Blog

Sort by

• Newest Reply
• Newest Topic

We have the channel bridge which is available now: https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/channel-bridge

The VRBO API based integration will require 5+ properties -- that's their minimum for hooking up an account, unfortunately.

When you get the integration setup for VRBO users is there going to be an offer for the $1 per month for the first year. I am only on my own site and the VRBO site so there is no need for me to sign up now.

that works if you live on premises and keep an eye and you have a B&B set up. Mine are fairly secluded mountain stand alone log homes. So if I rent a 5 bd for 2 bd price, it will mean that there will be people who are unwilling or unable to pay 5 bd rate roaming 5 bd house and possibly bringing more people and in many owners' observation, it is lesser desirable clientele. I cannot lock off anything as it is not B&B but rather a standalone fairly luxury log home. So I will rather have it sit empty than rent for below certain price. Not worth the risk. I am 700 miles away.

Of course, peak - shoulder and off season is each a separate problem.

Although I am not starting until early spring, 1/3 of my building is someone else's bed and breakfast (4 rooms). I watch at night like a hawk for lights in the room and cars in her drive. It is like a tomb Sun afternoon to Friday afternoon the last couple weeks. And she said January-March is dead dead.

So there is a theory that offering my 5 bedroom townhome also as a 2-3 bedroom during the offseason, expands your reach I would be happy to rent it at less just to not have it empty. Like $150 instead of $250 or so a night. you can always lock 2-3 bedrooms so they dont get messed up.

I tend to do my own reports that involve $$$ amounts due to the fact that 1) importing amounts from VRBO and AirBNB still does not seem to always work correctly (esp VRBO) - or maybe I am slow :) and 2) me having the refundable damage dep (vs secdep as card hold) and then refunding seems to mess up the money picture. So as avid OR user, after all these years, I still rely on my trusty spreadsheets an enter amounts manually as importing the amounts from other sites seem to mess them up. :)

I do tend to disagree , in some part, with assertion that if your property books far in advance, your prices are too low. With larger properties it is not so straightforward. if you do not book far in advance , you may not book AT ALL near term no matter how you drop price when it comes close (unless it is highest demand holiday). Why - you had it above: large properties take larger groups who need more time planning. It is not your last minute getaway type booking. Unless of course you want to discount 5 bd house price to that of a 2 bd last moment. Not many owners would do that as it invites undesirable clientele. .

Some people just charge flat prices year round. Seasonal pricing is a theory, but anytime you vary price, it impacts demand.

Yep, the payment summary or booking summary reports are good.

Net is gross - fees, but the reason it doesn't add up on this report is the difference between the way payments and refunds add up fees. Fees on payments are positive and reduce the net, while fees on refunds are negative and increase the net refund. If you run that report for just payments or just refunds, you'll see what I mean.

I'll look into this and see if there's a way to make this simpler on the report so it can add up across.

Any other sorts of reports that would be useful?

@Ross, you can group these by listing site if you want. Or there are also specific listing site volume reports in the Analytics section of reports. What would you be looking for on the seasonal pricing analysis?

I would like to see (unless I missed it) reporting for total profit/total revenue/total bookings per channel (my hosted website, AirBnB, flipkey, VRBNO, Expedia, craigslist, marketing, rebookings, etc. This might help to where to double down or cut back. The last thing I want to do is to saturate myself in google or other analytics, trace back, analyze, research, optimize, panic, etc.

Would be nice, projecting how PriceLabs, flat pricing, seasonal pricing would compare against each other for a property. Probably hard to do!

You mentioned that these reports will provide "analysis that will give you actionable metrics to help increase bookings and increase profit per bookings".

So, how do we measure the profits? It looks to me like the Payment Summary report might be the right one. However, there are three summary fields to use, Total, Net Total, and Fees. I feel like the Net Total and Fees should sum up to the (Gross) Total, but they don't appear to.

How are the three summary fields related. And if (Gross) Total is not a sum of Net Total and Fees, what else is missing here and why?

I had rental properties for > 15 years and I ALWAYS did my own accounting and taxes. If audited, I don't want to be represented by someone who is not really familiar with my numbers. (I'm sorry sir, your accountant of 8 years just retired, but we have this new guy who...) An accountant caused me a major problem with a business purchase, and I have been doubtful ever since.

I believe that if you want to be more successful, a good piece of software and DIY trumps the CPA. You should know your own numbers, intimately (IMHO)

Just wondering what's on the horizon, and whether or not it might make sense to do accounting on my own as opposed to paying an accountant.

We just dropped a large update a week or two ago on QuickBooks and have several more scheduled for later this year.

Are there any particular features you were interested in?

Each one is different, and there are instructions in each channel as you add it, as well as links to step by step articles.

If you run into a particular snag, shoot us an email at help@ownerreservations.com and we'll get you sorted.

What's the approximate roll out date for these new accounting features?

Okay, I signed up... Now how do I turn on each integration?

As many of you are already well aware, dealing with proper accounting and bookkeeping is a big frustration in the vacation rental industry -- whether you manage hundreds of properties or are an owner with just a couple.

Jesse and the team at Ximplifi Accounting have started a great blog series on accounting for vacation rentals. We are working with Jesse's team to create a long-term comprehensive solution in OwnerRez to the accounting problem. We push bookings and payments to QuickBooks already, but this is just the tip of iceberg in terms of what is coming.

Check out Jesse's inaugural article: Trust Accounting for Vacation Rental Managers

Quick excerpt:

Trust accounting for vacation rental managers (or property managers in general) ("PM") can be confusing. Add in the selection, set-up & use of VRM booking and accounting software and it can become all out dizzying! The below is not intended to be all encompassing, as the set-up, and specific accounting & reporting is dependent on many different factors. But, it is intended to provide a framework for VRM trust accounting and the different key considerations.

