Introduction

Now you have your users and teams set up to use iPro, let’s go ahead and configure your agency settings.

Here you will configure the following:

• Company Name, Address, Logo
• Financial statements
• Booking Rules

If you run multiple brands or run two or more short term rental agencies you can now run this through one booking management system in iPro.

For example, you are able to have one company that specialises in luxury villas and another company that specialises in family-friendly apartments. 

This allows you to have multiple distinct websites coming into one booking system which have different branding emails going out. 

You can also use the multiple brands feature by having a rental agency and a separate property management company. You will be able to track everything under one system instead of having a different system for each brand/company.

An activation/set-up fee is required to enable multiple brands on your account. You can send your request to support@ipro-software.com.

How to update your Company Information?

1/ On your iPro dashboard, go to Settings > Company Settings:

2/ Locate the brand that you want to update and click the 'Edit' button against it under the Actions column:

3/ This will bring you to the Company Settings page and will default under the Company Info tab:

4/ On this tab, you can update your Company Address, Phone #, Company Number, VAT Number, Taxrate,  Currency, etc. Once you are done with the updates, just click 'Save' or 'Save & Exit'.

How to update your Company Logo?

1/ On the Company Settings page, click on the Branding tab:

2/ Upload your company logo and click 'Save' or 'Save & Exit'.

How to configure your Owner Statement settings?

1/ On the Company Settings page, click on the Financial Statement Configuration tab:

2/ This section allows you to set how your owners are paid. Firstly, you need to set whether you pay a deposit to your owners. 

Within iPro, every time you process a booking, we create a set of payment schedules showing when payments are due, what they are for and how much they are for.

These payment schedules will drive the owner statements and ensure your owners are paid on time and accurately.

Do you pay your owners / landlords a booking deposit?

If you pay owners a deposit once the booking is confirmed, iPRO will create a payment schedule on each booking for the owner deposit as shown below:

When you run your statements, any new bookings will be added to that monthly statement. Please note that if the booking is considered ‘Last Minute’ then all money will be payable with the balance payment.

This field has several options:

Guest booking deposit less commission earned from the deposit:

This means you will earn commission only from the guest deposit payment, you will earn the rest of the commission once the guest balance payment has been received.

In this setup, the owner will be paid twice: A deposit payment and a balance payment, each payment will include a deduction for your commission and any applicable taxes.

Below is an example of how iPRO will calculate the payments to the owner based on deducting commission for each guest payment (deposit & balance)

Guest Rental Amount: £1,000

Owner Commission: 20%

Tax: 20%

Guest Deposit: £400

Commission from deposit: £80 (400 * 0.2 = 80)

Commission tax from deposit: £16 (80 * 0.2 = 16)

Owner deposit: £304 (calculation is 400 - ((400*0.2)*0.2))

Guest balance: £600

Commission from balance: £120 (600 * 0.2 = 120)

Commission tax from balance: £24 (120 * 0.2 = 24)

Owner balance: £456 (calculation is 600 - ((600*0.2)*0.2))

Guest booking deposit less the full agency commission for the booking:

This means you will earn commission based on the full amount of the booking value.

In this setup, the owner will be paid twice: A deposit payment and a balance payment, the deposit payment will include a deduction for your commission and any applicable taxes while the balance payment will be the remaining amount owed.

Below is an example of how iPRO will calculate the payments to the owner based on deducting commission for each guest payment (deposit & balance)

Guest Rental Amount: £1,000

Owner Commission: 20%

Tax: 20%

Guest Deposit: £400

Commission from deposit: £200 (1000 * 0.2 = 200)

Commission tax from deposit: £40 (200 * 0.2 = 40)

Owner deposit: £160 (calculation is 400 - ((1000*0.2)*0.2))

Guest balance: £600

Commission from balance: 0

Commission tax from balance: 0

Owner balance: £600

No deposit payable

This means you only make one payment to the owner, this payment is due after the guest has paid their final balance.  Please see the next section to decide when the owner balance is due to the owner.

I pay a fixed deposit from the guest booking deposit 

This means that you pay the owner a fixed amount or a fixed percentage to confirm the booking.

In this setup, the owner will be paid twice: A deposit payment and a balance payment, each payment will include a deduction for your commission and any applicable taxes.

