, Discover, and American express credit cards from guests.

Guest PayPal account information is collected during the online booking process so you can match PayPal payments with reservations. After a reservation is screened and accepted, the guest is emailed your PayPal account information so they can send you PayPal payments.

After you receive a payment for a reservation from PayPal, you will need to enter a receipt of the transaction receipt in your VacationRentalDesk.com account. A copy of the payment receipt can be automatically emailed to the guest, saving you time and informing the guest that their payment has been received.

PayPal electronic payments and invoices are not integrated into the VacationRentalDesk.com online booking and reservation management system at this time. The PayPal payment option is provided for organizational and tracking purposes only, indicating to the vacation rental owner or manager that the guest will be paying for their reservation by PayPal.

Yes! All of our websites, including our Reservation Dashboard where you manage reservations, are mobile friendly. Support for the latest iPhones and Android phones as well as tablets is built-in. We also do our best to keep font-sizes large and readable, making for a positive web experience for guests and managers alike.

Yes! Availability can be synchronized in both directions, both to and from Vacation Rental Desk, with third party websites including all of the top marketing channels as well as iCalendar and Google Calendar.