It is located in Houston Tx. 2- Would it be possible to automate the check in and check out so management would be exclusive to building maintenance and property maintenance by a local handy man or contractor?

This is something you could automate and delegate too.

I guess I am not much of an automation guy.

I saw they just released several new features, the one that will be useful for me is to set a separate floor price for low season vs the rest of the year.Optimal is in the eye of the beholder - you have to develop your own pricing strategies and then pricelabs gives you the tools to implement that in a more automated fashion. 

It's great to be able to automate online rent collection, plus take advantage of additional features like tenant screening and accounting.

Are you looking for any other features or is it just rent collection you want to automate?

I follow some investing coaches, who seem to think automating processes are just as sufficient, so you don't need to be local if you hire out the right people and tools.

And I've got some automated emails set up to take care of sending check-in details and other ordinary things.  

We’re now into STR for a few months and have learned a few things to make the process more automated.

I've an automated message going to the guests on trash day, but it doesn't always work.I've had multiple PPM companies and none of them take the trash, My cleaners won't take it, and for everything else they do, it isn't worth firing them over it.I've been trying to get a small group of homeowners in my community to just pay someone on trash day to stop in and take out all the barrels.