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Not sure if this would even be an option for you but ...... When I had a private lady clean my condo in Myrtle Beach, I purchased 3 entire sets of linens for all the beds / baths / kitchen. She kept set one locked in the owners closet for emergency use, set 2 was in use by the "current" guests and set three was taken home by her and washed / folded at her leisure.

She would just exchange sets 2 and 3 every turn over which in my case is every Saturday.

We used Amazon to deliver replacements to her home when needed.

AirBnB emailed me the other day that as of July they will be requiring all rentals to provide linens. I contacted my independent cleaner, and he's willing to do the extra work, but we need a good system. I have 4 rentals from 1BR to 4BR on a lake in a very rural area.

* no washer/dryer on site
* limited indoor storage space
* 15m to a sketchy looking laudromat
* 30m to a decent looking laudromat

Has anyone designed a good system for similar conditions?

TIA,
-JJ

Hang in there! I started using OwnerRez about two or three months ago. We have five properties, and I've been using spread sheets and quicken since 2004. We have a "book it now" button on our website, and the ability to run reports and keep track of things much more easily. Our guests like it. It has taken some getting used to, but I consider it the best business purchase of 2017, possibly the decade!

There is a learning curve, but once u figure out, it is well worth it. I trued out 2 other priducts before choosing ownerrez. My life is sooooi much easier now. Getting ready to add 3rd property, and without this tool and having fulltime job it would be a tremendous challenge. Ownerr keeps me sane

Thanks for the check list Chris. My brain has hit a wall! everytime I open the program lately, I just stare at it, not sure what to do next, so I end up doing nothing. Hopefully this will help me break through.

It's worth it, keep going ;-) It will save you lots of time in the future and if you are able to get rid of ABB and VRBO you will have an independent means of taking bookings, etc... plus it looks professional.
Wendy

Thanks Chris I will try it out. Very much appreciated.

I just put up a setup checklist article here to help out: https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/setup-checklist

Hopefully that'll give you some ideas of where to go.

The best way it to get to that quote process and send yourself a quote so you can see what the guest will see. That'll give you ideas about what you want to change and let you know when you've got it set up as you want to be able to take bookings.

Lauren, We are in the very same boat!! Feeling pretty overwhelmed....... I just keep reminding myself it will be so good if I can get it all configured. Just started last week. But frankly, I have a return guest willing to be my guinea pig and I can't even formulate the process well enough to know what to send her. sigh
But we will make it!! eventually......

It does take some time and effort to get set up, but once you get set up it will save a bunch of time in managing a central calendar, having everything sync together, and setting up scheduled/triggered emails like pre arrival welcome emails etc. that work for all listing sites. Being able to accept direct bookings and have e-signed renter agreements, automatically scheduled second payments, security deposits, etc. is a big help too.

I'm clearly biased but I think its well worth it for even 1 property. We've got larger users, but also have many users with just one property. That's how OwnerRez started back in the day, actually -- myself and some colleagues started with one vacation rental and needed software to manage it. Being software guys, we started working on OwnerRez.. and the rest is history ;-)

To be honest, our features are often ahead of the help docs, so if you have questions ask away and we'll get them answered. you can post on here or send an email to help@ownerreservations.com. If you've got more detailed questions, let me know and we can schedule a call to walk through everything and get you on the right track.

I have one property. I am on AirBnB and VRBO and have my own website. So I have the 2 week trial and I still don't get it. This seems very confusing and I don't think I am just that dumb. It doesn't seem very intuitive. I have tried to see where there are help docs and slug my way through them, but honestly is this for the big timers and it's just too much for the little guys out here?

I emailed the rep over there who had responded to my initial inquiry and he said that interchange-plus is definitely something they can (and do) offer their larger accounts. If I grow to the point that it would make a material difference in my costs, he indicated we can talk about it at that time.

He made it pretty clear, though, that there isn't much they can do about discounting the plan on lower volumes (either the monthly fee or the discount rate) because the VR industry is considered a "high-risk" industry in terms of underwriting. I understand and don't disagree--I'm just both seeking to make sure I get a good deal now (whether that is favorable pricing or a clear explanation of why paying a slightly higher price is worthwhile) as well as ensuring that if I do make this a long-term relationship, things can work out well downline.

Hi Chris,

Thanks for weighing in!

