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Gratitude can transform common days into thanksgivings, turn routine jobs into joy, and change ordinary opportunities into blessings.
As soon as Thanksgiving 🦃 is over and the leftovers are packed away, it seems like the world shifts into holiday mode. Despite the chaos of the season, it's important to step back and reflect on all of the things we're grateful for. After all, our customers drive us to push the limits and constantly improve OwnerRez. And our team is thankful 🙏 to have the opportunity to work in a vacation rental and software industry that is continually evolving.
As we enter this holiday season, let's all take a moment to reflect on the many things we have to be thankful for in our personal and professional lives. And while you are at it, take some time to review our coverage of the November 23rd release with eleven updates and November 29th release with four updates.
Adding additional properties to your portfolio? Congratulations! OwnerRez users could duplicate properties for quite some time, but now when users duplicate a property, any property Custom Fields will automatically be duplicated and applied to your new property!
Read our Adding New Properties and Custom Fields support articles to learn more about both.
Have great news to share with your past guests? Need to send out an email blast to all of your guests from the last year, last month, or even the next couple of months? Of course, OwnerRez has an Email List Report to assist our users with that! However, our email list report was initially built way back in the day and needed a couple of improvements for how most users would need to use it. We have made the default report period to be the current year and cleared the created before criteria. Additionally, we updated the Exclude Email Domains field to include vrbo.com (and alphabetized them). This function helps exclude any channel/platform email addresses, so your report only includes guests' real email addresses.
OwnerRez has updated our Site Testing Service that evaluates all OwnerRez-enabled hosted websites and portal sites to check that the Domain Name System (DNS) certificate is configured correctly. OwnerRez has also implemented this updated protocol.
Additionally, we have added labels on your OwnerRez enabled hosted site page showing the last DNS status (red for failed, green for succeeded) and a "Check DNS" button to view your DNS Certificate state.
Want to learn more? See our Going Live with a Custom Domain Name support article.
Reports!! Who doesn't love a good report? Especially when that report deals with damage protection or travel insurance. To make this report more valuable to our Ownerrez users, we added a Listing Site column, a Listing Sites drop-down filter, and a Listing Site Group By option in the Report Criteria.
An example of this (without grouping by Listing Site) is shown below. Note that none of the guests opted to purchase travel insurance, but if they had, the travel insurance columns would be filled with that information.
Read our Damage Protection Overview, Travel Insurance Overview, and Reporting Overview support articles to learn more.
Did you know that OwnerRez logs slow queries? Yes, we do! By logging this information, OwnerRez can discover specific queries that we can improve - which impacts the speed of the OwnerRez app. Through this, we saw that we should optimize some, mainly the results for the main grids and ribbons (Booking, Quote, Inquiry, Contact, Properties), making OwnerRez load even snappier.
Short Message Service (SMS), more commonly known as texting, is a powerful way to send information directly to your guests, bypassing or alongside email. Our premium SMS Messaging feature also works with templates and triggers so that you can send automated personalized messages at scheduled times. You can also receive texts or replies to the number you configure.
Well, guests (or others) can also dial that number. Depending on your settings, if you don't have it set to forward the call to another number it goes to voicemail. This improvement allows guests to leave you a voicemail without waiting for 6-7 rings to do so. So, if your Voice settings are not set up to go to a Forwarding Phone Number, voice calls that come in will now go to your configured voicemail box right away.
Want to learn more? Watch our SMS Setup & Usage support video.
OwnerRez has a nifty Third Party Alert feature where you can put in your cleaner's name/email address. The system will automatically email them whenever a booking is created, canceled, or changed dates. We've recently made some improvements to the Third Party Alert feature, including:
To set a Third Party Alert, navigate to Properties > (select the property) > Third Party Alerts on the left navigation menu, as shown below.
Read the Third Party Alert section of the Bookings Display for Cleaners support article for more information.
Deleted Property Errors. Deleted OwnerRez properties generate errors because our channel partners don't know the property has been deleted, but a generic 500 error wasn't helpful to them. We have updated the specific error code to attach a "NotFound" reason.
Fix API Bookings Endpoint to Correctly Include Guest Names. OwnerRez has an API that users can use to pass data back and forth with third-party applications or their custom programs, and we noticed that our API v2 bookings were not including guest names. We have corrected this.
Fix "Accepted" Misspelling. In the OwnerRez Property Sharing section, the list of your properties had the Accepted column heading misspelled. We have corrected this typo.
Fix Duplicates in PM Owner Statement Expenses Report When Filtering for a Specific Property. When users generated a PM Expenses report with filtering for a specific property, the report generated duplicates. This error has been corrected.
Fix "Occurred" Misspelling. When OwnerRez users received a Crash Bang error message (which we hope you never have to see!), the word Occurred was misspelled. We have fixed this typo.
Fix Payment Entry Source Population. The Booking transactions Payment Entry Source transaction details automatically default to display "manually submitted by guest" with no IP address listed, which can confuse users. To clear up this confusion, Payment Entry details now include the date and time payment was collected and whether the following individuals made the payment:
Fix Vrbo Refundable Damage Deposit Collected as a Booking Charge. This was an edge case that was affecting a tiny number of OwnerRez users, but we found that when OwnerRez users had Vrbo settings where the first payment was 100%, Vrbo was collecting Refundable Damage Deposit at the time of booking as a booking charge, instead of waiting until X days before arrival as configured in their rules.
Because of this, the separately scheduled security deposit was double-charging the refundable damage deposit! Then, when the automated security deposit refund occurred, it was only refunding the second charge (the one we scheduled) and not the initial Refundable Damage Deposit charge that Vrbo initiated.
This meant that each Vrbo guest was paying the Refundable Damage Deposit twice but only receiving the second Refundable Damage Deposit (the one we scheduled) back. We have resolved this issue and contacted the OwnerRez users that this has affected them so they can refund their guests accordingly.
OwnerRez Single Page Hosted Website Errors. If an OwnerRez user had deleted their hosted website reviews page, those websites were experiencing errors, including displaying the listing story on the website overview instead of on the headline. This has been resolved.
Remove Double Scrollbars on Ribbon View. OwnerRez initially added bottom padding for improved readability, which caused the ribbon to create a double scrollbar even though it was originally designed for a single scrollbar. We have removed the bottom padding on the ribbon view entirely so that it uses the correct scroll on a desktop view.
We LOVE this integration news...still! Minut are fantastic partners and are doing great things in the short-term rental industry. Here's a joint case study we did with Minut and a property manager client who is using both our services to make sure they have the full booking protected from start to finish, if you'd like to learn more you can have a quick read here in the words of your peer: How Know Your Guest and Minut help HOLT protect their global portfolio (superhog.com)
"Who shot J.R.?" That was the burning question on everyone's mind on this day in 1980 as millions tuned in to find out who did it on the CBS prime-time soap opera Dallas. 🤠
Spoiler alert...it was Kristin. Now that we've ruined that for everyone, we've shot (see what we did there?) out another product update detailing our November 21st release.
And just like 42 years ago, we know the suspense about today's product update is killing you. Spoiler alert again--we've got some great new features, including updated Property Descriptions and Team Access detailed below, so you will want to read all about them.
