Development Agency
Contact Sign in Get a project quote

Service

Short term rental software development

For operators of serviced apartments and managed holiday lets who need direct booking, guest verification, self check-in, cleaning turnarounds and owner reporting to run from one record per unit rather than a channel manager, three apps and a spreadsheet of key codes.

Get a project quote See the software package

The problem

What goes wrong today

Where it usually starts

A serviced apartment operator sells nights across dozens of units in several buildings, and most of those nights come from listing channels.

  • The channel manager keeps the calendars in step, but everything that happens after the booking is manual.
  • Verification is a chain of messages asking the guest for identity documents, which arrive as photographs in a shared inbox and are checked by whoever is on shift.
  • Key safe codes and door codes live in a spreadsheet that the night team edits on a phone; a code is sent too early and a guest lets themselves in while the cleaner is still inside, or sent too late and the guest stands in the street at eleven at night.

Where it gets harder

Cleaning is scheduled by text to a group of cleaners each evening from the next day's departures, so a same-day turnaround with a late check-out and an early check-in is spotted only when the cleaner arrives to find the guest still there.

  • Linen counts and damage reports go in the same group chat and are lost by Friday.
  • Owners of managed units ask for statements and get a spreadsheet assembled at month end from channel payouts, cleaning invoices and a memory of which nights were owner stays.
  • The operator knows occupancy from the channel manager but not the cost of each turnaround, the verification rate or which building generates the most lock-out calls.

Scope of the service

What the build covers

A custom short-term rental build normally covers:

  • A building and unit register With a calendar per unit and the shared attributes of a building (access, parking, lift, quiet hours)
  • Direct booking with length-of-stay pricing Minimum stays and seasonal rates alongside a channel-manager connection that keeps availability and rates in step
  • A guest verification step before confirmation With document capture or a third-party verification provider and a record of who approved the stay
  • Self check-in instructions and access codes released on a schedule relative to arrival and withdrawn after departure
  • A cleaning and turnaround module that creates a task per departure Assigns cleaners by building and shift, flags same-day turnarounds and captures linen, consumables and damage notes with photographs
  • Maintenance issues raised from a turnaround
  • Owner statements for managed units showing nights Revenue, deductions and owner stays

How discovery works

Discovery walks through a changeover day with you: which channels produce bookings and what the channel manager already does, what verification is required and who approves it, how access works per building (smart locks, key safes, concierge), when codes may be released, how cleaners are rostered and paid, what counts as a turnaround task, and what owners are entitled to see and when. Each becomes a named stage in the scope document: book, verify, pay, release access, stay, turn around, report to owner.

Deliberately out of scope

  • Replacing the channel manager itself, long-let tenancy management, accounting ledgers and payroll for cleaners, which remain in their own systems with integration where it earns its place

When the scope grows

Scoping scenario

An operator with seventy units across six buildings, two with smart locks and four with key safes, takes bookings from three channels and its own site, requires verification above a stay value it sets, employs eight cleaners on shifts and manages forty of the units for owners who want monthly statements. That is a different build from a manager with eight holiday cottages and a weekly changeover, and the scope document will say so.

Deliverables

What you receive

  • Discovery notes from a walk-through of a changeover day, including the access method per building and the current code spreadsheet
  • A written scope document naming each stage from booking to owner statement, the channel-manager connection and what is excluded
  • Design of the unit calendar, the verification queue, the cleaner task list and the owner statement on phone and desktop
  • The build, deployed to your hosting or ours
  • Migration of units, future bookings and owner agreements from your current tools, where relevant
  • Channel-manager connection configured and tested against a sandbox or a controlled unit before switchover
  • Training for the operations team, the cleaning lead and the owner-relations contact, with a short written guide
  • Handover material and full ownership of the source code and your data

Process

How a project runs

Each stage maps onto the project view in your client panel. Durations are set in your proposal, never on this page.

  1. Onboarding

    Access to the channel manager, the unit list, the access code spreadsheet, cleaning rotas and owner agreements; contacts named for operations and cleaning.

    Project stage: Onboarding

  2. Planning

    Discovery with the operator, the operations lead and the cleaning lead; verification rules, release timings and the scope document are agreed with milestones.

    Project stage: Planning

  3. Design

    Clickable designs of the multi-unit calendar, the verification queue, the cleaner task on a phone and the owner statement.

    Project stage: Design

  4. Development

    Built in stages: units and calendars with the channel connection first, then booking, verification and access release, then turnarounds and owner statements.

