Comprehensive Fix for Accounting/Quickbooks - develop Roadmap

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Hi Paul,

I'm new to the Quickbooks Ownerez integration, and I have some questions.

I have turned the Airbnb transaction sync on, but I'm API integrated with Airbnb. In Ownerez, my future Airbnb bookings are shown as paid. It looks like it shows the date that Airbnb collected the payment.  Also, in my Quickbooks, the invoices show as paid ( when the quest submitted the payment, " I'm assuming)  even though I'm not getting the money until the customer checks in.  I'm doing something wrong. Please help 

Since OR doesn’t follow proper accounting practices that is the way that the software is designed to work. In the current implementation it is considered paid because the customer has paid it and when it is deposited in your bank by AirBnB it will be processed as a deposit by OR.

If GAAP accounting processes were followed those funds should be put in an “undeposited funds” asset account that would represent all the funds that AirBnB is holding on your behalf. It doesn’t help that QB doesn’t support more than on Undeposited Funds type account so one has to create other types of accounts as Undeposited Funds and if so can’t use the Deposit feature of Quickbooks.

I have requested several times that we setup a committee of users that have expertise in accounting and finance so we can create a solid roadmap for the QB integration.

The new deposits feature has been rolled out which is great to see effort but unfortunately it seems to have lack of forethought and planning from an Accounting perspective - not sure who is providing the guidance to product development but I believe that the implementation could be better. Especially for advanced users that have multiple currencies and multiple payment methods. Maybe OR core customer is the Mom and Pop so it doesn’t matter

Having said that, to do proper GAAP accounting is not a straightforward thing and there has to be a balance between practicality, QB capabilities, and Accounting accuracy and that is the reason that these trade offs should include input from a working group.

Ocean Zen, thank you for responding. I do need to follow GAAP. How would I turn off the Automatic Airbnb Payments? I can't show that I have " received money," even though I may not get the money for a year.  

I used to use BNBTally, and I did not have any of these problems. Do you have a step-by-step guide for the proper workflow between Ownerez invoices and deposits and QuickBooks? I want to make sure that my Undeposited funds/ Clearing Asset account reflects the proper balance. 

Hey Ocean Zen,

I've read your post, and I agree with you for the most part. I say "most" because there are some things that I don't understand, most likely because I don't have the accounting knowledge to parse those parts out. If you don't mind, could you please clarify some of these things for me?

...In the current implementation it is considered paid because the customer has paid it and when it is deposited in your bank by AirBnB it will be processed as a deposit by OR.

If GAAP accounting processes were followed those funds should be put in an “undeposited funds” asset account that would represent all the funds that AirBnB is holding on your behalf

Am i wrong in saying this is actually how it currently works? On my (granted, pretty simple setup) the invoice payment uses "undeposited funds" and the date on the payment is day or two (maybe) before the date when the funds hit my banking account. during normal year, not a big deal. if is going to cross to next year (i run my business on cash basis) than i will have a problem, but i do check for that manually.

"... those funds should be put in an "undeposited funds" asset account that would represent all the funds AirBnb is holding on your behalf"...i believe that is how it works right now. for me, "undeposited funds" hold all the funds for all the OTA's are holding on my behalf

It doesn’t help that QB doesn’t support more than on Undeposited Funds type account so one has to create other types of accounts as Undeposited Funds and if so can’t use the Deposit feature of Quickbooks.

This one went over my head...more than one "Undeposited Funds" type account? is that even something that QBO supports? not sure what is the use case here assuming i even understood correctly what you said

I have requested several times that we setup a committee of users that have expertise in accounting and finance so we can create a solid roadmap for the QB integration.

Yup,  i do recall that time and i completely agree with you. Not sure what is OR doing about this. I do see improvements to QBO integration, but, with all dues respect, the way those improvements work do seems to point to a lack of accounting expertise as you have pointed out many times.

The new deposits feature has been rolled out which is great to see effort but unfortunately it seems to have lack of forethought and planning from an Accounting perspective - not sure who is providing the guidance to product development but I believe that the implementation could be better. Especially for advanced users that have multiple currencies and multiple payment methods. Maybe OR core customer is the Mom and Pop so it doesn’t matter

Agree on the first part. I'm one of those "Mom and Pop" and the new deposits feature is not working for me. I'm not even sure what exactly is the use case OR thought about when they implemented this. The rest of your points here, not sure i'm parsing. i understand the words, i'm just not sure what are you referring to. (the multiple currencies and multiple payment methods part)

For me, the biggest pain point is that i need to manually match the invoice payments to banking transaction so i can add the missing expenses and run validations (check the invoice and payment dates to make sure they do not cross into next year or the other way around, adding CC charges, or AirBNB charge..so on). i was hoping the new deposit feature will help me here, but the OR gods decided (why???) to not allow me to use COGS for expenses in deposits. seriously...

Alin

BnBTally is the best accounting implementation for AirBnB (and VRBO if you are not on a PMS) that I have found. It becomes a little more complicated when you have a merchant account and are processing your own CC.

Since the deposit feature didn’t exist until now I setup my system to process similar to BnBTally syncing with Stripe and my Bank Feed. It’s not perfect as OR doesn’t open up the financial data in their API. I can try to put together a post of how I do it in the next few weeks. Would love to get better support from OR for improved accounting.