Deposit is fixed amount

If you pay your owners a flat fee per booking i.e. £500, you would enter 500 here and every owner deposit will be set to £500 irrespective to the full amount of the booking.

Deposit is a percentage

If you pay your owners a fixed percentage to confirm the booking i.e 50%, you enter 50 and every owner deposit will be set as 50% of the total amount owed to the owner.

It is important to understand that the percentage option is based on the owner amount, so it is 50% of the amount payable to the owner after tax

When do you pay the balance due to the owners? 

Ensuring your owners are paid on time and accurately is a key part to running your agency. We recommend setting this to 'x days before/after checkout' and no. of days set to '0'. 

This will set the due date for the owner balance as the day of check out for each and every booking.

This will protect you from any ‘act of god’ where consumer law states you must refund in full if you cannot provide the accommodation as booked through no fault of the guest.

When you run your owner statement, we recommend that you run on the 1st of each month for the previous month. This will then pick up any owner payments that were due in the previous month.

You can configure this to be set against check-in or check-out date and whether it’s before or after and by how many days. Which means we can cater for any variable.

If you pay your owners in advance be sure to have strong contracts to reclaim money should there be any breach of contract. We can manage this within iPro, however, we do still recommend you retain the cash until after the guest has completed their stay.

If you only have 1 brand on your account, the answer to the following switches below will all be 'YES':

Is this the default company for management tasks? - Every time you create a task e.g. housekeeping, it will assign to the default brand

Is this the default company for management bills? - Every time you create a bill e.g. maintenance, it will assign to the default brand

Is this the default company for invoices? - Every time you create an invoice, it will assign to the default brand. An invoice is a collection of tasks and bills grouped together in a chargeable invoice to your owners.

Is this the default company for statements? - Your default company for producing owner statements, this compiles booking income, charges (bills & task) and commission deductions into one beautifully crafted owner statement.

Create blank monthly owner statements? - this is purely a preference. Some people like to produce a statement every single month irrelevant if there are any bookings. This is so the owners know that everything is in order and nothing has been missed. Other people just like to send owner statements when there is money owed so they would set this switch to 'NO'

Show future bookings? - when set to 'YES', this allows you to produce statements that shows the owner earnings from bookings in the future that have been confirmed.

Choose statement design layout? - the selected layout will depend on the options you've set above. Please reach out to support@ipro-software.com once you are done configuring this section so we can set the layout for you.

3/ Once you are done with the updates, just click 'Save' or 'Save & Exit'.

How to configure your Booking Rules?

1/ On the Company Settings page, click on the Booking Rules tab:

2/ This section will dictate how your guests pay you which will then affect how the guest payment schedules will behave on the booking:

• Booking Deposit Required - this field has several options on the drop-down list. Choose the option that suits you. If no rental deposit is required on the booking, set this field to '0':
  
  
• Balance Due Date - how many nights before check-in do you want to collect the rental balance?
  
  
• Default Security Deposit Amount - this is a global setting which will automatically apply the security deposit amount to all bookings created on each property. Take note that this amount can be overridden on each individual property. If you do not use security deposits, leave this field blank.
  
  
• When is the security deposit due? - how many nights before check-in do you want to collect the security deposit?
  
  
• Booking Fee - this is a global setting which will automatically apply a booking fee to all bookings created on each property. Choose the option that suits your preference. If you need to have different custom booking fees for each property, you'll need to utilise the Holiday Extra feature:
  
  
• Add booking fee to deposit? - this switch just determines whether the full amount of the booking fee will be included as part of the deposit required to secure the booking.
  
  
• Block Bookings x Days in Advance - this field indicates the # of nights before a booking is allowed to commence. If set to 0, same day bookings will be allowed. If set to 7, bookings will only be allowed to start 7days from today. This setting can be overridden manually through the back office.

3/ Once you are done with the updates, just click 'Save' or 'Save & Exit'.

By implementing what you have learned from this guide you will be able to answer the following questions:

• Where do I configure my Company Settings?
• Where do I configure the global booking fee?
• Where do I configure multiple brands?
• How can I set the owner balance due date?
• Where do I configure my owner statement settings?
• Where do I update my company logo?
• Where do I update my company/agency address
• Where do I configure the global security deposit?
• Where do I configure the balance due date?