How to Automate Merlin Software

An owner buys a week once and stays for thirty years

Merlin Software is one cloud system for the whole of vacation ownership: timeshare and fractional resorts, points clubs, resort communities, homeowner associations, condo hotels and the sales organisations that feed them. Most of the people working in it all day just call it Merlin.

The business it runs is unusual because the customer never leaves. Somebody buys a week, or a block of points, and then stays on the books for decades. They book, they pay an annual maintenance fee, they exchange a year they cannot use, they rent one out, they occasionally sell, and eventually somebody inherits it. The resort is a hotel on Tuesday and a small financial institution on Wednesday.

Merlin CORE holds all of that in one place across Marketing, Sales, Front Office, Back Office and Business Intelligence, with owner portals and mobile apps for housekeeping, maintenance and tour agents on top of it.

The maintenance fee run decides the resort's whole year

The calendar of a vacation ownership business is brutal in one direction. Almost everything comes due at once.

Annual maintenance fee billing goes out to the entire ownership base, and what comes back is a long tail of part payments, disputed amounts, failed cards and people who moved without telling anyone. Points expire on dates owners do not watch. An exchange request goes off to the exchange company and then simply sits. A deed transfer goes to a title company and a county recorder and comes back in six weeks, or does not come back at all. Somewhere underneath it, a week in March is still unbooked and unrented.

Member services spends the day answering owners about things happening on other organisations' websites. Whether the exchange came through. Whether the payment cleared. Whether the resale listing ever went up.

Merlin Software

Exchange requests that get chased Each partner's extranet checked against the requests still open in Merlin, so a deposit that never confirmed is found while the week can still be used.

Deeds tracked as far as the recorder Transfers sent to title read back off the county index, with the ones that recorded and the ones that quietly stalled listed side by side.

Fee payments matched to owners Bank and processor portals read for payments and rejections that arrive with no reference, so collections skip anyone who has already paid.

Merlin World handles the exchanges it is connected to

Merlin automates a great deal of this already, and a club paying for the ecosystem should have the whole of it switched on before adding anything else.

The Back Office is a double entry, multi currency, multi company accounting system built for resorts and homeowner associations. It raises the annual maintenance fee bills, tracks what has been paid, sends reminders and runs collections without anyone retyping a ledger. The Front Office is the property management side, covering reservations, the front desk and online booking straight from the resort's own website. Owner portals let a member book, check a balance and pay a fee at two in the morning without calling anybody. Merlin World adds dynamic exchange, automated resales and auctions and integrated rentals onto the same record.

The line is drawn in a sensible place, and every resort system draws it. All of that runs on records Merlin holds, or on partners somebody connected it to.

An exchange company's extranet, a county recorder's index, a title company's status page, the bank's lockbox, the resale boards and the rental listing sites are none of those things. They hold the answers member services is asked for all day, and not one of them will volunteer anything.

An owner's week is trading somewhere the club cannot see

Those sites stop being phone calls and become a morning report.

The exchange partner's extranet checked each morning against the requests still open in Merlin, so a deposit that never confirmed gets chased while the owner's week is still usable. The county recorder's index read for the deeds sent out for transfer, with the ones that recorded and the ones that stalled set side by side.

The money side works the same way. Fee payments landing in the bank's own portal with no reference attached, matched back to the owner accounts they belong to, so an arrears letter is not posted to somebody who paid last Thursday. Card and direct debit rejections read off the processor's site while the fee run is still warm.

Then the market. What weeks and points at your own resort are actually listed for on the resale boards, which is the number an owner in arrears will quote back at you. What nearby hotels are charging for the March week you are trying to rent, from their own booking pages.

Reading and comparing can run unattended. Anything that bills an owner, sends a collections notice or moves a title stays drafted and waits for the person accountable for it.

Member services should be answering owners, not refreshing extranets

What happened to that request is on the exchange extranet, and the person an owner is waiting on the phone to speak to is the one signing in to look.

WebRun is an agent that works a real Chrome browser, signed in as you. It opens Merlin the way your team does, opens the exchange partner's extranet, a county recorder's index or a resale board beside it, and leaves one list naming the owner, the account and what changed.

It runs on your schedule in your own private environment, and a run can be locked to a named list of sites. Owner letters, fee adjustments and anything touching a title are prepared for a person to approve.

The workflows below are already built, and each one names what it opens.