OwnerRez users can now custom tailor property descriptions to specific platforms, including API-Integrated Channels and OwnerRez Hosted Websites. OwnerRez users can create specific property descriptions and Add Overrides for the following:
As you add additional Overrides or API-Connected Channels, you will see those tabs added along the top of your property descriptions.
OwnerRez supports Property Descriptions for many other API-Connected Channels, as seen in the Add Override drop-down list.
For more information, see our Property Descriptions support article.
Once limited to the Property Manager Premium Feature at an additional fee, all OwnerRez users can now grant Team Access to Staff Members or Portal Users (whether owners, cleaners, maintenance staff, etc.) at no additional cost. Team Access allows team members to view calendar availability and/or perform actions like blocking off time or viewing owner statements. Each user gets a separate login, and OwnerRez Users can configure various access to one or more properties, including the ability for a single property to share multiple owners.
Everything is managed in the Team Access area. OwnerRez Users can navigate to the Team Access area by clicking on the drop-down arrow of the account menu (upper right-hand corner of the screen) and selecting Team Access.
Portal User Access allows owners, cleaners, maintenance staff, etc., to view availability calendars and perform actions like blocking off time or viewing owner statements. Each Portal User gets a separate login, and you can configure access to one or more properties or owners.
Staff Member Access allows complete OwnerRez access. Note that granting Staff Members access gives them access to everything in your OwnerRez account, including bookings, payments, emails, etc. Staff Members are basically a clone of you. Staff Members are not restricted by property or role - Staff Members can see and do everything.
For more information, see our Team Access Overview support article.
For many reasons, some OwnerRez users don't want to reveal turnover (bookings that arrive and depart on the same day) information on their ribbon view availability calendar widget. Users now have the choice to either show bookings that arrive and depart on the same day as separate unavailable blocks or show adjacent bookings merged together as one continuous unavailable block.
Here's an example of a calendar displaying bookings that arrive and depart on the same day as separate unavailable blocks.
And below is an example of the same calendar showing adjacent bookings merged together as one continuous unavailable block.
OwnerRez users can now change the Ribbon Calendar Widget Adjacent Ribbons view as shown below to display or Show as Continuous or Show as Distinct bookings.
Important Note:
If cleaners or maintenance staff are using your ribbon view availability calendar widget exclusively, be sure to share arrival and departure information with them.
For more information, see our Widgets Overview support article.
OwnerRez has updated Guest Review labels for clarification. Now the "Show Publicly" controls indicate whether the guest review will publicly appear on OwnerRez Hosted Websites and Widgets and be distributed to Vrbo (if enabled and otherwise possible for the review). In addition, the owner response will be shown with the review in those places where it is shown publicly. Users can view individual reviews as shown below with the updated label, "Show on OwnerRez sites and widgets and distribute to Vrbo (if enabled and eligible)."
And owners can respond to public reviews as shown below with the updated label, "The public response you are making to what the guest said in their review (others will see this next to the guest's review)."
We have enhanced the Search Widget Rate Display to display the following details:
For more information, see our Widgets Overview support article.
OwnerRez hears you and appreciates your input on the Forum Feature Requests. We have added the "In Development" status, indicating a feature that is actively in development.
The Listing Quality Analyzer checks your listings for errors and makes recommendations for improvement to your listings for channels like Vrbo and TripAdvisor. The Listing Quality Analyzer now checks the accommodations against amenities to verify that shared spaces match the property type. For example, for some property types, such as Hotel, you can't have an Entire Home type space (which is the default if null) and will produce the following error.
Conversely, when the property type is Campground, you can't have a Shared Room type space and will produce the error below.
For more information, see our Listing Quality Analyzer video.
Zapier is a software product that allows users to integrate the web applications they use to automate workflows. Zapier integration with OwnerRez is now available by invite-only at this time. If you are a Zapier user and would like to request early access, please message the helpdesk, and we'll get you hooked up. This feature request is incomplete, and there is ongoing work before we can take it out of invite-only.
Google Thumbnail Search Results. For Google to display the thumbnail image next to search results, Google Search requires organizations to use a suitable logo image and website URL. OwnerRez now adds logo and URL properties to the proper metadata streams.
Incorrect Damage Protection Insurance Invoice Date Display. Damage Protection Insurance invoice dates displayed wrong dates in bookings and have been corrected to show the actual invoice date.
Namecheap Link Update. Updated the Namecheap link on the Portal Branding and Hosted Websites pages. For more information, see our Namecheap support article.
Non-API-Integrated Listing Channel Proxy Email Addresses. Many listing channels generate proxy email addresses or platform emails as Airbnb does. If your OwnerRez properties are not API-Integrated with these listing channels, you may or may not receive real guest email addresses or even specific reservation numbers. Users can now manually enter guest email addresses and reservation numbers on those bookings.
Rate Calendar Scroll. On smaller screens (a.k.a. viewports), the Rate Calendar no longer scrolls past the Calendar, Seasonal Rates, and Spot Rates tabs and now keeps those tabs at the top while keeping the calendar focused.
Team Access Owner Permissions Popover Help Text Added. A Property Management Team Access Owner Permissions popover help text has been added to clarify that "Access to an owner is required." for owners to view Statements and the Dashboard as shown below.
Updated Branded Team Portal Setup Link. Updated the link on the Team Access Portal to go to the Branded Team Portal Setup support article.
Updated Florida Rentals by Owner Logo. Florida Rentals by Owner has a new logo that has been updated on the OwnerRez Identifier Mapping page.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.
Wayne Gretzky
Wayne Gretzky clearly understood the importance of thinking ahead to connect with the puck 🏒. That doesn't mean that we don't learn from the past but we do have to keep our ears and eyes open to the future.
Thinking ahead about travel trends? New technology to embrace? Absolutely! That's why OwnerRez is cognizant of the future and continually strives to achieve a faster and more flexible vacation rental software to meet our users' needs today. That said, read on about the November 1st release with 14 updates below.
The OwnerRez Channel Management feature is extremely powerful and can greatly simplify your channel advertising. Learn how it works by reading our Channel Management overview article. The most powerful part of our Channel Management is the API Integrations we have with certain channel partners like TripAdvisor. And while we have some pretty great support articles for Vrbo and Airbnb we realized that we'd missed an important step for the TripAdvisor setup process.
In the TripAdvisor Setup & Connecting support article, we've added an additional section, titled Activating and Deactivating which details how to check the real-time status of your listing on TripAdvisor's side.
Need to know more? See our QuickBooks Integration Overview support article.
Want to learn more about guest maximums and number of beds? Those are addressed in our Adding New Properties support article.
Tags are an easy way to organize and remind yourself about important details related to bookings, guests, inquiries, properties or quotes. OwnerRez has made some style revisions to the look and feel of of the tag editing process as listed below.
Want to know more about tags? See our Tags Overview support article.
Setting up OwnerRez can be a little overwhelming and our Setup Interview Ending Page wasn't helping! In our attempt to give our users information, we now realize that it was information overload. OwnerRez has streamlined our Setup Interview Ending Page with a button link to our Setup Checklist support article that assists OwnerRez users during the onboarding process. The article even includes a helpful checklist as a Printable PDF for those users that still like to print and check off items on a physical list.
