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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.

• Enhancements & Tweaks
  • Channel Partnership with Golightly
  • Deposits Enhancements
  • Lynnbrook Group Updates
  • Retire Legacy Stripe Payment Methods
  • v2 API Booking Field Additions
• Bug Fixes

Enhancements & Tweaks

Channel Partnership with Golightly

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.

Deposits Enhancements

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.

• Adjusted and enhanced the deposit fee handling
  • Created separate tabs for Transactions and Fees (in that order).
  • Show booking, property, transaction (description) and amount.
  • Added "Total Transactions" and "Total Fees" on the top of the deposit summary.
• Optimized deposits queries
  • Added property dropdown filter.
  • Added payment method dropdown filter.
  • Similar to guest conversations, display the most recent 50 deposits with a "Load older transactions" button.

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.

Lynnbrook Group Updates

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.

• Lynnbrook Group deposits are now automated.
• Any OwnerRez user that wants to apply to Lynnbrook Group as a payment processor can follow the instructions in the Lynnbrook Group support article.

Retire Legacy Stripe Payment Methods

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.

v2 API Booking Field Additions

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. 

Bug Fixes

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.

• Adjust the booking.com payment logic to use the property timezone.
• When doing booking.com automatic refunds, don't refund VCCs. Instead, alert the OwnerRez user if we don't have enough non-VCC to cover the refund.
• Don't report booking.com VCCs as bad cards to the guest.
• Call out booking.com VCC processing errors in alert to users.

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:

•  Only skip deletes of transactions that have been deposited, and notify the user if this happens. Users can still add new transactions even if others on the booking have been deposited.
•  Update host fees, but skip updates/deletes of fees that are deposited, and notify the user if this happens.

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!

• Enhancements & Tweaks
  • Add PlatformEmailAddress to the Import/Export Bookings Excel
  • Google Analytics Upgrade
• Bug Fixes

Enhancements & Tweaks

Add PlatformEmailAddress to the Import/Export Bookings Excel

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.

Google Analytics Upgrade

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.

• Only render Google Analytics (GA) if analytics is configured for the user
• Convert to gtag.js for both GA4 and UA
• Add support for running GA4 and UA side by side (UA will be phased out by Google in July 2023)
• Add support for enabling debug mode to support GA4 DebugView report
• Set GA cookie flags to SameSite=none to improve sharing through widgets to reservations
• Widgets automatically request GA client id from containing page
• Add widget Loaded event
• Add QuoteDisplayed and QuoteErrored events for the booking widget
• Rename the ViewQuoteDetails event on the booking widget to QuoteDetailExpanded to clarify what action it indicates

Want to start implementing analytics for your Hosted Website? Read our Tracking guest interactions through Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel support article.

Bug Fixes

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.

• Switch back to putting surcharges in nightly rate always. Leave discounts as separate for strikethroughs.

• Turn off the Listing Qualtity Analyzer (LQA) warning on the number of nights less than for Length Of Stay (LOS) or surcharges that are rolled into standard fee or nightly rate.

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.

• Update the base rate first with minimum of pet fee amount to avoid the pet fee amount error.
• Update Listing Quality Analyzer (LQA) checks to display errors for percent pet fees and per night pet fees.
• Calculate the number of pets always as 1 because that's what was charged.

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!

• New Features
  • Custom Field File Formats
• Enhancements & Tweaks
  • Airbnb Room Shared Spaces Option
  • Damage Protection Update
  • Lynnbrook Group
• Bug Fixes

New Features

Custom Field File Formats

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:

• Plain Text format is ideal for additional Guest information that OR users may require.
• Rich Text format allows the use of additional fonts and colors.
• File format is best suited for non-text files, such as image or PDF files.

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.

• Create a new Field Definition by clicking on Create Field Definition.

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.

• Edit an existing Custom Field by selecting from the following for your existing Custom Field.
  • Click on the Pen icon. 
  • Select Edit this Field Definition from the drop-down list as shown below.
  • Select Open in new tab from the drop-down list as shown below.

For more information read the Custom Fields and Capture additional fields on booking and agreement signing support articles.

Enhancements & Tweaks

Airbnb Room Shared Spaces Option

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.

Damage Protection Update

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.

• Clear Coverage Types (both Standard and Enhanced)
• Amount of Covered Damage per Booking
• The Cost per Booking
• Any Extra Coverages available with Enhanced Damage Protection

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.

• Add Damage Protection
• View Damage Protection Policies

Add Damage Protection

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.

• Select the amount of coverage for each property.
• Opt out or exclude specific channels 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.
• Apply Damage Protection to either:
  • Pre-existing bookings that will arrive in the future
  • New bookings

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.