Continue reading

These appear to be dated instructions. I am having a hard time finding where to increase the check acceptance date.

https://www.ownerrez.com/blog/setting-up-and-understanding-payments-by-check

Wouldn't let me edit post. I added:

Standard disclaimer about fake reviews. 1 and 5 star may be faked. I find most wisdom between 2-4 star reviews.

That is why I said "practically". There are going to be hiccups like your solar eclipse. But one-off things like eclipses or one-time events are certainly not the fault of the dynamic pricer.

I am on board with not using BP or Everbooked. My research leads me to PriceLabs and WH only. And certainly not the builtin dynamic of something like Airbnb. The OTAs have made themselves almost the enemy of the VR owner.

The following may be insightful on software review site Capterra about 3 of the dynamic pricers.

Wheelhouse: https://www.capterra.com/p/171266/Wheelhouse-Pricing/

PriceLabs: https://www.capterra.com/p/158348/PriceLabs/

BeyondPricing: https://www.capterra.com/p/141284/Beyond-Pricing/

Everbooked: Not reviewed there.

Secdep vs actual damage deposit (i.e just auth held against card, vs money actually charged and put in bank). I use the latter as non-taxable surcharge. Pro: money in bank; con: if guests want to buy trip insurance, the damage deposit amount gets included into the amount against which trip insurance is calculated so it is overstated; also refunds take 30 cents out of your money ; remembering to refund it :)

As is said I did "set and forget " with BP and just got several spring break dates booked about $40-50/night LESS than I would have charged (and got, historically) myself .

About WH: Last year they did not set prices correct for local event (solar eclipse) that was crazy popular and could have fetched prices about $40/night more than those they set..

So yes, my time is worth money, but it is definitely worth several nights X$40 doing it myself Vs BP. very disappointed.

"But I'm not sure that these tools do substantially better than a few simple rules,"

I do not agree with this. There is a lot of aspects of seasonality, particular markets, events, how far out, ability to customize, and actual sampling in your market, and other things. And they are able to be practically "Set and forget", preventing you from having to test and tweak. My time also has value on 7 future properties. Even if they cost 1% of your revenue and brought an additional 2%, that would seem worth it!

"Are there any other similar tools that are used?"

EverBooked. But based on a lot of research, I would say Wheelhouse and PriceLabs are the top two, However, 1 of these 4 may be better in certain areas. For example, Wheelhouse coverage centers on a town 13 miles away from mine. But of course, that means they also average in properties in the opposite direction. And mine is a very specific, hip tourist town with whitewater rafting, amazing history, rail-trail, cycling, events, etc. So even being this close, it might price very differently from that town to my town.

For the accidental damage insurance, that's billed to you, not the guest.

You can add a surcharge to your bookings (or not -- some folks like to keep that coverage on the down low as they feel that people will respect the place more, not knowing they have insurance).

Can you owners upcharge the accidental damage insurance price that is billed to the guest?

In your market definitely is probably the main differentiator

The 30-40% is a nice claim, but another factor is time savings. I am not sold on the concept of simple rules X days out charge this amount or do this in certain seasons. I also don't want to spend time tweaking prices for 7 rentals.

If a dynamic pricer gets me 10% improvement for 1% of the revenue and I don't have to think about it, that has high value to me.

I am leaning towards putting several properties on PriceLabs and similar ones on Wheelhouse, and let them run a year. If one is significantly better, then put them all on that one. I don't believe a couple months is adequate and I am a very very patient person!

Some of it is about market coverage (ie. geographical coverage). We've been told by users that Wheelhouse and PriceLabs do not cover their market but BeyondPricing does. Vermont came up recently in one such conversation. BeyondPricing had coverage there but not the other two. That affects the situation as well.

supposedly a little more than that. Since they are plugged into other properties and can "see" occupancy your competition (and supposedly even hotel occupancy), they can tweak price based not only on how far/close in advance, but also based on competitor's occupancy AND they take into account local events. Like having some local festival that may increase tourism (like here in the smoky Mountains few times a year we have antique car shows that draw people from al over the place). Wheelhouse does it better. Like I said BP is very so so esp for my larger property, their price swings are too wildly unrealistic and they do not make suggestions on your suggested base price (Wheelhouse does using some algorithm and gives you several options). .
did using them increase revenue? a little bit but not by 30-40% as they claim. You have to be totally clueless about your own market and seasons and your own prices have to be totally wrong if using the tool increases your revenue by that much.

If I were to look into it, I would focus on Wheelhouse. BP is just not working that good at least not in my market. I would not spend time on it.

Yep, I haven't locked in to a dynamic tool for my properties yet either. It seems very cool, and I've looked at some of what it says to do and gotten some good ideas.

But I'm not sure that these tools do substantially better than a few simple rules, like -50% for < 7 days from arrival, -30% for < 14 days, + 20% for > 90 days, + 35% for > 120 days.

That's basically what all of these tools end up doing, right? I wish I had a couple of identical properties so I could run an a/b test between hand setting rates, rules based rates, and demand based rates.

We are talking with BeyondPricing and Wheelhouse to see if we can get integrated with them as well. Are there any other similar tools that are used?

You can't disable a single holiday on the list, but you can make all custom holidays. So you could unsubscribe from the holiday list and then add custom holidays for the ones you do want to hit on holiday fees.

I looked at wheelhouse, they say 1% per booking up to 10 properties.

The claim for using these dynamic prices is a yield mgmt. As hotels do. The claim is perhaps 30-40% more revenue.
Of course, I did not start yet, so not really sure of the truth.