Add Property URL to Property Export and Import Templates via Excel. If an OwnerRez user is using our WordPress Plugin and they need to update all their property URLs to the new WordPress ones, there was no way to do this in bulk and tedious to add the property URLs one by one. The Property Export and Import Templates have been updated to include property URLs.
Clarify "QuickBooks Mappings Not Configured" Status. We realized that we need to clarify the QuickBooks status "QuickBooks Mappings Not Configured". Now, when OwnerRez users check the Property Settings of their QuickBooks Integration, they can see that the Default Rent Item is missing as shown below.
Need to know more? See our QuickBooks Integration Overview support article
Clarify File Size Restrictions. OwnerRez messaging about file size restrictions are confusing with 30 MB in some places and 32 MB in other places. We have clarified that the maximum file size is 30 MB and have fixed the error message on files that are too large to display the error message, "Upload failed. File exceeds maximum upload size."
Correct Field Code Prefix for Custom Fields Export. Engineers logged a bug report on the export file format and have now fixed it so that entries will import properly for the Import and Export Custom Fields.
Custom Field File Format Should Display File Name Instead of Just ID in Reports. The custom field file format now displays the file name instead of just the file ID in OwnerRez Reports. Users now have three options for custom field reports:
Learn more by reading our Custom Fields support article.
Friendly Error Message on File Uploads That are Too Large. Nothing is more frustrating than having a file upload that receives an error with no information as to why the file couldn't upload. OwnerRez has now added friendly error messages indicating what went wrong with your file upload as shown below.
Include Airbnb Default Discount in Specific Date Ruleset. Airbnb does not display discounts as a line item but rather roll it into the nightly rate. But there was an Airbnb issue that was causing a discount that applied to all seasons to not be applied if there were other discounts that applied to specific seasons. OwnerRez instituted a fix that will include the discount in specific date rulesets as well as the all time ruleset that will solve the issue.
Only Push the First 50 Rooms for Airbnb. Did you know that Airbnb has a (undocumented) 50 room maximum limitation? In order to handle that better, OwerRez has added that 50 room maximum to the Listing Quality Analyzer (LQA) tool and that warning will now display as shown below.
Want to learn more? Check out our Listing Quality Analyzer support video.
Show Lock Error Message on Booking. If there is an error generating a door code, show an exclamation iconwhere the code would normally display with the following error message
upon hover.
On this day in 1918, Margaret Owen set a typing speed record of 170 words per minute on a manual typewriter. Imagine that! Owen briskly followed up on that success by authoring the wildly popular book, The Secret of Typewriting Speed, in 1919.
Ok, maybe not "wildly popular", but there are still a couple of copies floating around on eBay if you are looking for one. While you are waiting for your copy of to arrive, read all about our October 21st release with 5 updates and October 14th release with 4 updates detailing Batch Tag editing feature and SMS Branding. No speed reading allowed!
OwnerRez users can add tags for all kinds of things for Contacts, Inquiries, Quotes, Bookings, Properties, and Owners. But, rather than editing individually, OwnerRez users also have the ability to set tags for multiple properties, bookings, quotes, inquiries, guests and owners all in one quick process.
For this example, we will demonstrate the process in the booking area but the procedure remains the same in the properties, quotes, inquiries, guests and owners areas. Setting multiple tags in the bookings area is only available in the List view.
In the Bookings list view, users can select individual bookings (or properties, quotes, inquiries, guests and owners) by clicking in the individual checkboxes on the first left column as shown below. Note that we have selected and will edit seven of the bookings that have no tags because we want to add the same tags for all bookings selected.
Users can also Select All by clicking on the green icon on the top left column as shown below.
But we are going to set tags for just these seven bookings to add ,
and
as shown below. Users also have the option to Select All or Clear tags in this dialog window. Click on Save.
Tags are only limited by your imagination. Learn more about this topic with our Batch Tags support article.
Sending SMS messages is highly regulated. An "SMS Brand" is basically just a profile (ie. business name, phone, and address) that you provide to carriers like Verizon and T-Mobile that identify you when they are sending your SMS messages to their customers. It's basically like Caller ID for SMS.
Creating an SMS Brand will allow OwnerRez to manage your sending reputation, but we are required to collect and verify some additional info about you and your business. We currently only offer SMS brands for businesses with tax identification.
Want to learn more? See our SMS Brands support article.
Apply Damage Protection on Calendar Sync Bookings. Bookings that synced via an iCal-based calendar importing and exporting process did not have damage protection applied even if the OwnerRez user had damage protection turned on. Damage Protection will now be properly applied for all bookings based on the OwnerRez user's preferences, regardless whether properties are API Integrated or synced via an iCal-based calendar importing and exporting process.
Booking.com Detailed Guest Counts. When we originally implemented occupancy, booking.com didn't have much info on guests and guest counts for bookings not showing the correct party size in OwnerRez. This could cause confusion for cleaners. We got in touch with booking.com support and we have adjusted the parsing logic so that guest counts are correctly populated in OwnerRez as expected.
Don't Blow Up on Preview of Bounce System Alert. OwnerRez has tweaked the alert preview for the "Email Message Bounces" so that users see the bounce alert rather than the email. We also optimized the query to promptly locate and display email bounce alerts for users to preview.
Fix eProcessing Network Security Deposits Interpreted as Sales Instead of Holds. OwnerRez security deposits place a hold against a guest's credit card prior to guest arrival - not a charge, just a hold. It came to our attention that some eProcessing Network Security Deposits were being run through as a sale rather than an authorization only (hold). And some transactions were not refunded at all. We have resolved this error so that eProcessing Network Security Deposits will process correctly.
Fix Issue Where Charge Cannot be Edited on iOS 16 iPhone When PM is Disabled. An October 9, 2022 update to the system generated a bug affecting iOS 16 iPhones only. Charges could not be edited/changed on iOS 16 iPhones. OwnerRez has resolved this issue.
Make Photo Captions That Start With # Not Freeze Page. An OwnerRez user tried to put # at the start of some photo captions indicating what property/unit it was. Doing so made the page freeze periodically and the photos didn't rotate properly. Also, when viewing the full-page photo carousel, the caption did not display at all. We made some adjustments so that # is able to work at the beginning of captions with refactoring to ignore it where needed.
Transform Arrival Date to Stay Date Criteria on Vrbo Percentage of Subtotal Fees. We realized that when users created a season with a surcharge rule, the rate generator to combine arrival date criteria into stay date intersect criteria wasn't actually syncing. This has been resolved.
Hold up! Before you start celebrating International Beer and Pizza Day, don't forget to drink up and chow down our latest product update!
🍺 and 🍕 go together like peanut butter and jelly! They're both great combinations--just like OwnerRez and vacation rental businesses. But unlike food that is meant to be consumed and then disappears, OwnerRez is here for the long haul and is continually beefing up our software. Read all about the October 9th release with 13 product updates detailing Support Article Anchor Links, Improved Airbnb Message Displays, and Upgraded Reports!