• The coverage amount, in this case, is $1500.
• The amount paid by you the owner and when it was paid. It is up to you as a user whether you choose to pass the cost of Damage Protection on to your guests as a surcharge. If you do have to submit a claim (and we hope that is not the case!), there is a link to the Online Claims Form along with a handy Reservation Number to add to the claims form. Copy the Reservation Number by clicking on the Copy icon next to the Reservation Number. 

For more information, see our Damage Protection Overview support article. 

Lynnbrook Group

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:

• Onboard (even small users) within a few minutes.
• Use Lynnbrook's own funding process to determine if new users needed to be Fund At Event (ie. payouts are sent at booking check-in) instead of Fund At Booking.
• Provide settlement data, including fees, so OwnerRez can do to-the-penny reconciliation with our Deposits feature.

To learn more, see our Lynnbrook Group support article.

Bug Fixes

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!

• Enhancements & Tweaks
  • New OwnerRez Feature Indicators
• Bug Fixes

Enhancements & Tweaks

New OwnerRez Feature Indicators

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.

Bug Fixes

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.

When?

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.

Yes, that is correct:

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/duve

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!? 

I'm out of here. This is ridiculous!!! Smoobu, Hospitable... all better "bang for the buck" now. OwnerRez will slowly lose a lot of people and a lot of money. 

I would like to have Quickbooks integration included in the normal subscription, as opposed to an additional fee. 

Paul, you write:"We actually do have a fulltime Engagement Team that does in-person phone and video calls every day of the week.  Send in an email and we'll get you on the call-back schedule for sometime this week or early next.  Our Engagement Team is expanding and we look forward to doing a lot more phone/video support in the future."

I think that you are missing the point. 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. Therefore I always use email and the response time is pretty good; but knowing that someone will pick up the phone if I feel that the matter is urgent enough to warrent a call, would be refreshing. 

Ken,

1. With regard to the rent, yes you can combine the rental lines but you can't combine any other fees INTO the rental line. You can only group surcharges together, discounts together and rents together (and taxes)....but you can't combine different categories. I think a lot of people have a number of "per stay" fees that they would like to wrap up into the rent total but that cannot be easily added to a nightly rate. Cleaning fees being the primary one. My cleaning fee is $150 whether 1 night or 14 nights so I need it to be added as a per stay surcharge but I don't want to display it.

2. Multiple payments only exist as a manual workaround.....and one that requires the guest to agree to terms that you are then going to change. I don't want to tell my guests, "yeah the agreement says you have to pay the entire balance in one lump some but after you agree I will change it to two payments." No, that's not reasonable. Owners should be able to have multiple payment options....whether they choose to split it into 4 payments, or a $500 deposit and then 2 payments of 50% each. That's what OR should offer and what many people have been asking for since about 2017. Also, OR offers no ability to set dates that payments are due, only dates based on the stay. Many seasonal rentals will have a payment due by say January 1st, then the balance 60 days prior, or even on a second set date. Right now that's not an option so I have to manually send out payment reminders in November.

@Nona - you can control your Premium Features here:

https://app.ownerrez.com/account/billing/premium

@Tim it is possible to set up multiple payments for an individual booking, has been for a long while:

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/multiple-payments

And, you can indeed combine the various Rent entries onto one line - that's controlled in your Pricing Preferences under "How Guests See Charges":

https://app.ownerrez.com/settings/pricing

Paul,

As others have mentioned, I just have one duplex that equates to 3 listings (A,B A&B) so I'm looking at a significant increase in cost. I started at $22.99, then last year it jumped to $42, now next spring it will be $88!

Perhaps most egregious is the pricing for the Wordpress plugin. I can't begin to understand how that pricing is reasonable....everyone might as well have the full hosted website feature for $5 more. $18 a month for a calendar widget and booking form? I'd love to hear the justification for that. 

Primarily my complaint about missing features is the multiple payments (n payments as you guys called them) and the ability to create payment schedules and set due dates. It has been on the roadmap for probably 4+ years now and it seems like a pretty common practice in the industry.

Another missing feature is the ability to "bundle" all the surcharges/fees into one "price". With all the media attention on cleaning fees and other fees being charged it would be nice if on quotes and bookings there was the option to just display everything as "rent" rather than breaking it down. I know you can manually do this on quotes but it would be a useful and time saving feature. At a minimum I don't want my quotes to default to this giant mess that I have to edit each time. I can't imagine people wanting to send out a quote that looks like this....

How about the option to combine select charges into a simple "Rent" line...

I barely book with VRBO so that integration isn't worth my time and it seems from owner reports that the AirBnB API integrations are still not perfect. AirBnB via iCal is working fine so I'm not sure I want to deal with switching to API if it potentially brings me headaches. I'm not convinced that any of the newer features are of use/interest to me and it seems like a lot development work is spent on integrating partners that I have no use for. I read through the blog and it is new integration after new integration....mostly of services I've never heard of. Meanwhile I'm stuck here waiting for improvements to basic functionality.

How do I remove PM?