At our most recent user conference, we had the wonderful opportunity to have Dirk Johnson, the Executive Director of the Vacation Rental Housekeeping Association. Throughout his compelling and humorous presentation, he made sure to remind us Housekeeping Professionals are the heart of any well-run vacation rental business. How many times have you checked in somewhere, either for business or pleasure and a dirty space has ruined the entire expectation? This is completely preventable.
Barefoot understands the importance of having an efficient housekeeping program. Inside of the Barefoot Agent system, clients use the Manager’s Cleaning Report to track the cleaning schedule for their housekeepers. As with most things in Barefoot, we provide a lot of flexibility to our users to determine their own housekeeping services and best practices. You can create and assign cleaning types that are associated with a fee or not. This report also works in conjunction with our Barefoot Vendor Portal, so that housekeepers can view their cleaning schedule, communicate with the office and change the cleaning status.
The primary functions for the Manager’s Cleaning Report include:
- setting the rules for cleaning jobs, including the frequency of cleans during a stay and whether there is a fee associated with a cleaning job.
- tracking the current status of cleans including, dirty, started cleaning, clean, and inspected.
- creating cleaning schedules for both internal teams and third-party housekeeping vendors.
- adjusting existing cleaning schedules and updating cleaners both in the schedule and as the paid to vendor on the reservation.
Barefoot also many modifiable report templates that you can configure based on arrival and departure. If you are managing linens as part of the arrival and departure you can track those using configurable reports associated to services inside of Barefoot that would add associated fees to the reservation, if that is your model. If this raises some questions for you, please be sure to let us know. We like figuring out how to help you run your business in Barefoot.
Barefoot Vendor Access is a portal that is great for your housekeeping professionals. This is a tool where users can log in and see a list of “reminders” which an efficient way is to communicate additional pieces of information, like a special need for a guest or to request some additional attention. Through the configurable admin side of the vendor portal, clients can determine what kind of cleaning report information they want to make available, again tracking to whether you work with arrival or departure cleans and many other factors.
The housekeeping vendor is also empowered to communicate in real time to the vacation rental or property manager what the current status of the clean. They can also view and enter notes that are viewed on the reservation as a comment and on the Manager’s Cleaning Report as a comment. Inspectors can also use this tool to mark that the properties have been inspected. This can trigger a series of automated communication, using email and/or texting, to let your incoming guest know that the property is available. Talk to us about our texting functionality and how that can work both with housekeeping communication and reservation-based texts for guests.
If you haven’t talked to Barefoot about our housekeeping functionality, we think you’ll be surprised when you schedule a demo. And thanks again to Durk for the leadership in the Vacation Rental Housekeeping Professionals. You can see Durk present at one of the many events they host using this link.
For over twenty years, Barefoot has provided vacation rental and property managers with the tools they need to run their business their way. We are constantly developing our software based on our client’s needs. In addition to housekeeping and work order tools, we are focused on providing a one stop solution for all your vacation and property rental management needs. For more information, please contact sales@barefoot.com or call 877.799.1110, ext. 1.
