General Help and Questions

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First I disconnect from my current channel manager. But I don’t think I turn on my new channel manager API yet. I need to PULL the Airbnb listings and get them into OwnerRez first. I understand once connect OwnerRez pushes out to all channels. But I need them to be pushed the other direction...just once. In order to setup my account. Do I use that Bridge tool they suggest? To pull all listings, calendar, and photos? Or in other words PUSH my listings from Airbnb to OwnerRez. Or do I just change my channel manager and connect through API and like magic all those Airbnb listings will be imported.

Thanks, both link were helpful.

Go to support section and search on refundable damage deposits. Or look for a recent post by me on same topic.

I am outside the norm as I don't require any portion of rent at the time of booking. I only require the $250 deposit.
However, I do NOT want the deposit in the total, as it looks like the vacation is costing the renter $250 more. It would make me lose renters.
I tried excluding the deposit from the quote...but then I couldn't ask for the $250 in the first payment, or if I did it looked like it was $250 out of the rent, not the deposit.
Is there a way to include a damage deposit AFTER the big total is shown to the guest? Or can I set a payment to ask for the damage deposit and not show it in the quote at all? I am actually not even taking credit cards...only checks and Apple Pay....but I still need to get this correct for the quote.

Mmm... that's a lot to unpack. Definitely food for thought!

We have tossed around the idea of a central guest portal accessible by link that you can customize with info about the property, lock codes, etc. If we want to get fancy it could have areas for requesting date changes, updating credit cards, all that sort of stuff that'd be nice to give more self service for the guest. Some of those things are already done by channels and we'd have to direct them to the channel on those bookings, but would work for direct bookings at least. Useful for a lot of different things and could be shared in a link with the guest via SMS vs the long and windy welcome email.

The confirmation is another interesting concept. The only way I could see it truely working is if you made them reply to get the door code and entry information. "Your stay is coming up soon... reply to get your door code" or something. Otherwise you'll still get people that don't.

These are all things we've been thinking about and will do eventually, but we don't have any near term plans yet. Well except for SMS. That's actively being worked on, although I don't have an ETA yet.

Yep, security deposits are a bit of a strange beast right now as they're not recorded normally in the charges. We've got a planned overhaul there to fix some of these things.

I haven't tried, but it should work -- it's all Chromium under the covers so the API should be the same.

Let me know if it does work :-D

Hey Toni...glad to see you made the decision to switch! Yes, our last software's accounting was literally unusable. I would love to be included in the setup process - I want to set it up but am afraid after the last experience - maybe you can help me after you're set up - LOL!

Hey there! We've replied several times to your questions over the past 24 hours, have you not gotten any emails on your end? Can you check your email to see if they're being spammed or filed away somewhere else?

NOPE! Not resolved. One of our properties is blocked -HA send to their software team (again)! On another note - still waiting for a reply on my previous emails to OR help/support.

You can do an overall escalator for all rates pushed to the entire channel. So your Airbnb rates would be, say, 15% higher than your regular rates in OwnerRez.

The discount would be calculated independently of that, against the total rate including the escalator.

And yes, LOS discounts can be aligned with Seasons so they are only valid at particular times.

https://www.ownerrez.com/forums/general-help/google-direct-booking

https://www.ownerrez.com/forums/requests/refundable-damage-deposit--how-it-is-displayed-in-quotes

https://www.ownerrez.com/forums/general-help/secdep-via-cc-hold--insurance-vs-traditional-damage-deposit

I have only done a few direct bookings outside of vrbo or airbnb, so haven't paid much attention to security deposits. After reading the help documentation (which is quite well written by the way!) I think I understand it, but would like to be certain.

By the way, I do not handle credit/debit cards in any manner, all of my direct booking is by guests mailing me (or venmo) checks. And I do not use the VRBO api, however I do use the Airbnb API

I *think* that I should change my settings regarding Security Deposits (in property rules) to have "No security holds"
And instead I should be using a Refundable Damage Deposit configured as a surcharge

This all makes sense, just double checking that when using RDD's only I should turn off Security Deposits.

And finally - I want to make sure that doing this is safe for the Airbnb API I'm using. In that API I have "specific amount $100" set.

Yes, looks like it Chris. I already talked to Caleb from Lynnbrook. I guess it was good while it lasted. Here is the email.

Hello,

We'd like to let you know that we're making some updates to your Stripe fees.

In 2017, we updated our fee handling for refunds and international payments to account for changes in our underlying costs. Because you were an early user of Stripe, your fees did not change at the time. Beginning March 6, 2020, we’ll be updating your Stripe fees to bring them in line with our current pricing.

