How Abode Luxury Rentals Runs 200 Properties with a 3-Person Finance Team

Abode Luxury Rentals has spent 18 years caring for luxury vacation homes. Today it manages 200 of them across Park City, Jackson Hole, and Sun Valley, along with its own housekeeping company and a laundromat. It runs Guesty as its PMS, QuickBooks Online for accounting, and Breezeway for operations.

Before Topkey, Abode ran its company cards on Ramp. Each month, the goal was to have owner statements out by the 10th, and getting there meant chasing receipts, figuring out which home each charge belonged to, and adding owner charges to every statement by hand. A part-time contractor spent 20 hours a week on the receipts alone, and even then, the 10th didn't always hold.

Chelsea Clay joined as Finance Director about a year and a half ago, just as Abode implemented Topkey to fix that process. She had used Topkey at a previous company, and finding it already in place was "a huge relief."

The Challenge: Luxury Volume on Tools Not Built for It

At 200 luxury homes across three states, the finance work is constant. Homeowners expect more at this level, so there are always repairs, purchases, and work orders to track, tie to the right home, and bill back. Before Topkey, each of those charges went through manual steps, and every step stood between Abode and an accurate owner statement going out on time.

A Part-Time Role Just to Chase Receipts

Abode brought that contractor on because, as Chelsea puts it, "it was just so, so manual to get all of the receipts tracked down and owner charges pushed correctly."

It worked as a stopgap. But it meant paying for hours each week just to find paperwork, and it put receipt tracking in the hands of someone who split the week with reservations and guest services.

Owner Charges Entered Statement by Statement

"We have an additional kind of standard of care that we're expected to maintain for these homes, so there's always work orders and always things to bill the owner for," Chelsea explains.

Each of those charges had to be added to owner statements manually. At 200 properties, that work came around every month, and it was a big part of what it took to hit the 10th.

Spend That Was Hard to Tie to a Property

For Rachel Alday, Abode's Co-CEO, the biggest gap was attribution: knowing which property each expense belonged to. Abode buys a lot on Amazon for its homes and for the company, and each order needs a property or a corporate code.

With spend spread across cards and tools, there was no easy way to be sure nothing had slipped through.

General Tools for a Specialized Business

For most of its history, Abode ran its finances on QuickBooks and Streamline alone. Neither Divvy nor Ramp was built around vacation rental owner billing, so owner charges still went onto statements by hand.

Abode also had a card program it wanted to keep. The company's Delta cards earn the miles that pay for conference flights, so any new system had to work with them.

Rachel calls numbers the opposite of her skill set, so she judges any tool by how her team feels using it. "I want my team to have smooth, easy processes. I don't like it when they're complaining that stuff is really difficult and I don't have a way to fix it," she says. Abode wanted a system built around owner billing and property-level reporting.

The Solution: The Middleman Between Every System

Topkey replaced those manual steps with one connected system. Chelsea calls it "our middleman between everything that we use." What the operations team records in the field lands in Topkey, and from there it reaches owner statements and the books without anyone retyping it into Guesty or QuickBooks Online. For a lean finance team, Topkey is what makes 200 homes manageable.

A Finance Director Who Could Start on Day One

Because she already knew the platform, Chelsea could "hit the ground running." "It really made me feel comfortable coming into the role, knowing that Topkey was already there, because I knew there were going to be so many safety checks for us," she says.

With no new system to learn, she could start on budget, cash flow, and owner statements right away. Day to day, one accounting team member spends about 80% of her job in Topkey. She onboarded the platform, trained staff, and each week follows up on receipts, adds labor, and pushes transactions to accounting.

Cards and Receipts Without the Chasing

Staff carry corporate cards in their phone wallets for Tap to Pay, and rollout was easy because they were already used to company cards. After a purchase, Topkey's receipt reminders text them for the receipt and a memo, and that's all they're asked to do. "That's pretty straightforward for the team, they don't need to know the different accounting codes," Chelsea says. Operations staff, who work mostly in Breezeway, upload receipts and notes, and finance does the coding.

Abode also kept its Delta cards through Topkey's connected cards. "We love that we were able to use other cards, largely because we are a Delta company. And so we get to continue to use miles for conference flights," Chelsea says. Keeping those cards "was a huge point for us," she adds. When she first looked at Topkey years earlier, those cards weren't supported yet.

Breezeway Work Orders Become Owner Charges

Abode's operations team has used Breezeway for years and wanted to keep it. Topkey imports Breezeway tasks as work orders, and finance adds labor, upcharges, or a percentage markup and assigns the property. "That integration between Breezeway and Topkey is crucial for us. It let the operations team keep what they were used to," Chelsea says.

Each week, finance sends the owner billables to Abode's owner relations team, who flag any homeowner who gets a comp or shouldn't be charged labor. Approved charges go to Guesty and onto the owner statements, and any edits happen in Topkey.

Guesty Holds Steady Through a PMS Switch

In Topkey, expenses are tagged to a property and marked to bill the owner or the company, using a property list Topkey keeps in sync with Guesty. For Rachel, that's the change that mattered most. "Being able to attribute expenditures to the properties has been massive," she says.

In early May, Abode moved from Streamline to Guesty, and Topkey matched the property codes between the two systems. "The changeover was truly seamless," Chelsea says. The integration has worked the same way since.