OwnerRez Support articles are a rich resource for OR users. But sometimes you just want to find a specific answer that is buried deep in a support article. Instead of scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, we have started adding anchor links to support article sections as shown below. Important sections of the support article will have links at the top of the page to take you to the corresponding sections.
In addition, the URL or address will change accordingly so that you can link or share specific support article sections with staff (or yourself for later).
It's frustrating when OwnerRez users are seeing a Sync Status error on the Property Status page. And while not all errors that are produced in the sync status will be understandable to the average user, OwnerRez has decided we should err on the side of transparency and display the error text when users hover over the error link as shown below. Perhaps this would allow some of our more tech savvy users to attempt to debug it themselves first. Of course, our Helpdesk team is always there to help too.
Learn more about Channel Syncing by reviewing our Adding New Properties support article.
In Airbnb API Connected properties, we display any messaging not from the host as from the guest. That's pretty confusing if you're co-hosting as the conversation view will show anything not from the host as from the guest. For example, if you respond directly via the Airbnb platform as the co-host, rather than responding from OwnerRez as the host, then that co-host message would show up as from the guest since it's not from the host.
User IDs have been added to the OwnerRez messaging so OR users can now see the actual Airbnb user ids on the message as shown below. Note that there are both a Mike and a Michael responding to Airbnb guest Stephenie. Hopefully, with the addition of the Airbnb user IDs any co-host/owner/property manager confusion will be cleared up.
Learn more about this topic by watching our Messaging - Overview support video.
OwnerRez offers a robust report system that allows user to record and manage all sorts of transactions, payments and expenses. Reports, both import and export, now include expense categories. Category columns on the expense-import.xlsx template use data validation to utilize a prefilled list of system items, but now also allow adding your own additional categories as shown below.
Learn more about Report Categories in the How can I show surcharges (e.g. cleaning fee) and taxes to owners? section of the Property Management - Common Issues & Questions support article.
Consider Quote Charge Description a Change When Quotes are Updated. We discovered that some description updates are considered a change for bookings but was not the case for quotes. Those quotes gave no reminder that the quote charges could or should change and the change date descriptions did not update. This issue has been resolved.
Don't Include Aggregate Review Ratings When There are No Reviews. No reviews yet? We're sure guests will be reviewing your property soon. In the meantime, OwnerRez will not aggregate or display your property's review average.
Don't Include Guest Name in Custom Statement View Expense Description Columns. When OwnerRez Property Managers create Owners Statements and select "show guest names" and "grouped by property". Guest names are hidden but are still impacting the statement settings. So if you view a standard view with names on, then switch to custom view, guest names display again (both for bookings and expenses). That's now fixed so you should see no name as expected when switching to a custom view.
Fix Issue Property Management Booking Expense Changes That Fails to Save. When OwnerRez users using the Property Management area are making changes to booking expenses, the system wasn't allowing expenses to actually save on the Expenses screen. However changes to booking expenses could be sucessfully completed on the individual booking charges screen. This can occur if the charge/surcharge is set to "owner or PM gets the entire amount" (as shown below) so that any expense changes will automatically revert to the original booking expense.
This has been resolved to check expense changes for the "owner or PM gets entire amount" setting and the change amount. Any manual expense changes will override the "owner or PM gets entire amount" so the manually set amount will take effect.
Fix Issue Where Manual Surcharge Settings Not Saved When Adding Charge on Mobile Device in Portrait Mode. When a user's settings include "Property Manager gets the entire amount" and "no commission", manual surcharges added to a booking on a mobile device in portrait mode only (desktop and mobile landscape mode work fine) weren't saving properly. This has been resolved.
Fix Rental Agreement to Use User Date Format. We found that some users rental agreements were not honoring the selected culture settings. All rental agreements now respect the date culture setting.
Fix Report Date Picker Layout. When selecting OwnerRez Report dates, the report was jerking back down to the report body. The report date picker has been fixed to no longer do that.
Remove Old API Callout From 2020. We removed an old API callout stating that we would be removing that feature on or around June 2020 on the Developer/API Settings page.
40 years ago today, the American sitcom television series, Cheers premiered. 🍻
As an OwnerRez regular, be sure to belly on up (yep--we said it!) and enjoy this product update reviewing the September 26th release with 5 updates and September 30th release with 6 updates with all kinds of refreshing brews, including Hosted Website Redirect Imports and Channel Bridge Updates. Cheers!
Guests are starting to catch onto the fact that listing channels are charging guests exorbitant fees to book on their website and they are starting to look for vacation rentals that they can book directly with owners or property managers. If you are starting to think about creating your own direct book website, OwnerRez is the easy answer. Hosted Websites are available as part of your OwnerRez account for as little as $15 a month and users can enable an OwnerRez Hosted Website in their account at any time.
Already have a website but are considering a move to an OwnerRez Hosted Website? Transitioning websites can be painful but OwnerRez assists users to make that changeover as painless as possible. Part of a website transition is redirects. What is a redirect? A redirect is a way to send both users and search engines to a different URL from the one they originally requested.
Assisting OwnerRez users with their redirects is advantageous for site transitions and maximizing search engine optimization (SEO) or the "Google juice". One tool that we offer is the Import hosted website redirects from Excel tool. To navigate to this, go to Tools > From Excel > Import Hosted Website Redirects as shown below.
Learn more by reading our OwnerRez Hosted Website support article.
The OwnerRez Channel Bridge is a Chrome browser extension that allows you to log in to your listing site accounts and unlock the data stored there, rather than relying on the limited export functionality that the listing site offers. With Channel Bridge, you'll be able to download your data and upload it directly into OwnerRez in one smooth operation.
We update our property management system (PMS) more frequently than our competitors. And of course, those updates include our channel bridge tool. We have revised the channel bridge tool to now include the following.
To learn more, see our Channel Bridge support article.
OwnerRez recognizes that property managers own their businesses and wish to remain autonomous. This applies to commission fees as well as how owner expenses are applied. We want to assist property managers to flexibly determine how to apply owner expenses and have now added the option to exclude credit card fees from owner expenses.
To make changes to owner expenses, navigate to Property Management > Owners > Select Owner > Change > Settings as shown below.
Learn more about our Property Management premium feature in the Property Management Overview support article.
Add Link to Custom Field File. Do you prefer that downloaded files open in a new window? We do too! We realized that Custom Field Files were just downloading. What a hassle! Now the Custom Field File links and opens in a new tab.
Want to learn more? Check out our Custom Field Codes support article.
Fix Booking Fee Transaction That was Incorrectly Required. Due to the recent Deposits work on Booking Fees, we must have inadvertently marked transaction fields as required. This was asking users to complete the Transaction field while trying to record a fee for a booking. We have revised this field as not required when ad hoc fee additions.
Fix Issue for Quote Signing Custom Fields. There was a bug where the rental agreement preview was showing a previous value if the agreement referenced a field but the field wasn't matched to the property. That's now fixed.
Fixed Issue With PSiGate. When OwnerRez users that use PSiGate: Payment Gateway Services & Online Payment as their payment processor attempted to refund guests, the order id wasn't correctly being looked up for refunds. We've released a hotfix that has solved the issue.
