A short advisory YouTube video by Donna Genie about opening a micro-campground. The speaker outlines legal/compliance pre-checks, emphasizes treating a campground as an operating business (not a passive rental), and gives practical setup recommendations: separate accounting/chart of accounts, a dedicated business bank account, and forming an LLC. The segment closes with a request for audience stories via campgroundaccounting.com.
Do you have some spare land that you're looking to put a few RV sites on and maybe start up your own little campground? Well, we hear news of people wanting to open what I call micro campgrounds quite frequently now, especially in the west where land is plentiful. So let's dive into a little bit about how you want to keep up with that and what you should do if you want to take that plan of action. First, you're going to have to make sure that everything is compliant through all of your legal jurisdictions and environmental departments and all of that. But let's say you've jumped through all those hoops and you've already figured out that you can do this. What's your next step? Well, a couple of suggestions. First, make sure you keep up with this like an operating business, because it is one. This isn't like rental property where you just put collect some rent and somebody lives in the house. Owning a campground, no matter how big or how small, is still an operating business. You have things that you have to do to rent those things out. So can't just put it out there like it's an Airbnb. It has to actually be in. You have to have check in procedures and things like that going on. So. So in most cases you're going to be classified as an operating business and not a passive investment. So in order to keep up with it as an operating business, you're going to have to keep up with your accounting the same way. And you'll want to, because that's how you're going to save on taxes and not and make this a viable venture for yourself. I would suggest our new process where we have a DIY program where you can keep up with your own accounting. We'll set up the chart of accounts for you and make sure that you have everything you need to be on your way to keeping track of things nice and easily. Secondly, open up a separate banking account just for that business and all the expenditures that go along with it. Keep track of it there so that you have a nice separate trail of events of how you keep up with your business. That'll make your record keeping at tax time a whole lot easier. Within our DIY program, you'll be able to print off the report that you're going to need for your tax return and be ready to go. So keep that nice and easy. Don't forget, set up a separate LLC for that so that you can keep that operating business separate from your personal liability. You don't want to make your personal home and personal possessions be part of a lawsuit if someone decides to sue for some reason. We have a very litigious society, so you always want to be careful. Take a couple hundred dollars, 1,000 bucks and form that separate entity to give yourself some legal separation from you personally. Nobody wants to lose their house over a bad camping deal, so check that out. If you have a small micro campground, we'd love to hear from you. We want to keep up with progress that's going on with this little micro industry going out there. So let us know@campgroundaccounting.com Tell us your story and give us some comments below. We look forward to hearing from Sam.
