How to Stop Losing Money on Owner Charges and Reimbursements

‍

Are you tracking every dollar you spend on behalf of your owners? For vacation rental managers, covering maintenance costs, emergency repairs, and supplies is part of daily operations. But when these expenses aren't properly tracked or reimbursed, the impact on your bottom line can be staggering.

"I would literally print out my credit card statement and go through each line one by one," recalls Riley Goldman of Beachside Vacation Rentals. "I'd call every single person on my team asking - what was this receipt for? Which property needed these cleaning supplies? We had to be losing thousands each month."

Riley's experience isn't unique. Let's dive into why property managers are losing money on reimbursements and how to fix it.

The Real Cost of Missed Owner Charges

For property managers, unbilled expenses aren't just small accounting errors—they represent significant revenue loss that can compound over time. Nick Giordano from Elevated Tahoe Properties learned this the hard way. His team discovered that they were losing anywhere from "a thousand to two thousand, maybe even a few thousand per year per unit" in unbilled charges. With 45 properties under management, that meant as much as $90,000 in lost revenue—money that should have been reimbursed by owners but instead quietly disappeared from their bottom line.

The pain of missed owner charges goes beyond just financial loss. It creates operational chaos, forcing teams to spend hours sifting through incomplete records, backtracking transactions, and fielding disputes from owners who question unexplained expenses. A single lost receipt might seem minor, but when these add up across multiple properties, they erode profitability and trust. Without a proper system in place, managers risk turning what should be a smooth financial process into a constant firefight - one that drains both time and revenue.

Why does this happen? Property managers face three major challenges

1. The Emergency Purchase Problem

Your maintenance team makes an emergency hardware store run at 9 PM to fix a broken toilet. The receipt ends up crumpled in someone's truck, and the expense is never billed to the owner. Multiply this by dozens of small purchases each month, and you're looking at significant revenue loss.

2. Receipts Falling Through the Cracks

With high volumes of transactions, keeping track of every receipt is nearly impossible without the right systems in place. "Many things fell through the cracks," explains Emily Burke from ERB Properties. "With such a high volume of transactions, we couldn't guarantee with 100% certainty that every reimbursable expense was accounted for." Whether it's maintenance purchases, vendor invoices, or unexpected fees, missing receipts lead to lost revenue.

3. The Manual Tracking Trap

Using spreadsheets and paper receipts might work when you manage 5 properties. But what happens at 20? 50? 100? Manual tracking simply doesn’t scale.

At a small scale, you might be able to track expenses with a few spreadsheets and a shoebox full of receipts. But as your portfolio grows, so does financial complexity. More vendors, more maintenance requests, more owner distributions, and more monthly reconciliations—all of which demand time, accuracy, and organization.

Think about it: At 20 properties, you’re managing hundreds of transactions per month. At 50, that number jumps to thousands. By the time you hit 100 properties, you could be processing tens of thousands of dollars in expenses, invoices, and payouts every single week. A single missing receipt or misallocated charge can create hours of manual backtracking, frustration, and even disputes with owners.

Manual tracking leads to:

• Lost receipts and missing documentation – Making expense reconciliation a nightmare.
• Time-consuming data entry – Leading to human errors and delayed financial reports.
• Owner disputes over unclear charges – Damaging trust and creating unnecessary back-and-forth.
• Lack of visibility into real-time expenses – Making it harder to control costs and identify financial leakage.

The Math Behind Hidden Costs for Vacation Rental Managers

Want to estimate how much you might be losing? Use this simple calculation:

• Average monthly maintenance purchases per property: $100
• Typical percentage of missed reimbursements: 10-20%
• Number of properties you manage: [X]
• Annual revenue loss = $100 × 12 months × 15% × [X] properties

For a 20-property manager, that's $3,600 in lost revenue annually - just from small, missed charges. Many of our customers reported much higher rates of leakage before using Topkey.

‍How Top-Performing Managers Prevent Revenue Leakage

Automate Everything

"We no longer have any guesswork on which property an expense is for," says Aidan Groll of Blue Gems Management. "There's no disconnect between accounts payable and the actual expense that gets recorded in your owner statement."

Modern automation tools can:

• Capture receipts instantly via text message
• Tag expenses to specific properties in real-time
• Generate owner statements automatically
• Sync with your PMS and accounting software

Create Clear Processes

Successful managers implement systems that make it impossible to miss charges:

1. Use virtual cards for different use cases
2. Require immediate receipt capture
3. Log which property the expense is associated with and whether it is billable to the owner or to the property manager (or something else)
4. Review expenses weekly, not monthly
5. Automate owner statement generation

Track Everything in One Place

Top-performing property managers know that financial disorganization leads to missed charges and revenue leakage. By centralizing all financial operations in one platform, they eliminate the need for juggling spreadsheets, chasing down receipts, and manually reconciling expenses.

For Steven Wood, CEO of Host & Home, switching to an integrated financial system was a game-changer. His team no longer had to sift through piles of receipts or manually match expenses to properties. Instead, all transactions were automatically logged, categorized, and linked to the appropriate owner statement. This streamlined approach not only saved hours of work but also ensured that no reimbursable expense went unnoticed. By maintaining a single source of truth for all financial data, property managers can significantly reduce errors, improve efficiency, and protect their bottom line.

Expert Tips for Implementation

Start with Clear Documentation - Document your expense policies, including:

• What charges can be billed to owners
• Required documentation for each expense type
• Review and approval processes
• Owner communication procedures

Choose the Right Technology - Look for platforms that offer:

• Real-time receipt capture
• Property-level expense tracking
• Integration with your existing software
• Automated owner statements

Train Your Team - Success requires buy-in from:

• Maintenance staff
• Housekeepers
• Property managers
• Accounting team

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How quickly should expenses be captured?

A: Ideally immediately or at least within 24 hours of purchase. If you wait days, then our data shows that your reconciliation workload and timelines increase dramatically from chasing receipts and tracking down property and categorization info. As Nick from Elevated Tahoe notes, "If you wait longer, you're likely to forget details or lose receipts."

Q: What's the most common cause of missed reimbursements?

A: Emergency maintenance purchases and small purchases, according to our analysis of 100+ property managers using Topkey. Small charges end up making a big impact on your profitability. Either you spend your team's time making sure everything is perfect or you eat the cost. For small purchases, it usually costs more to clean up than it's worth. Either way you pay for it.

Taking Action

Ready to stop losing money on owner reimbursements? Here's your next step:

1. Calculate your potential revenue leakage using the formula above
2. Document all your current expense tracking processes
3. Identify where charges are most likely to be missed
4. Schedule a demo with Topkey to see how automation can close these gaps

Remember: Every dollar not properly tracked or billed is profit lost. As the vacation rental industry becomes more competitive, efficient financial operations aren't just nice to have - they're essential for survival.

About Topkey: Trusted by over 100 vacation rental managers managing 10,000+ properties across the United States, Topkey's financial automation platform has helped companies recover an average of $200-2,000 per property annually in previously unbilled expenses.

Topkey is a financial technology company and is not a bank. Banking services provided by Thread Bank; Member FDIC.