Overview
While DoorLoop is mainly focused on long-term residential and commercial leasing, it is possible to account for short-term rentals if you're dealing with properties that cater mostly to Airbnb, Vrbo, or other such services.
There are a couple of ways you can keep track of short-term rental revenue. You can either create a lease to keep track of them or make bank deposits only.
Note: These might not be the only way to account for short-term rentals, so you're free to use whatever method works best for you.
The Steps
Method 1 - Set Up A Lease for Short-Term Rentals
Step 1 - Create a short-term rental property
First, create your properties and units for short-term rentals. If you've already done this, you can skip this step. Otherwise, I recommend reading the article: Add a New Property.
Step 2 - Create a short-term rental lease
Create a new lease for that property. We won't go through the entire lease creation process; instead, we will highlight where specific steps will differ. For a refresher on how to create a lease, read the article: Add a New Lease.
Choose Month-to-Month for your Lease Terms and set a start date.
Add a new tenant(s) and name them Airbnb, Vrbo, or whatever other services you use. (You will be required to enter either an email address or phone number for the contact information)
Turn off the Tenant Portal and Insurance requirements.
Set the recurring rent amount to $0. You don't need to worry about the frequency.
Select No Deposit and No Late Less
Select Signed and click Save to finish.
Your lease is now set up to accept short-term rentals.
Step 3 - Post charges on your short-term rental
There will be no charges initially on the lease since we set rent to $0. You will also notice that there isn't a recurring rent schedule in the Rent tab. This is because we don't need one. Charges for short-term rentals and payments will be all manual on your end.
On the Transaction tab, click on the Post Charge button.
On the Post Charge window, fill in the required information:
Category - you can choose Rent or a custom category you set up
Description - you can use the guests' actual names or last names + date
Amount - enter the total amount charged for their stay
Memo - you can also enter any information about the short-term rental
Click Save to finish.
Step 4 - Receive payments on your short-term rental
To receive payment on your short-term rental, click the Transaction tab if you're not already on the lease and then click Receive Payment.
On the Receive Payment window, fill in the required information:
Received From: Select the service the user used (Airbnb, Vrbo, etc.)
Amount Received: Enter the total amount received
Payment Method: You can enter a payment method here
Notes: I would enter the notes for the short-term rental to coincide with the rent charge notes
You can then choose whatever option for the toggles
Click Save to finish.
That's it. This is a general way for you to record short-term rentals. Basically, it's a lease that never ends, and you're manually recording transactions for it whenever the property is being rented.
Note: If you would rather keep track of each renter, you could do that as well by adding each renter as a tenant via the move-in feature and then moving them out after they leave.
Method 2 - Tracking Short-Term Rentals with Bank Deposits
A slightly simpler method of recording short-term rentals is to enter bank deposits. This method is used if you just keep track of your short-term rental revenue outside of your regular long-term rentals.
On the main menu, click the + Create New button at the top left corner.
Click Bank Deposit under the Other Transactions section.
On the Bank Deposit window, enter the following:
Deposit Account - This is the bank account payments were received into
Property - pick the property associated with this deposit. (This deposit reflects on the accounting reports for this property.)
Category - Choose the correct general ledger account for the deposit. (Here you can use either Rent or Short-term Rent account.)
Description - (optional) Enter an optional explanation for the deposit. (What you enter here you will also see in the “Memo” column on accounting reports.)
Amount - Enter the amount of the payment.
Payment Method - (optional) Pick among several options for informational purposes. (Choosing Check allows you to record an optional Check Number.)
Reference - (optional) Add your own internal reference number.
Received From - (optional) You can record who paid you this deposit. In this case, you can use either a generic tenant you use for all your short-term rentals or a specific tenant if you want to keep track of that.
This does NOT put a payment on a tenant lease. If you need to record a tenant lease payment, record it from their lease.
+ Add Line Item: (optional) use this link to add additional deposit items if needed. (You could also create separate bank deposits for each line item.)
Add note: (optional) add additional information for your reference when reviewing the deposit later.
Click Save to finish.
Things to Consider
If you want to convert a unit to temporarily function as a long-term rental, you can. Just end the short-term rental lease and create a new lease as you would normally.