Frequently Asked Questions

The Vacation Rental Desk online booking and reservation management service is $29/mo plus $10/mo for each additional property.

For example, if you have 3 vacation rentals, the monthly fee would be $29 for the first property plus $20 for the 2 additional properties, for a total of $49 per month.

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

Credit card processing is an optional feature and costs $29.95/mo for a single property and $39.95/mo for an unlimited number of properties. Credit card processing is an additional fee and added to your normal monthly subscription fee as described above. There is a one-time $99 set up fee to establish your merchant account.

Accepting credit cards is 100% safe and secure. There are no hidden fees or long-term commitments. View Credit Card Rates & Fees.

The 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.

There is no buy-out price. The Vacation Rental Desk is an online service, which is provided for a monthly subscription fee.

No, there is no licensing required or available for purchase. The Vacation Rental Desk is an online software service and provides online booking for your guests and simplifies reservation management through your online account. There is no software to download, install, or maintain and there is no licensing to keep track of.

No. The Vacation Rental Desk does not charge booking commissions or per-booking fees. The Vacation Rental Desk only charges fees to maintain service to your account. You can accept as many bookings as you need with no additional commission or per-booking fees.

There is no long-term contract with the Vacation Rental Desk, it is simply a month to month subscription.

There is no free trial of our service, however, we provide 30-day, 100% money back guarantee. If you are not fully satisfied for any reason, you may cancel your account within 30 days of signing up to receive a full refund of the package purchase price and any applicable setup fees (restrictions apply).

Of course not! The Vacation Rental Desk is designed to be user friendly, intuitive, and accessible to everyone, including the computer illiterate! You do not need to have any computer skills--all you need to be able to do is use the Internet!

The Vacation Rental Desk is designed for do-it-yourself owners and managers. If you have over 30 properties, contact us and tell us your special requirements so that we can evaluate if the Vacation Rental Desk can accommodate your business.

The Vacation Rental Desk service is 100% web based so there's no software to download and install. Best of all, your reservations can be accessed and managed from any computer with an Internet browser. You can even manage reservations for your vacation rental while you're on vacation!

All of your account information and reservation details are stored on our secure servers with standby systems, so that you do not have to worry about losing any data if your computer crashes (which is the case with traditional reservation management software).

The Vacation Rental Desk is and online service provided and maintained exclusively the VacationRentalDesk.com. We do not have a downloadable version of our online booking and reservation management systems for a hosting environment.

Instead, our service is designed to quickly and easily integrate with other websites by adding our Universal Booking Calendar, a tool which integrates directly into any web page by copying and pasting a small amount of HTML automatically generated for you when you sign up. You can also add Booking Links--small buttons that a guest can click to make online reservations--onto any web page.

If you are a web designer who is building a website for your client, this model saves you time and makes integration as simple as a few copy/pastes.

See How It Works for more information.

We do not provide custom software development for hosting-capable online booking systems designed for proprietary third parties such as web design companies. Our service already integrates quickly and easily with vacation rental websites by simply copying and pasting our Universal Booking Calendar and Booking Links directly onto any web page.

Sorry, but we do not offer any specials or bulk discounts for accounts with many properties. Our pricing has already been lowered to only $10 per additional property.

Sorry, but we do not offer any bulk discounts for accounts with many properties.

The Vacation Rental Desk supports all of the latest and popular Internet browsers including Internet Explorer 6 and 7+, Firefox 2+, Safari 3+, and Opera 9+.

The Vacation Rental Desk has several reports that you can download for use with your own accounting software, such as Quickbooks®, PeachTree®, or Microsoft Accounting®. Each report can be downloaded in Microsoft Excel (XLS) and Comma Separated Value (CSV) format, which can then be edited and imported into your software using your software's import wizards.

To notify your housekeeping service of reservations, the Vacation Rental Desk includes a "Housekeeping Notice" email alert. With just a few clicks, an email will automatically be generated and sent to your housekeeping service with 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 “Management Notice” email alert is also available if you require a notification of an upcoming reservation to a management service such as a community, association, or security guard service.

Your VacationRentalDesk.com account comes with a single login for simplicity and security. If you need to disclose information about accounts receivable as well as payment and transaction activity for reservations to an accountant, you can print out reports from your account (see the "What Reports Are Available" FAQ). See the "How Is Housekeeping Notified" FAQ above to learn how housekeeping services are notified of reservations.

