General Help and Questions

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Hey guys how can I trigger an email to go out on a Sunday for trash collection on Monday?

Ken we know you mean well but we need help now. Is there any community people who would be willing to do a little hand holding?
Scott

Thanks, Ken!

I've set up my rental agreement for guests to sign as part of the booking process. However, our HOA requires guests to sign a lease addendum specific to rules on common property. I usually send this with my check-in email to guests 7 days before booking - it serves as a good reminder of the general rules.

I know there is a way to create multiple legal agreements. However, I don't see any guidance about a way to require guests to sign a second agreement post-booking. Is this possible?
Thanks.

Yes! You can do that in the Rules tab of a specific Booking or Quote.

Is there a way to manually change it on a per-booking level?

Unfortunately, at present we do not have the ability for your security deposit to vary for the same property at different seasons. We've occasionally had people ask for this, but it's rare.

Can you write in to the Helpdesk about this issue? I took a look at your account, and some of your properties are on the API, and some aren't. The API ones should still do all the taxes, as Chris said, because you're doing your own charging of the guests. The other ones may be an issue, so we need to gather more information with you.

The whole message system was supposed to get a significant overhaul this summer, until everyone's schedule got all knocked out of kilter.

We do, however, have new resources working on doing training videos right now. Setting up emails is on that list.

Agreed. It would be so helpful if there were an if/then guest journey flow chart to show when which emails are sent to whom when. I have no idea of the flow of these messages, so it's tough to know what to include in which message.

Hey all,
I am no doe doe but I am having the hardest time understanding setting up emails. I am a visual person and this site has been written by engineers with very little visual or explanation of what is happening.
Would anyone be willing to zoom with me and teach me the basics?

Scott
919-358-4015
scottsguesthouse@gmail.com

Hi - I'm deep into setup of my account. I'm setting the rules for security deposit holds and am running into a problem. I take a much higher security deposit for summer holiday weekends to discourage damage from groups that aren't our typical guests (ie, groups of friends vs our normal family groups). Is there a way to do this with OwnerRez? I only see one place for the amount to hold.
Thanks.
Anne

Thank you for quick reply, Chris, but they don't. They collect and remit county and state taxes:

"We collect State Sales and Use Tax and State-administered Local Sales Tax for all reservations in the state of Colorado under 30 nights. The taxes are remitted by us directly to the state. We began collecting and remitting in Colorado October 1, 2019."

They do not collect city tax, though. I have the city taxes set in OwnerRez, but it doesn't show on Vrbo site - I pretended to be a guest and tried to make a "fake" reservation. Only county and state tax is being collected.

When you're in API mode with VRBO, they will pass all applicable taxes through to you -- basically the same as a direct booking.

You don't need to do any special configuration for that like you do with Airbnb -- just make sure the taxes are applicable to the HomeAway listing site.

I need to collect and remit our city lodging tax. Vrbo only does county and state taxes.

My listing are connected through API.

I figured it out on Airbnb where I set it up as Passthrough, but how would I set it up on Homeaway?

yep. April is blocked bc our area asked for it. and reduced airbnb availability to 90 days so essentially only 2 months booking window. Even that is moot as there are 0 inquiries

Like many of you, we are getting a lot of refunds from the Covid 19 pandemic. Is there anyone out there in this community who could talk with me about the correct procedure on both these systems. I have been on the QB interface for about a month now and continue to learn more about how it works--sometimes to my surprise!

Kathy Martin, Bookkeeper
30A Coast Vacation Rentals
kathymartin234@gmail.com

In effect you just did - anyone who finds it while searching for the same question, will now know the answer and that it worked for you. :-)

I understand.. Thank u for quick reply. Is there a way to mark this as "Resolved"? This topic?

Yes, exactly.

Ok yes I agree a hold. So just to clarify...I want to delete the $300 in the Surcharge section correct?

There isn't. But it is possible to configure the main booking display to also show open quotes, so you can readily check and see.

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/main-bookings-display

Yes, you have doubled up on the security deposit. What you've actually done is configure a Security Deposit Hold:

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/security-deposit-holds

And also a Refundable Damage Deposit:

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/refundable-damage-deposits-rdd

You only want to do one or the other - we recommend the Hold.

I know in the "Rules" we can set a security deposit. I have it set to $300. However I am a little confused. I ALSO have it set up in the Surcharge & Discounts" for $300 for each stay. Am I essentially doubling the security deposit?

I ask because when I send a quote...the quote is confusing. It gives the total amount due..including security deposit 14 days prior to arrival. And that is my rules. So that is correct. However it also says that a $300 security deposit will be held one day prior to their arrival. So which is it? According to the booking quote it shows the total amount..including the $300 that is collected 14 days prior to arrival. But then it also says $300 will be put on hold a day before arrival. So this got me thinking that I have set this up wrong. I need to delete the $300 from the Surcharge and Discount section of my rates. I set that up across all my listings except for Airbnb.
Sorry it may be a little confusing since we can not attach screenshots in these forums.

I shall defer to your support ticket queue. ;) And yes, I do understand now. Thanks for clarifying.

Although I use PriceLabs, so setting rates/seasons in OR manually just isn't even on my radar right now... :P

Yes, I have been manually doing blocks before and after each guest. I missed one the other day in May, though, and now I have a same-day turn for a property there. :/

Is their a trigger to set up so that I get a notification during the quote process that I would be over riding another quote out there not yet expired

thanks in advance
Lou

The rates update actually **does** deal with current world events. The single biggest support issue in the past 10 days was not about forced gaps. It was about quickly changing seasonal rates to "covid" based seasons. As with all rate changes, the old split season/split rate screens with overlapping "all" options continues to make it difficult to quickly rates, or even to see them clearly. Again, it's not just an editor, it's a fundamental change in how seasonal defaults work (ie. there are no longer weekly/monthly type rates). If you could see our support ticket system, you'd understand very quickly how much of our time is spent explaining rates scenarios. 😜

I assume that you are creating blocks after your bookings to placate the cleaners? Seems like that would take care of it for now.

I didn't mean to offend or to imply the new Rates Editor was an unwelcome addition. :) (It just seemed a bit of an oddly-timed announcement given other world events right now.)

But keep in mind I have one cleaning company begging me to allow a multi-day gap between guests and another cleaning company outright refusing to clean until 24 hours after check-out. And neither is really wrong. Tools to deal with that kind of thing are very welcome in the immediate term. Other features that have been in development for months/years can wait another few weeks without being missed.

Our new rates editor is a fundamental change that fixes a years-long problem, not just some new UI candy we threw together in a week. It's the result of many discussions over many months. We developed and scrapped several other versions before this. There will be several other updates coming on this in the next few months as we transition all users to the new rates model.

First Responder promotion is entirely voluntary and, as you pointed out, you can easily block time on either side of a booking in a few seconds.

We'll get to the Forced Gap rule soon - it's a good idea but not the most important thing on the roadmap. Hell, the covid scare has pushed a lot of users to turn off their Airbnb listings entirely. I wouldn't go anywhere near the First Responder promotion - the smart money is on that getting screwed up too.

Yep, we've got a set of tasks that got bumped up in priority for COVID-19 related functionality and prep time between guests is one of the high priority tasks we're working on now.