Google Sheets Time Format Parsing for Excel Imports. OwnerRez has updated the parse methods that contain date and time format information for OwnerRez Excel Imports to include 24-hour time format settings. This only applies to users that use the Google Sheets application.
Make Property Listing Photo Caption Maximum Length Consistent at 256 Characters. Occasionally, when a property photo was added, saved, and subsequently edited, the maximum caption character link was limited to 192 characters. We've made sure that now all photo captions allow for a consistent 256 characters.
Order Airbnb Messages Sending by Queue Order. We tracked down an issue where Airbnb messages weren't always being sent in the order they were queued. We've added an additional level of sorting that will solve this issue.
Remove Owner's Property Commission Settings. The Owner's Property Commission Settings in the Property Management Owner section are no longer available. Owner commission settings for existing properties can now be updated in the Owner Configuration section for properties.
When it comes to luck, you make your own.
Bruce Springsteen
On this day in 1949, Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen, aka Bruce Springsteen, was born and he included the quote above in the lyrics of his 1992 song, Lucky Town. And while most people would consider Bruce to be a pretty lucky guy, we suspect that he has worked pretty hard to get where he is today too.
We know that all of you OwnerRez users are hard workers (and hopefully have a little bit of luck 🍀) too. Consider listening to Bruce's tune linked above while you review our product update summarizing the September 15th release with 6 updates and the September 23rd update with 4 updates.
We are happy to announce our partnership with Golightly as a new first-class channel partner!
Golightly is a private club for women, requiring all members to be female. All bookings must be made by a vetted female member, but she can travel with whomever she wishes. If a property manager lists their properties with their wife or has a female property manager/owner who is happy to be the accountable member, she can list the properties under her Golightly profile. Their mission is to build the largest community of women who love to travel and provide them with a safe space to host, book accommodations, network, and support other women within the community.
Read more about Golightly in our Integration with Golightly blog post.
OwnerRez has been working on the concept of tracking deposits for quite some time. In the summer of 2022, we launched the first release and then immediately followed it up with several more enhancements. This update includes many enhancements that can only be described as "extras" or "This is great--now let's add...".
We have added the following updates to the Deposits feature.
All of these deposit tweaks and enhancements were made in preparation for our Deposits feature. Want to know more? Read our Hello Deposits! blog post.
As an independent software product for vacation rentals, it's not our job to dictate what specific payment processor or method you use. We integrate with a variety of payment methods of which Lynnbrook Group is one but we made a couple of updates listed below.
Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher, is quoted as saying "change is the only constant in life." This applies to payment processors too. We have retired legacy Stripe payment methods in order to integrate Stripe's most current API.
Learn more at our Stripe support article.
If you use our API, you'll be excited to know that we've added additional booking field information to our v2 API, which now includes amounts paid, refunded, owed, host fees and cleaning dates, to our API. To be clear, that's the OwnerRez API that we host for our many partners who build integrations and apps for OwnerRez, not the channel APIs we connect to for our channel management feature. If you are a developer and want to learn more about our API, including v2, see our API documentation.
Add Cleaning Date to Update Booking API Call. We implemented a patch on the bookings API call for cleaning dates only. Additionally, in order to more smoothly allow for editing on the API, we split apart both the edit and view models instead of using the same model everywhere.
OwnerRez is always interested in integrations that developers want to build with the OwnerRez API that we host for our many partners. To be clear, these are not the channel APIs we connect to for our channel management feature for OwnerRez users. If you are a developer and want to learn more about our API, including v2, see our API documentation.
Booking.com Adjustments. A last-minute booking in the evening can cause a payment to be attempted early. OwnerRez was interpreting the payment logic and virtual credit card (VCC) to both be Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) because that's what most of their dates are, but it's actually supposed to be in the property timezone. We have now fixed both of these bugs by making the following adjustments.
Custom Field PDF Files Not Opening Correctly. Some Custom Field files, not an image files, but PDF files were opening up as raw XML files which are difficult to decipher. We fixed Custom Field files to accept and generate proper PDF files.
Damage Protection Cannot be Added for Individual Bookings. Damage Protection is important to vacation rental owners and property managers alike as we want to protect our investment against accidental damage a guest might do while at your property. Under Damage Protection settings, users may choose to not apply or opt out of Damage Protection for certain channels.
While not recommended, perhaps the OwnerRez user has opted out of damage protection for one or more channels because the user feels the damage protection from a channel or some other source is adequate.
Sometimes OwnerRez users may have some secret spidey sense about specific guests and want to attempt to add Damage Protection to that guest's booking. Unfortunately, the terms of our Damage Protection program do not allow you to purchase our Damage Protection coverage for bookings that are already covered some other way, and the channels' coverage does technically meet this requirement.
When users that previously chose to not apply or opted out of Damage Protection for certain channels attempt to add Damage Protection to an individual booking, a new warning label will appear as shown below.
Learn more about this topic by reading our Damage Protection support article.
Don't Skip Channel Bridge Transactions for Not Deposited. In the September 12th Update we skipped Channel Bridge transactions for bookings that have deposited payments, but that leads to problems when new payments are added after legitimately deposited payments. This could lead to potential payments that should have been added before but were not during Channel Bridge transactions. We have made some improvements that include the following:
Hey, hey--did you know that the short-lived TV series, The Monkees, premiered on this day 56 years ago in 1966?
But before you meet us at the station at 4:30 to catch the Last Train to Clarksville 🚂, be sure to read through our September 12th release with 4 updates and September 6th release with 13 updates detailing the Import and Export Bookings Template Enhancement and Google Analytics Upgrade!
Some Airbnb bookings (as well as other listing channels) don't include real guest email addresses which require users to search for and collect the Airbnb Platform Email Address. The Export Bookings function did not include real guest email addresses either. OwnerRez has now added the Platform Email Address as a column to the Export and Import Bookings Excel functions.
Learn more about this topic by reading our Proxy Email Addresses support article.
OwnerRez has upgraded our Google Analytics integration from Universal Analytics (UA) to the Google Analytics 4 (GA4) data model, which collects event-based data from websites and apps. Universal Analytics will be phased out by Google and no longer supported as of July 1, 2023, so OwnerRez wanted to be prepared ahead of the curve.
In the meantime, we will continue to support both Universal Analytics (UA) and Google Analytics 4 (GA4) data models and have added support for running GA4 and UA side by side. While recommended, Google Analytics is only rendered if the OwnerRez user has configured it themselves.
This upgrade is pretty tech-heavy but we know that there are lots of people interested in the nuts and bolts behind the curtain. So here's a list of what was included in this upgrade.
Want to start implementing analytics for your Hosted Website? Read our Tracking guest interactions through Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel support article.
Always Display the Allow "Request To Book (RTB) For Shorter Notice" (Even in RTB mode) Instead of on Instant Book (IB) Mode Only. OwnerRez previously only displayed the "Request To Book (RTB) For Shorter Notice" on properties that had the Instant Book mode configured. We now include the "Request To Book (RTB) For Shorter Notice" even when a property is set to Request To Book (RTB), allowing users to decide to approve or decline these shorter notice booking requests.