    Project stage: Development

  5. Client review

    Operations run a test fortnight on a few real units alongside the old process, checking code release timings and same-day turnaround flags.

    Project stage: Client review

  6. Revisions

    Timings, task templates and statement layouts are adjusted from the review and re-checked against the scope document.

    Project stage: Revisions

  7. Ready for launch

    Future bookings imported, channel connection switched over building by building, access messages tested on numbers you control, checklist signed off.

    Project stage: Ready for launch

  8. Delivered

    The portfolio runs on the new system; optional maintenance and hosting continue under their own agreement.

    Project stage: Delivered

Integrations

Commonly integrated

Systems this kind of business usually asks us to connect. Each integration is confirmed during discovery; none is assumed.

  • Channel managers that synchronise availability and rates with listing channels
  • Card payment providers for direct bookings, damage deposits and balance collection
  • Guest identity verification providers
  • Smart lock and key safe platforms for scheduled code generation
  • SMS, email and messaging providers for pre-arrival instructions and in-stay messages
  • Accounting software for owner statement reconciliation and cleaner invoicing
  • Noise monitoring and occupancy sensors where the operator already installs them
  • External calendar feeds for units listed where no channel manager is used

How we would approach it

Worked example

Concept demo

A six-building operator with mixed access and managed units

The situation

An operator with seventy units across six buildings ran verification from a shared inbox, access codes from a spreadsheet and cleaning from a group chat, and produced owner statements by hand each month.

Why it is a custom build

The reason this needs a custom build is that access, verification and cleaning differ per building and per owner agreement, and a channel manager has no model for any of them.

The scope we would propose

  • One unit register with building-level access rules, so a smart-lock building generates a code per booking while a key-safe building rotates its code per turnaround
  • A verification queue that holds confirmation until an approver signs it off above the operator's threshold
  • Access instructions released on a timer tied to verified status and payment
  • A turnaround task created from each departure with same-day flags and cleaner assignment by building
  • Owner statements generated from the bookings and tasks already recorded

Concept demo: a scoping scenario written to show how we would approach the work. It is not a delivered client project.

Pricing

What affects the price

Every proposal is priced on scope. These are the factors that move it most for this kind of build.

  • Number of units and buildings, and how many access methods are in use
  • Whether a channel manager is already in place and which one
  • Verification rules and whether a third-party identity provider is connected
  • Smart lock or key safe integration for automatic code generation
  • Number of cleaners, shift patterns and the detail captured per turnaround
  • Managed units with owner statements and how deductions are calculated
  • Volume of future bookings and owner agreements to migrate
  • Hosting choice: your own hosting or ours

Start from a package

Short term rental package

Direct booking, multi-unit calendars, guest verification, scheduled self check-in, cleaner turnaround tasks and owner statements for serviced apartment operators.

Custom build
View the package

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

How do you decide between a custom build and the package?

Discovery compares your changeover day with what the short-term rental package does through configuration. A single building or a handful of flats with one access method and a standard channel manager usually fits the package. Several buildings with different locks, verification thresholds that vary by channel, or owner agreements with bespoke deductions point to custom work, and we say which before anything is quoted.

Do we have to drop our channel manager?

No. The channel manager keeps doing what it does well, which is keeping listing calendars and rates in step. The system connects to it, receives bookings and sends availability back, and does the operational work the channel manager does not: verification, access, cleaning and owner reporting. If the channel manager has no usable connection we say so during discovery.

How is guest verification handled?

You set the rule: always, above a stay value, or for certain channels. Bookings that meet it wait in a verification queue where documents are captured directly or through an identity provider, an approver signs off, and the access instructions are only released once the stay is verified and paid. The record shows who approved what and when.

What about damage deposits and local letting rules?

Damage deposits are recorded and, where the payment provider supports it, held and released from the system, with the release workflow and reasons for deductions logged. Local letting limits, registration schemes and tax reporting are recorded where you ask for the data to be kept, but the system does not claim to make you compliant; that remains your decision with your advisers.

Who owns the system afterwards?

You do. Source code and your data are handed over at delivery, and your channel, payment and lock accounts stay in your name throughout. Hosting and maintenance are optional and agreed separately.

Get a project quote for short-term rentals software

Answer a few questions about your business, your current systems and what should change. We reply with a clear, competitive proposal.

Get a project quote Discuss a partnership
Get a project quote

Cookies on this site. Strictly necessary cookies keep the site working. Allow first-party analytics so we can see which pages lead to enquiries. No advertising, no third-party trackers, no personal data; you can change this at any time on the cookies page.

Manage preferences