I think Lynnbrook is definitely worth it for the low end depending on how much you value your time. The aggregators (Stripe, PayPal) you are comparing them to make your life difficult when it comes to:

- reconciliation (fees taken out with each disbursement)
- don't understand the VR product and may freeze funds or drop your account (this has happened to users)
- won't fight disputes/chargebacks for you because See Previous

Paying a small monthly fee is nothing compared to losing a $500 or $1k booking because the aggregator sided with the guest. You can recoup that by filing in small claims court but again - what is your time worth.

As an analogy, many users gladly pay $10-35 per booking for damage protection that they rarely use. Why? Because it's worth the extra couple hundred bucks a year when that moment strikes and the guest breaks a window and cancel their credit card.

Question - have you asked Lynnbrook about interchange plus pricing? I'm wondering if they already have that. They seemed pretty amenable to most of the stuff we've talked to them about. It's possible that they already do that, if specifically asked.

Seems to me this could be solved if Lynnbrook went with an interchange-plus pricing structure. More expensive card to process? We (the merchants) pay more. Their risk of having to absorb an expensive card is minimal (and we also save when someone uses a cheap-to-process card, like a debit card).

The only two "buckets" I wish Lynnbrook would offer were:

-Low-volume: $0/mo, 3% flat
-High-volume: $15/mo, interchange-plus

Right now, I'm low volume (because most of my bookings come through HomeAway et al.) and would gladly use them if they offered basically the same thing that Stripe and others offer (a relatively higher rate but no monthly fee), but knowing I was supporting a company who is intensely familiar with VR. I would then gladly transition to that kind of a high-volume plan once I build my portfolio out a bit more and/or my direct-mailing list of previous customers who want to book direct to the point where it makes sense to pay a monthly fee to take advantage of lower rates.

Unfortunately, for low-volume operations, Lynnbrook doesn't make sense at this point, and for high-volume ones, there are interchange-plus processors out there whose rates beat the socks off of them, so they kind of don't make much sense for either end of the spectrum.

My $0.02, anyway...I'm still trying to decide who to use and have talked with Lynnbrook and like what they have to say, but I'm trying to decide if it's worth spending $180 extra a year on them when other options work out cheaper for me at this time (due to my low direct processing volume).

Thank you for the update Paul.

Hi folks,

I wanted to drop an update here since we have a bunch of people who have been silently subscribing to this thread by email.

I talked to Lynnbrook and went over pricing. Here's where everything is at...

We were wrong to universally declare that the in-house gateway would make it so that the account is always free if you don't use it. That was (and still is) Lynnbrook's goal, but there's not enough data in place to be able to universally offer that to everyone, large or small, at this point. We talked at length about this.

That being said, Lynnbrook's price IS WITHOUT ANY QUESTION CHEAPER then what the major aggregators (like PayPal, Stripe, Braintree) offer over all. We already know that, having sent a number of users their way. No one has come away with more expensive rates.

In talking with Sharon (the CEO of Lynnbrook) we discussed the ways in which they vet each user's situation and work to get the lowest fees possible relative to that user. It's not easy to do this as a universal "one size fits all price structure" when you focus on the vacation rental market alone.

Keep that in mind - Lynnbrook is dedicated to supporting vacation rentals. They understand the booking "product". Most generic credit card processors won't approve processing at all if the "product" is delivered 60 or 90 days away.

The ultimate question is how to offer the same pricing to everyone when each user can vary so much in use, geography and customer-base. Every merchant account carries with it certain costs - core banking costs and the cost of underwriting risk - and there is a lot of variability between users.

For instance, vacation rental owners in North Carolina tend to have all American customers who use American credit cards, while vacation rental owners in Florida have a lot of international customers who use cards that are more expensive to the processor. The North Carolina VR is cheaper to underwrite than the Florida VR.

If we have many small users sign up who end up not using their merchant account for part of the year, there has to be enough larger/active users to offset the core costs of the smaller users.

This is true with the major aggregators too (PayPal, Stripe, Braintree) which is why their processing rates are 3% and why they shut off dormant accounts quickly and treat everyone the same (whether you're selling vacation rentals or blenders).

Lynnbrook is working on some pricing buckets - which we're waiting on before we begin marketing efforts - to lay out what to expect, but again they will mostly likely BE CHEAPER than what you're using now, particularly if you're with a major aggregator. That, we can guarantee!