Channel Bridge Bookings Deposits Transactions. Users were receiving Channel Bridge errors because the payments associated with bookings had payments that were not OwnerRez processed. This update allows the channel bridge to skip payment updates for bookings that have already been deposited as shown below.
Don't Generate Door Codes on Imports. If an OwnerRez user is generating door codes (whether manually or through other smart lock systems), sometimes those door codes could cause an error in booking and channel bridge imports. Now booking and channel bridge imports will skip door codes as shown below.
In addition, we clarified the labels on the Door Lock batch update menu.
Improve Yapstone Unknown Error Messages. It's confusing for an OwnerRez Yapstone user to receive a message that just says "Internal Error". For future internal error codes that we receive from Yapstone, our system will look at the code in the response. If an error code exists, that code will append to the error message with a colon that will hopefully produce a more useful message, ex. Eternal Error: E1015.
Airbnb Turnover Days Added. Turnover days have been added to the Airbnb channel policies tab.
Airbnb Listing Deactivated After Request to Publish. OwnerRez handled an edge case where an Airbnb listing was deactivated after we requested a publish but before we received the published webhook. The system now checks on the published webhook for the listing status to ensure it's still active before setting it active.
Clarify Current Damage Protection Settings. Current Damage Protection settings have been clarified to indicate which bookings, channels and properties are covered as shown below.
To view your current Damage Protection settings, navigate to Settings > Financial > Damage Protection. For additional information, see our Damage Protection Overview support article.
Discount Criteria "Before January" Causes Error in Airbnb Sync. Discount Airbnb pricing was causing an error upon sync when the arrival month before January was part of the discount criteria. OwnerRez replaced the wrap-around to use December as a maximum.
Expenses Weren't Removed During Batch Update. Under the specific circumstance when an owner booking was created with a surcharge as an expense and the settings on the surcharge were then changed to "owner gets the entire amount", the expense would still exist after a batch update was run. We have fixed this issue where expenses weren't removed during batch updates even if the surcharge setting changed.
Guest Sleeping Capacity is Capped at Maximum Occupancy. We found a case of a property that displayed the guest sleeping capacity minimum was greater than the maximum occupancy. We've capped the guest sleeping capacity at the property's maximum occcupancy. While not necessary, OwnerRez users can always edit the property information tab and set a sleep override minimum value.
Handle Edge Case Where Airbnb Listing is Deactivated After OwnerRez Publish Request But Before OR Receives the Published Webhook. OwnerRez experienced an edge case race condition where a "listing activated" webhook was in progress but the listing got deactivated before we were able to process the activated webhook. This was corrected to add an additional status check when processing the "listing activated" webhook to make sure that it is truly still active before marking it active in OwnerRez.
Owner Statement PDF Errors. When PMs generated an owner statement, the email-attached PDF statement opened to a PDF of an expired portal login page. This issue has been fixed so that the owner statement PDF is rendered correctly regardless if the owner user has an expired portal login idle time.
Portal Access After Ownership Changes. OwnerRez checks owner applicability when calculating permissions and won't allow title, notes or block permissions for owners that only have past access, but not current access, to the portal.
Roll back Airbnb Surcharges Into Rules. We included surcharges in rules for Airbnb but that ended up becoming a bit confusing, especially because Airbnb doesn't support that without professional hosting tools. We decided to change back the following below.
Send Profile Changed Emails in Portal Context When Granting User is Making the Changes. Normally portal profile booking change email alerts are portal branded. However, if a user wasn't logged into the portal when booking changes were made, any subsequent booking change email alerts would display OwnerRez branding rather than user-defined portal branding. OwnerRez has since instituted a Portal Team feature allowing users to fully control their profile and portal branding.
Switch BTRENT Back to Rent. The booking field BTRENT=Total Rent or the total amount of the booking rent charges and surcharges included as rent. It matters how guests see charges and users can make changes in the Pricing Preferencing area. OwnerRez now displays BTRENT in Rent and ShowInRent surcharges/discounts regardless of the collapse setting.
Tighten up Airbnb Pet Fee and Pricing Process. We added a feature recently to allow the user to specify whether to use the minimum or maximum nightly rate for an Airbnb base rate. However, if the user is using the minimum rate and then applies a pet rule, which subsequently gets blocked upon sync. Switching to the maximum rate does not fix the sync since Airbnb rejects the pet rule and fails the whole update even though the new base rate is part of that update. The following changes have been implemented.
Hold the pickles! 🥒 Did you know that today is Burger Day 🍔?
The humble but versatile burger has so many options! Cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, onions--they are all possibilities to build your favorite burger! Just like OwnerRez allows users to assemble all the tools needed to create a successful vacation rental business. Learn about all the juicy new features included in our August 25th release with 6 updates, including beefy (yep, we said it!) Custom Field and Damage Protection updates!
The highly-asked-for and much-anticipated feature to allow owners/PMs to capture files (e.g., driver's licenses) from guests is now available! With this release, there are now 3 types of Custom Fields:
OwnerRez users can now configure a custom field booking type file format to accomplish asking guests to upload files during quote acceptance or signing of legal/renter agreement.
To add or edit Custom Fields, navigate to Settings > Workflow & Devices > Custom Field Definitions.
On the Custom Field Definitions page, users can accomplish the following.
In the example below, we're going to create a required Booking Field Definition for Guest IDs. Note that we chose File for the file format. Click on Save.
For more information read the Custom Fields and Capture additional fields on booking and agreement signing support articles.
Properties listed on Airbnb, including API connected Airbnb properties, support shared spaces and rooms should reflect whether it is a private or shared space. OwnerRez Users can now define rooms or spaces in their properties as private or shared.
To indicate whether your spaces are shared or private, navigate to Properties > Specific Property > Rooms > Change.
Select whether each room or Space is Private or Shared by selecting the appropriate radio button.
Click Save at the top of the page to save your selections.
For more information see our Airbnb Photos, Rooms & Accessibility Amenities support article.
OwnerRez's Damage Protection Coverage provides protection paid for on a booking-by-booking basis against accidental damage a guest might do while at your property. It's directly integrated into OwnerRez and powered by RentalGuardian®. Damage Protection updates include new contract requirements, signature and billing all in one place. Users can also opt-out or exclude specific channels.
In addition to Security Deposits, Damage Protection Coverage is one more layer of protection for Vacation Rental Owners and Property Managers. However, it should be noted that it is no substitute for Homeowners Insurance (HOI).
OwnerRez has overhauled and clarified the Damage Protection Coverage enrollment process to now include the following information right on the OR enrollment page.
Users can select which properties to add Damage Protection to but the main requirement is that all of your bookings and properties must be included in the damage protection program. You cannot choose to turn coverage off and on for certain properties or guests.
While OwnerRez recommends that users include all channel bookings, users have the ability to opt out or exclude specific channels by selecting which channels to exclude from Damage Protection with the express understanding that you as an owner/PM are at the mercy of these channels and whether the guest admits to the damage.
Navigate to the Damage Protection Coverage area by going to Settings > Financial > Damage Protection.
During the Damage Protection Coverage enrollment process, users can accomplish the following.