Damage deposits can be secured by using a guest's credit card. To secure a deposit, an "authorization" can be placed for the amount of the security deposit prior to check-in. An authorization is a partial credit card charge which essentially "freezes" the amount of the charge on the guest's credit card and instructs the card holder's issuing bank to set aside the money for you. Authorizations can be collected up to 30 days later if there are any damages to your vacation rental.

If there is no damage to your vacation rental, the authorization can simply be voided. There is no refunding process to go through since no money was collected from the guest. Another benefit to this process is that no credit card percentage processing fees will apply!

It is recommended to place authorizations for security deposits up to 7 days prior to check-in. If the guest's reservation is longer than 30 days, a new authorization may be placed when the old one expires.

If the damage to your vacation rental is less than the amount authorized, you can specify the amount to collect (this is also called the clearing amount). Another benefit to accepting credit cards is that if for any reason the damage to your vacation rental exceeds the amount collected for the damage deposit, you can run a seperate charge for the remainder.

For further information, a step-by-step guide to processing credit cards using the Vacation Rental Desk is available to all members after signing up and is located under your account's "Help Section".

The Vacation Rental Desk has been developing innovative and easy to use vacation rental software since 2002. Our software engineers have a collective experience of over 40 years of professional web design!

Our business philosophy centers around three core values: maintaining the absolute highest level of quality of service, continually striving for improvement, and reinvesting in the company and its infrastructure.

Learn more About Us

No. The Vacation Rental Desk provides online booking and reservation management software services only. The VacationRentalDesk.com does not automatically manage your rentals for you.

You are responsible for screening and reviewing reservations, collecting payments, and conducting all other business operations as the owner of your own vacation rental business.

The Vacation Rental Desk's available reports include: The Reservation Charges report, Payment report, Virtual Terminal report, and Guest Report.

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.

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.

Virtual Terminal Report

The Virtual Terminal Report is available for client processing credit cards and summarizes all credit card transaction activity through the Vacation Rental Desk's built-in virtual terminal.

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.

Absolutely not. The 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.

See our complete Privacy Policy.

The Vacation Rental Desk does not provide website analytics or tracking. Support for this feature is planned to be added in the future.

Credit card processing is an optional feature and costs $29.95/mo for a single property and $39.95/mo for an unlimited number of properties. Credit card processing is an additional fee and added to your normal monthly subscription fee as described above. There is a one-time $99 set up fee to establish your merchant account.

Accepting credit cards is 100% safe and secure. There are no hidden fees or long-term commitments. View Credit Card Rates & Fees.

You can learn more about accepting credit cards and how credit card processing works by reading The Guide to Accepting Credit Cards for Do It Yourself Vacation Rental Owners.

After we receive your merchant application, set up generally takes within 3-5 business days to submit your application to underwriting and have your merchant account established.

Merchant accounts are not provided by the Vacation Rental Desk, they are provided by a merchant service provider. Vacation Rental Desk has partnered with an industry leading merchant service provider and negotiated very competitive rates for business owners in the vacation rental market.

View Credit Card Rates & Fees.

You can learn more about accepting credit cards and how credit card processing works by reading The Guide to Accepting Credit Cards for Do It Yourself Vacation Rental Owners.

If you already have your own merchant account, you can almost always integrate it with the Vacation Rental Desk. Contact us so that we can check compatibility.

The relationship with your existing merchant account will remain and all of your all of your existing merchant account fees will still apply (per-transaction fees, discount rates, and any service contracts).

Please note that the credit card monthly fees of $29.95/mo for single property accounts and $39.95 for an unlimited number of properties will still apply. There is a one-time $99 set up fee to activate your Vacation Rental Desk's built-in Virtual Terminal using your existing merchant account.

PayPal cannot be used to process credit cards through the 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 addition, payments must be sent and received through PayPal's website at PayPal.com.

In order to accept credit cards from the public and process them using the Vacation Rental Desk's built-in Virtual Terminal, you will need to add the credit card processing feature to your account when you sign up. By doing so, you will be able to establish a merchant account and be able to accept VISA, MasterCard, Discover, and American express credit cards from anyone.

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.

If your business is already using a PayPal as a Payment Gateway (that is you are currently using PayPal's Payflow Pro, Payflow Link, Website Payflow Pro, or Website Payments Standard) then you should already have an established merchant account. For integrating your existing merchant account with the Vacation Rental Desk, please see the FAQ "What If I Already Have a Merchant Account?".