Case study
A rental operations system that ties bookings, turnovers and owner statements together
Bookings, cleanings and owner reports were coordinated by phone and spreadsheet. We built a back-office system where each booking drives the work that follows it.
Quick facts
- Industry
- Vacation rentals
- Product type
- Back-office web application
- Platform
- Web, works on phones
- Timeline
- Built in stages
At a glance
What changed
One calendar per property
Every booking and block for a property appears on a single calendar.
Turnovers from bookings
When a booking ends, a cleaning task is created for that property and date.
Statements from records
Owner statements are built from the bookings and expenses already in the system.
Owners and properties linked
Each owner, property and booking is connected, so questions have one answer.
The client
The client and the situation
The client is a vacation rental operator that manages homes on behalf of their owners. It takes bookings, prepares each home between stays, handles maintenance and pays owners their share each month. The team includes office staff, cleaners and maintenance people.
Parts of its operation ran on older software, and much of the rest ran on phones and spreadsheets. As the number of homes grew, the gap between the two became the main source of mistakes and extra work.
The challenge
The challenge
Every booking starts a chain of work: the home must be cleaned after checkout, checked before the next arrival and sometimes repaired. That chain was coordinated by phone. When a booking changed, the cleaning schedule had to change too, and sometimes it did not.
At month end, owners expected statements showing their bookings, income and expenses. Building each statement meant pulling numbers from the booking records and the expense sheets and combining them by hand. The more homes the operator managed, the longer this took, and the more likely a mistake became.
Before
How the work was done before
Bookings were recorded in the booking system. Office staff then looked at upcoming checkouts and called or messaged cleaners to arrange each turnover. Changes to bookings meant more calls. Maintenance issues found during cleaning were reported by message and tracked on a separate list.
For owner statements, staff exported bookings, collected expense receipts and built each statement in a spreadsheet. Owners with questions were answered by going back through the same files.
Objectives
What the project had to achieve
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Show every booking and block for each property on one calendar.
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Create cleaning tasks automatically when a booking ends, and update them when bookings change.
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Record expenses against properties as they happen.
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Build owner statements from bookings and expenses without retyping.
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Replace the most painful parts of the older system in stages, without stopping operations.
The solution
What we built
We built a back-office web application around four records: owners, properties, bookings and tasks. Each property has a calendar. When a booking ends, the system creates a cleaning task for that property on the checkout date and puts it on the task board. If the booking moves, the task moves with it.
Expenses are recorded against properties as they happen, so owner statements can be generated from the records at month end. Staff review each statement before it goes to the owner. The system replaces parts of the older software in stages, following our legacy modernization approach.
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Owners
Owner records linked to their properties and statements.
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Properties
Each home with its details, calendar, tasks and expenses.
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Property calendars
Bookings and owner blocks shown on one calendar per property.
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Turnover tasks
Cleaning tasks created from checkouts and updated when bookings change.
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Maintenance tasks
Issues found during cleaning recorded as tasks for the right property.
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Task board
All tasks for the day and week, by status and person.
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Expenses
Costs recorded against properties as they happen.
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Owner statements
Monthly statements built from bookings and expenses, reviewed before sending.
UX and UI
The UX and UI approach
The office team lives in two views: the calendar and the task board. The calendar shows several properties side by side, so staff can see a busy weekend at a glance. The task board shows what must happen today and who is doing it, with the tightest turnovers at the top.
Cleaners and maintenance staff use phones. Their view is a simple list of today's tasks with the address and notes, and a way to mark each one done or report a problem.
Architecture
How the pieces fit together
Bookings flow into the operations system, which stores owners, properties, bookings, tasks and expenses in one database. Changes to a booking trigger updates to the tasks that depend on it, much like a webhook triggers work in another system. Owner statements are generated from the stored records, so they always match what happened.
Where the older software still holds data, the new system reads from it rather than asking staff to enter things twice. Each part of the old system is replaced only when its replacement has been tested with real bookings.
AI-accelerated
Where AI sped up the build
Honest about what AI did, and what people did.
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Process mapping: AI helped turn the team's description of a booking, a turnover and a month end into clear rules and edge cases.
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Reading old code: AI helped explain parts of the older software quickly, so we could see which rules had to be kept.
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Screens: AI generated first versions of the calendar, task board and statement screens, reviewed and finished by our engineers.
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Tests: AI drafted tests for booking changes and their effect on tasks, one of the easiest places for mistakes.
Integrations
Integrations
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Booking data
Bookings read from the booking system so tasks follow them.
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Older system data
Data still held in the older software read without double entry.
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Owner statements
Statements prepared for owners after staff review.
Screens
Concept screens
Simple mockups of the described interface. Real screenshots will replace them.
Concept screen
Results
The results
Each booking now drives the work that follows it. Cleaning tasks appear on the board when a booking ends and move when a booking moves, so fewer changes slip through between phone calls. The office team sees every property on one calendar and every task for the day on one board.
Owner statements are built from the bookings and expenses already in the system, and staff review them instead of assembling them. We do not have measured figures to publish for this project. When the client shares them, they will appear here.
What the team can do now
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See all properties and bookings on one calendar.
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Create and update turnover tasks from bookings automatically.
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Give cleaners a clear list of today's tasks on their phones.
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Record expenses against properties as they happen.
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Produce owner statements from records, with a review step.
Before and after
Before and after
Phones and spreadsheets
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Turnovers are arranged by phone after each booking.
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Booking changes do not always reach the cleaners.
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Expenses are collected on separate sheets.
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Owner statements are built by hand each month.
Bookings drive the work
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One calendar per property shows every booking and block.
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Cleaning tasks are created from checkouts and follow changes.
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Expenses are recorded against properties as they happen.
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Owner statements come from the records and are reviewed.
What comes next
What we would do next
We would next add AI guest support for routine questions such as check-in times and parking, answered from each property's notes, with anything unusual passed to the office. We would also give owners a simple portal for statements and bookings, which removes most owner emails.
On the operations side, automated reporting on occupancy, turnover times and maintenance costs per property would help the operator decide which homes need attention. Each step would connect to the same records, so nothing is entered twice.
Solutions in this project
Problems this project solved
Scheduling automation
Let customers book, change and confirm appointments themselves, by web, chat or phone, with reminders that cut no-shows.
Automated reporting
Reports that build themselves from your systems on schedule, with a plain-language summary of what changed.
Approval workflows
Requests, approvals and reminders in one place, with clear owners and deadlines instead of long email threads.
Keep exploring
Related case studies, services and industries
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View all solutions- Scheduling automation Let customers book, change and confirm appointments themselves, by web, chat or phone, with reminders that cut no-shows.
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Industries
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MCP servers
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Glossary terms
View all glossary terms- Webhook A webhook is an automatic message one system sends to another's web address when something happens, such as a payment or a new order.
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- Multi-tenant Multi-tenant describes software where one application and database serve many customers, called tenants, while keeping each customer's data separate.
- Progressive web app A progressive web app, or PWA, is a website that works like an installed app, with offline use, home screen icons and notifications.
- API An API, or application programming interface, is a defined way for one piece of software to request data or actions from another.