Nobody likes a surprise bill! OwnerRez Damage Protection charges are transparent and straightforward so there are no surprises. The list of all affected bookings, along with the amount owed now, will display when users click on Show Affected Bookings. This allows users to make an informed financial decision when applying Damage Protection Coverage before clicking on the Accept Agreement and Charges.
The full amount owed, $394 in the case above, will be charged immediately when users click on Accept Agreement and Charges.
View Damage Protection Policies
But how do find individual Damage Protection Policies? Users can view individual Damage Protection Policies by clicking on the Insurance section of individual bookings and selecting the Damage Protection tab.
On the Damage Protection tab, users will see the following.
For more information, see our Damage Protection Overview support article.
Lynnbrook was a long-time preferred payment processor with OwnerRez, and we still have a lot of users using Lynnbrook Classic. During the 2020 Pandemic, Lynnbrook stepped back, stopped onboarding new OwnerRez customers, and took the opportunity to retool and come back better than ever as Lynnbrook Group. Existing OwnerRez users continued using the classic integration method, but all new onboarding ceased. In the ensuing time, Lynnbrook Group created a new technology platform that users can now:
To learn more, see our Lynnbrook Group support article.
Send Confirmation to Guest After Manually Finalizing a Quote. In some cases, the Messages on booking quotes displayed Guest Notifications as "Not sent" even if it was sent. This bug has been corrected and the send confirmation to guests will now display after manually finalizing a quote.
Security Deposits Can be Deposited Elsewhere. Whether a Refundable Damage Deposit (RDD) is kept or released, OwnerRez copies and allows the Security Deposit Payment to be deposited elsewhere. Refundable Damage Deposits (RDD) are included in the Deposit Batch Update results. Booking transactions now display "marked deposited" for Security Deposit Payments even if the Security Deposit Payment is deposited elsewhere.
Did you know that IBM's own Personal Computer 🖥️ (IBM 5150) was introduced 41 years ago in August 1981?
During that time, one analyst was quoted as saying that "IBM bringing out a personal computer would be like teaching an elephant to tap dance." A lot has changed in 41 years!
We're not so sure about elephants tap dancing but we do know that personal computers, and other devices, are not only ubiquitous but now are necessary to run your successful vacation rental business today. While you ponder all that--shuffle, ball change on through this product update detailing our August 5th release with 7 updates and August 12th release with 12 updates!
We are always rolling out new features at such a quick pace that sometimes it's hard to keep up!
To make it easier for our users, we are now using a indicator for new feature areas. These new feature indicators will automatically expire after 6 months.
Airbnb Booking Trigger Error. Airbnb Bookings were generating a change trigger rather than a booking trigger for cleaners. This has been corrected.
Allow Updating of Expiration Dates on Stripe Token Card Transactions. The system was requiring the security code (CVV) to be updated for any Stripe transaction card changes which was causing headaches for guests. While it is possible to have the guest re-enter the full credit card details, OwnerRez users can now update Stripe transaction card expiration dates without requiring the security code (CVV) to be updated.
Auto Review Submissions Action Log Added. The ReviewSubmitterService was not pushing logs or requests so they just sitting on the service host filling up the drive. Not only was this not great for scaling, but it was also difficult to locate request logs if needed. A sync action log was added for automatic review submissions so we can have greater clarity on when and what type of review is submitted.
Counts Cannot Have Decimals. We released the new Deposit Summary report and then noticed that the payment and refund count columns were showing decimal places... That doesn't make any sense, so we fixed that.
Fix Error on "View changes" After Changing a Hosted Website Template. A "View changes" link was erroneously displayed after selecting a new template. This button should not be displayed and has been removed.
Fix Portal Site Certificate Issue After Domain Name Change. Users were experiencing intermittent errors with their Portal Site Certificates after a domain name change. This has been fixed.
Fix Portal User Viewing Extra Empty Pages. We found a bug that permitted a portal user to view empty owner pages. To be clear, they could not see any details on those pages, but they could still open them. We fixed this so it redirects such requests back to a "you don't have access to that" page.
Fix Quote Conversation View. Quotes stated that they were "sent" in the conversation view even if they weren't actually sent. We have updated the language to state that quotes are "created" as an indicator to users that the created quote has not yet been sent.
Guest Conversation Email History Error. Sometimes users encountered that when going to a Guest Conversation, it wasn't rendering the body of the triggered message after expanding it, and instead displayed "Couldn't find that! A EmailBody does not exist for this ID". But later after the guest conversation page had sat for a long while and the page refreshed, the conversation loaded were fine. This bug has been fixed.
In Period Custom Column Percentage. The percent in the period column was rounding to 0 decimals rather than the desired 2 decimals. This has been corrected and the Owner remittance in the In Period custom column percentage was corrected to round to 2 decimals.
Not a Number (NaN) Error When Setting Rates. A user received "Not a Number (NaN)" error when setting rates. We have added an additional check to resolve this issue.
Retry Converge Payments That Fail. On rare occasions, payments processed by Converge failed without any explanation. After discussing the problem in-depth with Converge support, we decided to implement a single retry in these cases. We'll continue to keep an eye on it. Contact the OwnerRez Help Team if you continue to see this problem.
Search Widget Form Property Search Results Error. OwnerRez developers recently became aware of a bug that occurs when you change the multi-property search criteria after having navigated to the second (or further) page. The results display the revised matching property count but don't show any properties in-page if the results are less than what fits back on the first page. This bug has been fixed to always go back to page one when submitting a search widget form.
Security Deposit Transaction Set to 0 days Before Arrival Should be Visible. If you have a Security Deposit Transaction property rule set to 0 days before arrival, either a hold or recurring saving deposit (RSD) property, the security deposit wasn't showing on guest booking transactions. This has been fixed and Security Deposit Transactions set to 0 days before arrival will display on guest booking transactions.
Trim Extra Spaces Around Names in Billing Information. Additional spaces can lead to card transaction errors. We have trimmed both leading and trailing whitespaces off first and last name billing information.
Tweak Reports Date Range Picker. The reports' date range picker was finicky so we unlinked the calendars. This allows them to move them independently and selected dates are now clearly displayed at the bottom of the Date Range Picker.
Vrbo Property Mapping Error for Request to Book Property Override. Properties should be able to be included on the Vrbo channel if it is set with property overrides for Request to Book for both Vrbo and Airbnb, even though the same property is listed on Airbnb which takes Instant Bookings. This property mapping error has now been remedied.
WordPress Bathroom Count Fixed. We "fixed" the bathroom math for hosted websites, but in doing so broke the auto-mapped bath count on the v1 API result used by WordPress. This has been fixed and the auto-mapped WordPress bathroom math count breakdown is now correct.
I'm afraid we don't generally state ETAs of future developments, but, you can watch our Blog for product announcements.
Portal access tab isn't visible on mobile. The only way to access it on mobile is to click the "invite staff" button and then under the warning displayed click the link to go to portal. Just FYI.
Hi Tim - we see what's going on, thanks for letting us know. We'll get a fix out as soon as we can!
Portal access tab isn't visible on mobile. The only way to access it on mobile is to click the "invite staff" button and then under the warning displayed click the link to go to portal. Just FYI.
