How HeavenlyRez Removed 10 Hours of Manual Spreadsheet Work per Week

Steve Resnick's journey from a corporate finance professional to the owner of a thriving vacation rental management company illustrates the power of strategic planning, technology adoption, and turning challenges into opportunities. HeavenlyRez, based in Ocean City, New Jersey, has experienced remarkable growth, scaling from 12 properties to 95 properties in just over a year, with ambitious plans to reach 300 properties within the next three years.

What started as a side hobby managing personal vacation rentals has evolved into a sophisticated operation that leverages cutting-edge technology to deliver exceptional service to both property owners and guests. At the heart of this transformation lies a critical realization: manual processes that work for a handful of properties become completely unmanageable at scale.

This case study explores how HeavenlyRez overcame the operational challenges of rapid growth by implementing Topkey's expense management and bill pay solution, ultimately saving thousands of dollars monthly while freeing up valuable time for strategic business development.

The Challenge: When Manual Processes Hit a Wall

The Breaking Point of Spreadsheet Management

As HeavenlyRez grew from a small side business to a substantial operation, Steve faced an increasingly common challenge in the vacation rental industry: the administrative burden of expense management was consuming a disproportionate amount of time and threatening the business's ability to scale effectively.

"It was becoming unmanageable because I was doing everything in an Excel spreadsheet, and obviously that's not sustainable at scale."

The core issues were multifaceted and compounding:

Property-Level Financial Tracking

With 95 properties under management, HeavenlyRez needed to maintain precise financial records at the individual property level. This granular approach was essential for several reasons:

• Owner Transparency: Each property owner required detailed statements showing exactly what expenses were incurred for their specific property
• Profitability Analysis: Understanding which properties were most profitable required accurate expense allocation
• Cost Category Analysis: Identifying spending patterns across different expense categories helped inform business decisions

"When you're trying to really isolate and manage costs at the property level, and you have 95 properties, even if you have more than five properties, I feel that you really can't sustain managing that manually."

Time Consumption and Scalability Issues

The manual process was not just inefficient, it was becoming a significant bottleneck that prevented Steve from focusing on higher-value activities:

"I was spending hours per day on it because if you don't keep up with it, if you don't have a great system and you're not able to keep up with it on a really regular basis, it's very easy to lose visibility, especially when you're trying to track at the property level."

Perhaps most critically, the complexity of the manual system made it very difficult to delegate these essential tasks to other team members.

As HeavenlyRez expanded its team, the challenge became even more complex:

"It wouldn't even be possible now with the scale that we're at, to be honest with you. If I wanted to do it, I couldn't do it on my own because we now have four or five people that have their own corporate card as well and they're expensing things randomly for different needs."

Revenue Leakage

Without a systematic approach to expense tracking, HeavenlyRez was facing what many property management companies experience: significant revenue leakage from uncaptured or improperly classified expenses that should have been billed back to property owners.

The Solution: Leverage Topkey to Integrate Systems

HeavenlyRez's approach to solving their operational challenges went beyond simply adopting a single tool. Steve Resnick made a strategic decision to invest comprehensively in technology:

"We have a very significant investment in technology, probably the best in the industry, I would say, in terms of all the tools that we use."

Why Topkey Was the Right Choice

The decision to implement Topkey was driven by several key factors:

Seamless PMS Integration

"The big thing for us was the integration with OwnerRez, because that is our central PMS and we're using that all the time, every single day to manage everything that we do."

This integration eliminated the need for manual data entry and ensured that expense data flowed seamlessly into owner statements.

Amazon Business Integration

Given HeavenlyRez's heavy reliance on Amazon for supplies and amenities, this integration provided immediate value:

"I love the integration with Amazon Business within Topkey because that saves us a tremendous amount of time because we order most of our products, our amenities, our linens, our consumables, our smart devices through Amazon. And everything feeds very cleanly into Topkey with an order ID number and a receipt."

Implementation and Team Training

One of the most impressive aspects of the Topkey implementation was how quickly the team could be trained and become productive:

"I've also hired an executive support resource that's handling all of our classifications and bill pay, paying all of our vendors. So she's the primary user of Topkey, and she is not very technical, but she was able to pick up on Topkey pretty easily and loves it herself because it's saving her a lot of time."

Automated Workflow Design

The new system created a streamlined workflow that minimized manual intervention while maintaining proper oversight:

"Under this model I really spend no time with any of the manual work. The invoice automatically will show up in Topkey. And then it's just a matter of her going in and classifying it at the property level, which from what I understand now, the AI implementation is already doing most of the work for her."