The base monthly fee will most likely change as well. For the moment, they've asked that smaller users (processing < 50k/year) pay $15/month. Most monthly minimums are $20-25 so that's better than the industry average.

SOME OTHER POINTS TO CONSIDER:

1) Good processing is not just about finding the absolute cheapest rate. Once you get a chargeback or dispute from a guest (and you will if your business goes long enough) you'll learn this lesson quickly. Cheap rate is near the top, of course, but you want a processor who fights for you as well.

2) Your processor should understand the vacation/short-term rental "product" and be happy to support it. Even though Stripe or Braintree tolerate vacation rentals now, they may not in the future and you may get dropped. We've already seen this happen with Braintree. Their underwriters frequently tell some users that short-term rentals aren't allowed but then other users are approved. Sometimes, they have special criteria like you have to be the owner of the property and can't be managing it for someone else.

3) Your processor should do gross deposit (fees taken out at end of month). None of the major aggregators do this. They send deposit with the fees already taken out. This is extremely frustrating when reconciling your bank account because none of your deposits match up to your booking records.

We will have more information coming soon; I'm just dropping this update here because I saw a lot of subscribers clicking to watch this thread so I know there's some concern. Also, I had a free second. :-)

Happy weekend to all,

-Paul

Subscribing to be notified when in-house gateway will be free with Lynbrook.

Update. Spoke to the rep. $15 is not a gateway change, he calls it "credit card" charge. so them advertising 2.59% + 10c is not really a 2.59% once you figure in $15 monthly charge. perhaps would make sense to switch for those who have higher amounts than me. In my case at this point not worth switching over $49 or so dollars a year.

so whomever is interested:
$2.59 + 10c per transaction
Plus $15 monthly.

I believe that's using Authorize.Net as a gateway. We are still cleaning up our integration with them. We're actually going to be surfacing a sign-up form on our site (OwnerRez side) that you can use without going to them directly (unless you want to). We'll reach out and see what the deal with that is, but I'm 100% sure that was them giving you Authorize.Net gateway since our support of their in-house gateway hasn't been announced. If you respond back to them, mention that you want to use the in-house gateway which OwnerRez has said is free and see what they say.

I used their contact form and I mentioned that I was interested in using Lynnbrook with ownerrez. The response email I received:
Thank you for reaching out to our company regarding credit card processing through OwnerRez.

The cost to use our system through OwnerRez would be:

** $15/month
** 2.59%
** 10 cents per transaction

If you would like more information on the integration or our services please feel free to give me a call.

What's the $15 fee for? The gateway should now be free since we now support Lynnbrook's in house gateway. Also what % rate were you quoted?

I ran a calculation on using Lynbrook (with gateway fee of $15 but lower %) vs Stripe (no gateway fee and 2.9%) on bookings using my current payments totals for the year (approx 68K). The savings for me would be $49 using Lynbrook (granted I do not have all my bookings volume yet for the year, but still). The $15 gateway fee kills the savings....This may work better for those who have more volume/higher priced rates.
Assumptions made: all transactions are credit card.

I see they offer e-check which is great. Wonder if we can offer discount somehow for paying by e-check vs credit card.

Yes. They're at lynnbrookgroup.com

We have to sign up with Lynnbrook 1st?

Lynnbrook gateway is now out and ready for use. Look for it under Settings > Payment Methods > Add. We aren't announcing it yet because we have some marketing tie-ins that are still being worked on, but you can go turn on the gateway part. Enjoy!

I like your amenities icons

Melissa, we do not have a specific timeframe/ETA for the Lynnbrook gateway, but it's rising rapidly in importance. Since we started recommending them recently, we've been inundated with requests to get the gateway portion going because we have users who need 5 or 10 merchant accounts (they process as a PM for multiple users). So they can't do Lynbrook because they'll get hit with 5 or 10 gateway fees every month. There are also users who have always had free-if-not-used processing accounts and don't want a gateway that costs. So it's rising rapidly in importance and will probably be looked at later this month or next.

Super easy to integrate.

http://jimandkelly.us/

But we are also testing the hosted site option. I like the layout

http://jim-kelly-s-vacation-rentals.hosted.ownerrez.com/

we need to decide which way to go.

I have used Lynnbrook Group for the last year and their customer service (and rates) are fantastic! Any time frame as when you would anticipate the integration of the Gateway account so it is free?

Thanks!
Melissa