Lease overview

HMS leasing functionality allows properties to manage long stay guests at properties with serviced apartments or rental operations in addition to the traditional hotel operations. Leases are handled solely at the property level, reservations cannot be made for leases and lease reservations will not display in CRS.

Leases can be made by an individual guest with the lease's start and end dates matching the guest's arrival and departure dates, or a lease can be made by a company or organization for a period of time with various guests staying in the room at different times and the room having possible periods of vacancy. Leasing functionality can be configured to allow for guest shoulder stay dates.

Leasing rates are set up specifically for leasing and can be set as monthly and/or weekly, and daily. Each leasing rate includes separate transaction codes for the rent charge, vacant room charge, and lease charge. Each leasing rate can have multiple rate periods created. Which room types are available and the rate amount for each room type is configured on the rate period of the leasing rate.

The leasing functionality includes lease invoicing which allows revenue recognition over the length of the lease. When a lease is created it can be set to have a rate billing cycle of monthly, weekly, or daily and then a rate billing cycle option of when exactly to post within the billing cycle can be selected. A lease schedule is created that consists of lease periods which align with the billing cycle selected. The lease can include hire charges, maintenance charges, and service charges. These charges can be added to the rental charge, included in the rental charge, or charged separately. They can be set to have their own billing cycle and billing cycle option, and can be set to invoice separately. You can also set additional charges to post. Each lease requires an A/R account to be associated. Multiple guest stays can be associated with the lease, but only one at a time unless they are guest shares. In the case the leased room is unoccupied; the charges for the unoccupied nights will be posted to a vacant room transaction code for accounting purposes if one has been configured.

The Lease Record is the account which holds the charges that are invoiced. When the charges are invoiced a posting is made for the total lease schedule and posted to the A/R payer and subsequently automatically settled and transferred to A/R for payment. Then each night of the lease the actual revenue related to the invoiced lease charges are posted to the Accounting folio of the lease account. The lease record can also contain misc./incidental charges which when invoiced will transfer firstly to the A/R folio, then be invoiced and posted to the A/R account. If the guest has an (room) upgrade, any charges related to this are posted and maintained on the guest stay record.

Many local governments consider guests staying in hotels "residents" once they have occupied the room for a certain number of nights. Once a resident, a guest no longer is charged the hotel occupancy tax. Guests on leases are treated in a similar way. Each room has an annual valuation which is the amount of the room portion of the leasing rate that is free of taxation. The annual valuation of a room is determined by local government. In HMS the annual valuation can be defined at the room type level or the room level. If it exists on both, the amount defined at the room configuration level is the amount used. Annual valuation is not required to be set up and is only used by properties that require it.

Setting and transaction code defaults used on leases are set up within the Lease Configuration screen. Leasing sequence numbers are set up on the Sequence Numbers screen's Lease tab.