Clean Books in QuickBooks Online

The team pushes coded transactions weekly to QuickBooks Online, already tagged with property and account, and Chelsea reviews them on the QuickBooks side. Amazon orders arrive coded too. Through the Amazon Business integration, team members note the property or mark the order as a company purchase, and Chelsea hasn't seen accuracy issues.

Flags and notes give her a quick status check whenever she logs in. If someone accidentally uses a company card for a personal purchase, they note it, it goes to the accounting inbox, and the amount comes out of payroll.

The Results: A Lean Team Built to Grow

A year and a half after going live, the manual steps that used to slow Abode's month are gone. Owner statements go out faster, without the holdups the old process created, and the same three-person team spends far less time getting them there. The biggest change is the time it gives back.

90 Hours a Month Back on Expense Management

The contractor role is gone. "Once we got Topkey onboarded, we were able to eliminate that role, which was incredible. Our team just got way more efficient," Chelsea says.

She estimates removing the role saved about 20 hours a week, or about 80 hours a month. The Amazon Business integration saves about 10 more hours a month. Together, that's about 90 hours a month.

Asked about the biggest return on Topkey, Chelsea named time first, because Abode runs lean. Most of those hours were a part-time job's worth of chasing paperwork. Now the finance team spends that time on the work Chelsea's role is built for: tracking budget, expenses, and cash flow, and reviewing owner statements before they go out.

Owner Statements Out by the 8th, Not the 10th

Abode moved its owner statement deadline from the 10th to the 8th. "We hit that consistently. And if we don't hit it, it's not because of Topkey," Chelsea says.

She credits the change to syncing more often. Breezeway work orders and card charges now become owner charges in Guesty each week, after owner relations reviews them, instead of piling up for month-end. Less is left to do when statements are due.

For luxury homeowners, that means accurate statements, with comps and labor already applied, two days sooner. For Abode, the money moves sooner too. In Chelsea's words, "We get paid sooner."

Three People, 200 Homes, and Two More Businesses

Abode's finance team is three people. They cover the Park City, Jackson Hole, and Sun Valley companies, each run as a separate Topkey account. Alongside 200 homes and about 50 employees, the company also owns a housekeeping company and a laundromat.

Before Topkey, the receipt work alone needed an extra part-time role. Now one accounting team member runs the Topkey workflow, Chelsea reviews her work, and the team hasn't had to replace the contractor.

Peace of Mind That Every Charge Is Accounted For

Chelsea used to have no easy way to confirm that each charge across 200 homes landed where it belonged. "The reporting in Topkey makes it so easy to reassure myself," she says now.

With all of Abode's company cards running through Topkey, each transaction gets classed to a property or to the company. Chelsea says there is now "considerably less feeling like there's leakage," and she can check it herself. A filter by property shows whether the team is following Abode's rules, "to make sure that we're not just throwing money out the window for fun."

That confidence held through a PMS change, too. Switching from Streamline to Guesty in May didn't change how charges reach owner statements. Chelsea says Topkey is "doing exactly what we were hoping it would continue to do."

A Happier Team, From the Field to Finance

Abode's team likes using Topkey, and for Rachel, that's the point. She measures success by how her team feels about its tools. "My team has a tool that they like that makes their life easier, then I'm happy because they're happy," she says.

That feedback starts with the people closest to the work. The accounting team member who runs Topkey day to day tells Chelsea it "has saved an exponential amount of time for her." Field staff only need to send a receipt and a memo, so, as Chelsea puts it, "it's pretty easy for the team, which is great." Instead of chasing receipts, the finance team spends its time getting accurate statements to homeowners, and the field team stays focused on the homes.

Why Topkey: Built for Vacation Rental Financial Operations

For Abode, the difference is that Topkey was built for vacation rental property managers. Each charge is tagged to a property in Topkey, and owner charges post to Guesty with the receipt attached, so the team never has to bend a general-purpose tool to fit how they work. That's what Rachel values: "knowing that there's a tool that's specific to our industry that gets the industry." Chelsea makes the same case in practical terms. A finance team needs a card and expense tool anyway, so "you might as well pay for one that's industry-specific and going to make your life a whole lot easier."

The relationship carries the same fit. Abode meets with the Topkey team every month, and Chelsea says the ideas Abode brings "have all been taken very seriously and often implemented." When something does need fixing, support resolves it quickly. Weighed against the hours saved and the earlier statements, Chelsea's verdict on cost is simple: "Topkey has paid for itself, certainly."

Built for What Comes After 200

"We're at 200 now, but we're not going to be at 200 forever," Chelsea says. When asked whether the team could take on another 50 homes in the next month, she said yes without hesitating, and called Topkey "definitely a scalable solution for us, which is exactly what we're looking for in all of our software partners."

That confidence comes from how the work runs now. A new home is one more property in Guesty and Topkey, and its charges get tagged, reviewed, and sent to owner statements through the same weekly routine the team already runs for 200. The three-person team that replaced a contractor and sends statements 2 days faster doesn't have to rebuild anything to grow. As Chelsea puts it, "I can't imagine a day where we don't have Topkey."

Abode used to add help to keep up with its homes. Now it plans to grow past 200 without adding to its finance team, because the work runs through one system instead of workarounds. See how Topkey can help your team keep up as you grow.