Owner Reservations

There is a special Reservation type called "Owner", designed to be used when you have individual lot owners who allow their site to be sub-leased when the owner is not there.  The main distinction is that it makes the reservation non-blocking -- i.e. it acts like a background reservation that can have other reservations made on top of it without causing a "conflict".  

The Owner's name will still appear on the Rack (unless "Show Owner reservations" is disabled on the Rack Options), normally as grey text on a white background, it won't block the site.  It will still be considered available when Available only is selected, and you can still right-click on it to make a normal reservation.

Owner reservations cannot be checked in or checked out -- they have no actual status, since the Owner Reservation is considered a non-present reservation since it doesn't really occupy the site.  For times when the owner is actually present, a separate "Normal" reservation should be made so the site is blocked, and to have a record of when the owner is present (see more below).

If you have monthly rent or dues for owners, e.g. a maintenance fee, then you can set up Rates for them and do Monthly Billing for them just like Monthly reservations.  Likewise you can do Electric meter billing, etc, and you can also put transactions on them manually of course, just like any other Reservation.

Note that you can't put another Owner reservation on top of an existing Owner.

Using the Owner type to track presence in the park

Another way to use Owner reservations is for long-term renters, even if they don't actually own the lot, if you need to keep track of when they are actually in the park vs. absent.  You could create an Owner reservation for the long-term stay (e.g. instead of a Monthly type reservation).  As mentioned above, you can still do normal billing on the Owner reservation.  Then you would make normal reservations on the sites as needed, perhaps as "Free Stay" types if no additional charges will apply, or create a special Normal-based type for "Renter On Site" (see Pick Lists).  Those normal reservations would be checked in and checked out as with regular campers.

The main drawback for this is that the site would technically not be blocked for other reservations, so you would need to pay attention when making reservations for others so you don't accidentally select a room paid by the company.  This shouldn't be an issue in most cases, since the name will still appear on the Rack (as well as in the New Reservation mini-Rack).

Also, you may need to be careful when you do add charges, making sure you put it on the correct reservation -- the Owner in the background or the normal one when present, depending on your operations.  As mentioned, things like monthly rent, electric charges, etc should go on the Owner reservation.  Charges and payments specific to the shorter-term "present on site" reservation, e.g. anything for which they should pay-as-they-stay, would go on the Normal reservation on top.

Accessing the Owner reservation when you can't see it on the Rack

Sometimes you will need to get to the Owner reservation, e.g. to add transactions, but if it's fully occupied on the Rack then you won't be able to see it there.  Of course you can use Find Reservation, or go through Customer Details and Reservation History -- but the simplest method is to simply go to the On Site tab view.  As long as you have the Option set to show owners, you can find them there and use the right-click functions.

Reporting

Owner reservations can be shown on other tab views such as On Site, according to the Options set on each one.  And of course in most other ways they are considered a Reservation just like any other reservation type.

One place this can be an issue is when doing Occupancy reports.  You will need to make sure that you use the Reservation Filter in reports like that, to select only the non-Owner types, if you don't want them to count as "Occupied".