Bed and Breakfast Management Software - Which is Best for You? by:Garth Catterall-Heart

Bed and Breakfast establishments have become more and more popular since the 1980s for overnight stays and lodging accommodations

. Besides managing the number of rooms and organizing rental activities, managers have to arrange bookings or reservations and determine which room is available on a specific date. What makes it more difficult is some of them do it manually. With the help of technology things can be much easier.

Organizing and managing your bed and breakfast will be a breeze with the proper reservations software designed for B&Bs. So how do you choose what reservation management software would best suit your needs. Here are some ideas that could help you in choosing the best reservation manager.

First and foremost, you must determine what are the things that you are looking for in a bed and breakfast reservation system? What are the things that you would like the software to do for you? Second, do you need a desktop application or a web-based program? Third, is the software user-friendly? Fourth, how affordable is the bed and breakfast reservation software?

The common features of a bed and breakfast reservation booking software are:

Check for availability and make reservations including the arrival date, departure date and manage multiple rental rates.

Generates confirmations, receipts and statements.

Record important information on all of your rental units.

Keep track of deposits, payments to accounts, and other income sources. Generate registers for your income reporting accounts.

An easy-to-use database that tracks all the information about your guests especially payments.

A way to add misc. charges and record full and partial rent payments and print rent receipts.

Process Online payments.

Record all your expense payments and travel deductions. View deposits and debits for any number of expense reporting accounts.

Track of all your income and tax deductible expenses and generate tax form reports.

Some room scheduling software will also keep track of schedules, generate form letters to be mailed or emailed, and provide other tools to help you streamline your business. Consider these additional features:

Send promotional materials or other form letters to all of your guests, vendors, family, friends or any other contacts.

Keep track of all the appliances, furniture, etc. that are included with your rental units.

Create To Do Lists with room for notes, deadlines, priorities, etc. with project management software.

Create Work Orders for any repairs or maintenance, track vendors, schedules, work completed and amounts paid.

Display your appointments, deadlines and other important events in Daily, Weekly or Monthly Calendar formats in scheduling software.

The best room reservation software also include tools which allow you to look up where area codes are, calculate time zone differences, and has a universal calculator that adds or subtracts numbers, dates and times, converts length, volume and weight measurements, computes discounts, sales tax, foreign money exchanges and loan payment amounts.

One major thing to consider is, should it be a desktop application or a web-based application? Here are some differences between the two:

A desktop application is an application that runs without the need of an internet connection. A web-based application, which includes any software you log on to a web site to access, requires a fast, reliable internet connection.

Desktop software is generally much faster and easier to use than web-based software. If you do not have a very fast internet connection, it could take you several times longer to get the same amount of work done.

A desktop application, if backed-up regularly, is more secure and reliable than a web-based application. If your web connection goes down, or the company's website were to go down, or the company went out of business, you will no longer have access to your data if using web-based applications.

With web-based applications you rent the software, paying monthly fees and often get only email support. With desktop applications, you generally pay just once, and technical support is often included.

Are you looking for software you pay for once, or would prefer paying less each month, but paying more in the long run? Would you rather pay less on a monthly basis for web-based software, which will add up to much more over time, or pay one reasonable amount up front and get the features, speed and reliability of a desktop application?

As a small business person, I'm sure you would rather find ways to save money and at the same time have the features and capabilities you are looking for in bed and breakfast management software?

With these things in mind, you can now determine what would be the best booking software for your needs. The best bed and breakfast reservations systems for a small business person like you, in my opinion, is Bed & Breakfast Tracker Plus. It is a reasonably priced desktop application that is easy to use and is available for most Mac and Windows computers.

About the author

Garth Catterall-Heart has been creating productivity software for self-employed professionals and rental property management software since 1999. Download your free trial for Mac or Windows at http://www.productivity-software.com/bedbreakfast/index.html

Jonathan Victolero assisted in the writing of this article.

You may reprint this article only in its entirety with this bio.

2010 Garth Catterall-Heart

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