This template applies the four-block method: THE THINGS, THE LINKS, THE STATES, THE NUMBERS, to managing rentals on someone else's behalf. It's filled in for a company managing twelve properties: a concrete example beats an empty outline, because it shows the level of detail that suffices — one page, not forty.
What separates a management company from a landlord isn't the number of properties: it's that the money isn't yours. You collect on someone else's behalf, you take a commission, and you have to be able to prove it every month, property by property. The OWNER is therefore a thing in its own right, and the monthly report isn't an export: it is the deliverable of the trade.
The second particularity: you don't do everything yourself. The turnover clean between two guests is often subcontracted, and it has its own state — scheduled, done, to redo. It is the thing that breaks when two stays touch, so it deserves to be tracked separately from the stay.
To adapt it, keep the structure and replace the content with your reality: your commission model, your kinds of service, your statuses in the order a stay actually goes through in your company. Screens will follow from this structure; no need to describe them.
Filled with your own words, this text briefs a developer, or is submitted as-is to Blueprint Maker, which turns it into an application plan you validate, then a generated application: database, screens per entity, dashboard and demo data.
The template to copy
My business: short-term rental management, 12 properties managed for 7 owners, 2 people, cleaning subcontracted. THINGS tracked: - Properties (name, address, capacity, owner, commission rate, access instructions) - Owners (name, phone, email, payout details) - Stays (property, guest, arrival date, departure date, number of people, amount collected, booking channel) - Cleanings (property, date, contractor, duration, cost) - Contractors (name, phone, speciality, hourly rate) - Commissions (stay, amount retained, payout month) LINKS: - A property belongs to an owner. - A stay concerns a property. - A cleaning prepares a property between two stays, and is assigned to a contractor. - A commission is attached to a stay. STATES of a stay: enquiry, confirmed, checked in, checked out, collected, paid out. STATES of a cleaning: to schedule, scheduled, done, to redo. NUMBERS to see every morning: - Check-outs and check-ins today - Cleanings to schedule before the next arrival - Amount collected this month, and commission retained - Still to pay out, per owner
Adapting this template to your business
- The owner is an entity, not a text field: this is the point not to simplify. Writing the owner's name in a column on the property is enough to display it, never enough to answer “how much do I owe this person this month”. As soon as one owner has two properties, only the entity allows grouping.
- Your commission, your rule: the rate sits on the PROPERTY here, because that is what most management agreements provide for. If it's the same everywhere, put it on the owner or use a fixed value; if it varies by season, put it on the stay. The template computes nothing you haven't described.
- The cleaning deserves its own entity: tracked as a mere checkbox on the stay, it loses its date, its contractor and its cost — and that is exactly what you're looking for when a guest arrives at a property that isn't ready. If you do the cleaning yourself, drop the Contractors entity and keep Cleanings.
- Linen, maintenance, welcome: these are other services on the same pattern as cleaning. Add them as types within the Cleanings entity rather than as separate entities, unless they follow a genuinely different cycle.
- What this template does NOT do, and it matters in this trade: the application connects to NO booking platform. It does not sync your Airbnb or Booking calendar, does not import reservations and sends no messages to guests. The booking channel is simply a piece of information you type in. Nor does it produce an accounting document of record: the owner report is a management statement, not a compliant invoice.