Results from Using Topkey

Dramatic Time Savings

The most immediately apparent benefit was the dramatic reduction in time spent on expense management:

Before Topkey: Hours per day of manual work. After Topkey: One hour per week of oversight

"All I do is meet with her once a week for an hour and knock everything out. I review everything that she's done and I approve it. And it's virtually taking me zero time in terms of the expense classification, other than just reviewing her work."

Successful Delegation and Team Scalability

The system's user-friendly design enabled successful delegation of complex financial tasks:

"Now it's very easy to delegate. Somebody else can do work and I can have my time back for the highest and best use of my time, which is not doing these granular level transactions and paying vendors and making sure everything's done on time."

Improved Vendor Relations

The streamlined bill pay process enabled HeavenlyRez to establish consistent, reliable payment schedules that strengthened vendor relationships:

"We have a very easy system now, we review every Thursday and then send out an ACH transfer to all of our vendors on Friday morning and they receive it on Friday afternoon. So they get paid same day, consistent, repeatable process. Everything is there and easy to do." 

Real-Time Expense Tracking Across Multiple Users

The system's mobile capabilities enabled real-time expense classification across the entire team:

"With Topkey, I love the fact that it sends a notification via text to anybody who has a corporate card. They can click on it and then classify it, bill to owner, bill to inventory, bill to corporate. And if it's bill to owner, they can then assign it to whatever property it was. There's a real-time record-keeping, an alignment of what property it goes to right there at the time of spend."

Significant Revenue Recovery

One of the most impressive results was the substantial reduction in revenue leakage through better expense capture and billing:

"I love the functionality within Topkey. With Topkey, not only does the expense come in, but right then and there on the same screen, you can say 15% markup to owner, push a button, and then have that mark it up, and then put it right into OwnerRez."

The automated markup and billing system eliminated the risk of missing billable expenses:

"The most important thing is losing visibility to a transaction, and essentially losing money if that happens. It makes shrinkage or loss of potential revenue, probably saving us thousands and thousands of dollars just on that one feature so we don't lose anything that is billed."

"I would say it would be thousands per month that we would be saving on that, just being able to see that visibility and some quick adjustments." 

Volume and Scale Management

The system's ability to handle high transaction volumes became increasingly important as HeavenlyRez scaled:

"We're dealing with a lot of volume and a lot of expenses. I think we're doing probably about 300 or so transactions per month. Our owner's statements are hundreds of thousands of dollars. So it's very easy to miss one or two little things here or there. And that can be very costly."

Enhanced Compliance and Record-Keeping

Beyond the immediate operational benefits, Topkey provided improved compliance capabilities:

"One of the cool things with Topkey as well is that you're able to upload tax information and insurance information right into the vendor's profile. 

Responsive Development and Feature Implementation

One aspect of the Topkey experience that particularly impressed Steve was the company's responsiveness to customer feedback:

"I've recognized several opportunities for improvement, and Customer Service ran with it. Within a week there are changes that have already been implemented, tested, and rolled out in a production environment."

This rapid response to customer needs contrasted sharply with Steve's previous experiences: "I'm used to it taking months for anyone even to vote on the feature."

Going Above and Beyond

The support team demonstrated a commitment to customer success that extended beyond typical software support:

"My Topkey account manager literally jumped on a call with my CPA and talked through things. He agreed to take me out of the loop and save me time and just have an independent meeting with my CPA just to iron out a few other details."

Looking Forward: Scaling to 300 Properties with Topkey

HeavenlyRez's success with Topkey has enabled them to set even more ambitious goals: "We're going to 300 properties in the next three years. We'll probably get there sooner, but the goal is to keep on growing and achieving high quality. So Topkey is going to be there for us."

As they scale, Steve describes his recommendation on Topkey. "I always recommend Topkey to anyone that really needs to get a handle on their finances and make sure that they're not losing visibility and able to do that at the property level. It's a game changer. And from my perspective, I haven't seen any other product that does everything that Topkey does in such an easy way."

The partnership between HeavenlyRez and Topkey exemplifies how technology vendors and growing businesses can work together to create mutual success. Steve's experience, from managing a handful of properties with spreadsheets to efficiently managing 95 properties with plans for 300, provides a roadmap for other vacation rental management companies facing similar scaling challenges.

As the vacation rental industry continues to evolve and consolidate, the companies that will thrive are those that embrace technology not just as a tool, but as a strategic advantage that enables them to deliver superior service while building profitable, scalable operations.

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Topkey is a financial technology company and is not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided by Thread Bank, Member FDIC.

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