We now use QuickBooks Online Plus for our approx. 45 furnished rental homes.
But no one seems to know how to run occupancy/vacancy rates. This is very useful in comparing say 1-bedrooms versus 2-bedrooms, etc.
We are still figuring this out by hand, using the rent paid information and counting the number of days. We have a fair number of move-ins and move-outs compared to unfurnished.
Does anyone here calculate that rate? Hotels have different software and they do it all the time.
By the way, we were at 91% occupancy for Jan-June and 87% July-Dec. It’s going to get even more important as the economy changes.
I don’t know how you could do it on Quickbooks if you’re using “cash basis” accounting (not to say that it couldn’t be done). I do calculate vacancy rates, but I do it by hand. I simply look at my paper rent roll each month and divide the number of vacancies by total units to get the vacancy rate. It couldn’t possible take more than 30 seconds to do it using this method. Even if you had some fancy-schmanzy computer program, you couldn’t save any time using a computer to do such a simple task. Of course, with unfurnished rentals, there is no need to calculate days, because tenants either pay for a whole month or they don’t. Obviously if you have tenants paying for shorter periods of time, that would make things a little more complicated.
Thanks for your responses. It is more difficult with furnished rentals because people rarely check in on the first of the month for a month’s stay–they can check in on any day of the month. All rentals now are for a month or more.
Yes, Joe I have calculated occupancy by your method, too, figuring what is the most rent possible? Now what actually came in? But rents vary and we sometimes discount for snowbirds (vacationers from up north), families of people undergoing medical treatments, or just to fill a unit in a slow time. So rents are not fixed amounts either.
Guess we’ll carry on doing calculations by hand. Going through the rental income received month by month and counting the days.
If you have a rent roll on paper, what about just adding another row under each property like “days occupied” or something like that? You could keep a tally of the days rented as you go and then just add them up and divide by the number of days so far that year.
You could update your vacancy numbers quarterly, semi-annually, or annually.
Not sure if this will help
But I run several Business with QuickBooks Pro
In that program You can set up to track Inventory
Using that feture I am able to track Inventory I have on hand at any time including what had and sold
I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t track Units the same way
be it 1 bdr or 2 brd there is place for each type of item all you have to do is configure it to track rental units instead of materials
That shuld do what your looking to do
Jusy configure it to use invertory even with cash sales it should track for you