As of yesterday, Portal Access is now free for all and has been moved to a new Team Access area under the account menu. We also dropped Zapier integration (invite only) and a large Property Descriptions overhaul that allows overrides per channel.
It appears the name of this company/solution has changed to Duve.
Hi Melanie,
This is Adam from StayFi. Guests that log into WiFi will be synced into OwnerRez, but currently they will not be associated to the current booking at that property. But we do have that improvement on our roadmap, we don't have a timeline for when this will be completed, but we do plan on implementing it in the near future.
I am using Stayfi and integrated with Ownerrez and am happy with both. With the integration between the two, will Ownerrez import contacts received via Stayfi back into a reservation for future inclusion with that particular booking? Or will those contacts stay with Stayfi?
That is unfortunate. I am not seeing a strong argument to raise the subscription fees beyond 80% when the inflation levels are at 10-20% increase. Unfortunately the rental prices have only gone up by 10% on average and expecting anything more to offset inflationary adjustments are not possible in the hotel industry. The supply vs demand trends are still the same while offering hoteling services.
Expecting software based services ( that is what i see ownerez category) to keep going higher when dollar becoming stronger is counter intuitive. I expect OR to find cheaper software hosting and development options. I will start exploring other options.
Thanks.
Sad, really sad! I can see some other comments which I re-state. I chose OR for its great features but when I made my evaluations of the different system, I did not consider those that were almost twice the actual price. In that spehere of providers, I am certain that I will find a better-fitting provider among the top-rated ones. OR is great and assistance too but for what I need, if has some shortcomings too (it varies upon each one's needs of course) and to my eye is not worth the new pricing, especially that what I can see from the 2023 plans, the most improvements I was expecting / hoping for and already listed are not listed.
Yes it takes a lot of time to adopt a new management software but I didi it last year in favour of OR and it looks like I will have to do it again next year... Sad!
I’ll add this feature request in the appropriate section as well but I have seven properties all co-located under the same roof. I’d like a shopping cart option where a guest can book 2 or more suites at the same time and only have one contract and one payment. I’m aware of the ability to bundle units and use mutual blocking but with seven suites that would become very tedious to setup and very expensive.
Yes, great point. By "rare" I mean that the major OTAs (Air, Trip, Vrbo) all standardized on first and second/final payment structure years ago so the industry kind of followed that. Back in the day, HomeAway and Vrbo had a "how much do you require up front" and "when is the final balance due". But yes you are 100% correct that homeowners need better options than that, particularly for big properties like lodges or large beach homes where the cost may be 15 or 20k per stay.
PS. Air only recently allowed a second payment. For a long time, it was just pay-in-full up front!
Paul,
I think maybe it is rare in the VR industry for professionally managed properties, but I think among individually owned VRs it is more common to offer more than 50/50 payments. I would expect larger PMs not to have much flexibility by nature, but for the "mom and pop" owners I think flexibility (not just on payments) is more common. As I said, I don't know what % of your customers are of the "privately owned and operated" VR type vs those that are operated by property managers at a larger scale, but I'm guessing the latter make up the majority of your customers and thus have the product geared more towards their needs.
Tim, I agree with you on the payment schedule issue. It's been kicked around internally for a long time. You are correct about that being one of the older pressing issues. I think it hasn't seen more attention because it's rare in the VR industry. The first/second payment schedule is broadly used. Thank you for reminding us.
Hi Luis,
Thanks for your continued feedback and ideas. Re: training course:
could be addressed via a training course
I agree, and we started our webinar series for this reason to great success. We do a weekly demo webinar, have Live Q&A webinars and monthly partner webinars.
In terms of deep-dive or third-party training, we already have a number of affiliates that do third-party training, but we've been slow to endorse or recommend those as our philosophy is to be careful about where we direct users. If we don't know what is being said (which could be wrong!) we don't want to endorse the trainer.
I noticed earlier your comment here and had to address it:
Owner Rez seems to have very different growth objectives....
Yes, that is correct - very different growth objectives indeed. 😊 We don't believe in growth at all costs, we're not seeking to sell out or merge. We are happy with our model, have zero debt and zero outside investors, and we plan to keep it that way. We're here because we want to be here, in this industry, building this software with our team.
Hi Mark,
Regarding the live phone calls:
What is frustrating is that I/users cannot just pick up the phone and talk to someone then and there. Sometimes I require an immediate response, and a call back days later, when I might be out, doesn't cut it.
The reason we don't do this is because it would not add anything in terms of quality. You would get an immediate voice but not a quality answer. OwnerRez is a wide and deep software platform (8 verticals) with many different support areas and many thousands of customers. If we staffed a live call center that answered immediately, all you would get is a friendly immediate voice asking for a time we could schedule a time to put you in touch with our Tier 2-4 or engagement specialists who can walk through a 15-30 minute call about the issue.
Backing up, our focus in support is providing correct thorough answers, as well as go over other issues/questions you might have while on the phone. Hiring more bodies would not immediately help that. It can take 6 months to a year of training and ramp-up before our customer success team is able to provide deep knowledge about individual accounts and give valuable help. And we would still have to schedule calls out because of tickets requesting calls and time zone issues
Across the software industry, this is pretty common. Even huge companies like Intuit don't really provide great live support. You get a live voice, yes, but it can take 30 minutes on hold or a scheduled call-back if your question is anything beyond a very routine issue (eg. how do I pay my invoice). Try asking an actual accounting question like why your balance sheet is off....
I'm not trying to be defensive here but show a peak behind the curtain. More videos and support docs are part of the solution as well, and we are working towards that as well.
To be sure, we are continuing to staff up our Engagement team so that the time between your request and the live phone call is shorter. It used to be "in a few days or later this week" but has recently gotten down to a day or two typically. We are working towards making it same day or next day at latest. At some point, we might be at the point where there is enough slack in the Engagement team to be able to answer live.
I see a lot of complaints here, which were probably expected, so thank you for giving us a forum to communicate our frustrations. It goes a long way to adding to the feeling that Owner Rez is a good partner in our businesses.
That said, It seems like some of the complaints about "not needing XYZ" or n"not happy to pay for XYZ widget/integration/plugin" could be addressed via a training course. I have used these to great success in other software companies. How it works is by making a course that helps all of us owners be more successful, and at the same time, addresses the #1 issues that the price increase brings being that many people are upset and may want to leave. Considering the time it takes to set up owner rez I bet the churn rate is not too high... but no one else in the industry has their own training course so it would help you to stand out and honestly make us a lot more dedicated when everyone understands why they do need that "XYZ" thing that right now they do not want to pay for.
Feel free to email me for more details if you would like to see some examples of how we have saved other software companies and helped them 10X their growth.
I have been paying for QuickBooks integration for 6 months and it has NEVER worked. Is anyone on this blog actually having success with this feature? I have asked several times for help and Owner Rez support has refused to help. I was actually told that “we are not accountants so we can’t help with QuickBooks” I don’t need help with QuickBooks I need help with syncing QB with OR… What good is a software if it doesn’t help you with accounting? Also, how can you charge someone for a premium feature and not help them use it. FOR SIX MONTHS!?
