You already know how VRTrust handles trust accounting: guest money lands in your trust account, and reservations, deposits, expenses, fees, and payouts flow through it.

This article covers how Operations Accounting works in VRTrust.

For a refresher on the basics, see VRTrust Terminology & Core Concepts and Trust Accounting 101.

VRTrust has always tracked one side of your business: the trust account, where owner and guest funds live.

Operations accounting brings the operating side into VRTrust, the money your management company earns and spends.

This means you can record and reconcile both accounts in one place and see each transaction from both perspectives: what it means for the trust account and what it means for your company financials as a whole. VRTrust keeps the two sets of books balanced automatically.

Operations accounting activates when you connect an operating bank account.

You can change an account's Trust/Operating designation later only if no transactions have posted to it yet. Once activity is recorded, the type is locked.

You can designate a bank or credit card account as Operating (not just Trust), connect it through the bank feed or CSV, and reconcile it exactly like your trust account.

Operating accounts become selectable everywhere you pick an account: Expenses, Deposits, Owner Payouts, and the new Bank Transfer.

VRTrust keeps two sets of books that each balance on their own:

Each transaction line is tagged with a Ledger (Trust or Operating) automatically, so you don't have to set it by hand.

Think of it as a clean lens over activity you're already recording, so you can view your trust books and operating books separately or together. (This is designated by "Trust" and "Company" views in reports.)

When money crosses between the two ledgers, say you pay an owner's expense from your operating account, each ledger still has to balance on its own.

VRTrust does this automatically with a behind-the-scenes account called Due to/From Trust. You never post to it manually; it simply records that one ledger owes the other, so nothing is ever out of balance.

Only when the account you use sits in a different ledger than the money belongs to: the cash is in one book, the obligation in the other.

In practice, this happens whenever:

Two choices you make on screen decide the outcome:

When these line up, an Owner line paid from a Trust account, or a Manager line paid from an Operating account, everything stays within one ledger.

When they don't line up, an Owner line paid from an Operating account, or a Manager line paid from a Trust account, VRTrust automatically adds the Due to/From Trust entry to keep both ledgers balanced.

You don't do anything differently; just record the transaction as usual, and VRTrust handles the balancing behind the scenes.

A transaction type called Bank Transfer is used for recording money moving between your own accounts (trust → operating, operating → operating, trust → trust, and so on).

You'll usually create one straight from your bank feed by matching the money-out line in one account to the money-in line in the other.

You'll find a Bank Transfers tab on the Bank Reconciliation page, with an Add transfer button and a detail view showing the From and To accounts. Bank Transfers don't require a description — VRTrust fills in "Transfer from X to Y" by default.

Example: You move $1,000 from trust to operating to reimburse yourself for expenses you fronted. From the Bank Account Reconciliation page, you can create a Bank Transfer, and VRTrust will automatically assign the From or To bank account depending on whether the bank record is a deposit or a withdrawal.

In this example, you would select your operating account as the "To" account.

Then, you would reconcile the corresponding deposit in the operating account. You don't need to create a new transaction to do this - you would match both sides to the same Bank Transfer.

VRTrust records the cash leaving trust, arriving in operating, and keeps both ledgers balanced.

There is an important distinction between transfers and payouts in VRTrust.

A Payout refers to the payment to or from an owner triggered by "Pay Owner" on a published statement, and this is consistent throughout VRTrust (filters, badges, and icons included).

A Bank Transfer refers to transactions where money moved between bank accounts, such as paying the operating account from the trust account.

The PM Statement reflects your full operating picture, not just revenue and expenses.

Notably, there is an Assets & Liabilities section (replacing former "Reserves" section) and shows balances as-of the statement date (like a balance sheet), covering timing items such as payment-processor reserves and the Due to/From Trust balance.

Users with the VRTrust default chart of accounts will see a few entries that support operations accounting, including a Trust<->Operating Cash Adjustments account (where Due to/From Trust activity lands) and clearer tax and deposit categories such as Security Deposits Payable and Taxes Payable – Lodging & Occupancy.

To keep owner funds correctly separated, VRTrust prevents certain account choices.

For example, coding owner activity to accounts that would misstate what's held in trust. If an account looks greyed out when you're categorizing a transaction or setting up a mapping, that's the guardrail keeping your trust books clean.

You can create an expense that's paid from an operating account as well as trust. What VRTrust does depends on whose cost it is and which account pays:

Example: You pay a $100 cleaning bill on an owner's behalf from your operating account. VRTrust shows it as an owner expense in the trust books, shows $100 leaving operating, and records that trust now owes operating $100 automatically.

Note: the separate expense reimbursement (non-trust) path is unchanged. Use it to record "non-cash" owner expenses that weren't paid from any of the bank or credit card accounts you've connected in VRTrust, whether they are trust or operating accounts.

You can now record a deposit received into an operating account. What happens depends on whose money it is:

Example: A $1,000 onboarding fee that belongs to your management company, recorded as an operating deposit against management revenue, stays entirely in operating and never touches owner funds.

Owner payouts normally come from trust. You can also create an owner payout from your operating account when needed. VRTrust records the payout to the owner and adds the Due to/From Trust entry so both ledgers stay balanced.

When a fee moves revenue from the owner to your management company (most commonly your management commission) VRTrust records what the owner owes you.

The Due to/From Trust balancing entry isn't created by the fee itself; it appears when that money actually moves: for example, a trust → operating transfer is created, or an owner payout is created from an operating account.

All of your accounting lives in one place: VRTrust.

Reach out to our support team using the help icon in the lower left hand corner of the main navigation pane.