What changes you’ll see

Refunds: We’ll no longer return Stripe’s fees from the original transaction when you refund a customer.

International payments: All payments from non-US cards will be charged an additional 1% fee.

Currency conversion: Foreign exchange fees on your account will be lowered from 2% to 1% for any payment that requires currency conversion.

All other pricing remains unchanged. You can always find our current pricing and fee details on our pricing page, and you can read more in the docs about refunds and currency conversion.

Best,
The Stripe team

Hmm. So they're un-grandfathering all of the grandfathered accounts, basically?

Most CC processors do have a model where they return fees on refunds if you're doing "interchange plus pricing". They may not return fees on refunds on a flat rate plan like Stripe's default plan, but even Stripe has plans that do return fees on refunds (of course, for Stripe, ya gotta be pushing a good chunk of volume for them to negotiate a custom plan with you).

I know Lynnbrook Group has an interchange plus plan where they'll return fees on refunds, so that might be worth checking into -- make sure to mention the refunds when you're getting the plan set up. They have a monthly fee, but they also have a lower rate so it'll end up cheaper overall if you're doing mid 5 figures in volume.

I guess Stripe has followed suit of others- no refund of CC fees on refunds.

Yep, we're monitoring Google Travel and will develop an integration when it coalesces into a viable source of traffic. Like that article mentions, the vacation rental side of Google Travel is in the nascent stages and they're still changing a lot of things all the time and haven't solidified an offering or pricing model.

Right now, if you have channel integrations like VRBO/Airbnb/TripAdvisor/booking.com, you're already listed on Google Travel via those channels.

The list of other PMS's you mentioned from the article is a list of PMS's that haven't yet started building Google Travel integrations.

Just read an interesting article on VRM Intel: SEO/SEM Disrupted: How Google Travel is Shaking up the Marketing Funnel

https://www.vrmintel.com/seo-sem-disrupted-how-google-travel-is-shaking-up-the-marketing-funnel/

I'm wondering if the folks at OR are thinking about an integration with Google Travel API like the other PMS systems mentioned in the article ( MyVR, Guesty, Streamline, and Direct.io.)?

Hi OwnerRez partners!

Are you using Quickbooks intergration and have over 40 properties? Do you have time to help me with some set up questions to make a nice accounting flow? I would love to connect with other partners that are already using quickbooks intergration and HAPPY! OUr last software was an accounting headache and I want to set this up right to prevent accounting issues.

If you can provide a phone number or email, I would love to connect and ask a few quick questions while I set up the quickbooks.

Thank you for your time.

Cheers,
Toni LeGras

2 of my 3 pages have 2000+ followers. And I have widgets embedded. issue is, most people use mobile, but custom tabs (as the one where widgets are) do not show on mobile. So it has very limited usefulness. You can see my page and embedded widgets on desktop facebook.com/AppalachianEscape

Does the Airbnb integration support Length of Stay Discounts depending on time of year, and can it be combined with an uplift in prices to cater for the Airbnb service fee? I'm testing 2 different booking systems at the moment and they handle everything differently which is very confusing!

Has anyone tried using channel bridge in the new Edge?

Seems like it should work.

Nice - this is actually a really useful approach but looks like a Facebook Page would need 2,000 followers before it can be used. So I imagine most owners cannot take advantage of this. Too bad, I'd probably do it if it was as easy as dropping widgets onto a Page.

I take it you've followed our instructions here?

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/channel-management-calendar-import-export-houfy

If it still isn't working correctly, please take screenshots of the bad Houfy calendar, and specify the ORB numbers of the blocks in OwnerRez that aren't appearing in Houfy, and send in a support request to our Helpdesk email.

Actually, under certain circumstances, you *can* put a widget on your Facebook page:

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/facebook-widgets

Just to clear this up -

1. If you are using an API connection, then yes, all property listing data is pushed from OwnerRez to the channel, overwriting whatever may already be there. If you want to add a new property, don't bother to do that in the channel; do it in OwnerRez, and then let OR push all that stuff to the channel when you turn on the API connection for that property, which is what it's going to do anyway.

2. If you are *not* using an API connection, you can import property listing information from Airbnb or HA/VRBO into OwnerRez, but not the other way around. Channel Bridge doesn't do that kind of data, just bookings, guests, rates, (some) rules, and reviews.

I keep my master calendar in ownerrez and I just exported my calendar to Houfy. However, not all of my blocked dates are showing up in my Houfy calendar. Dates after 4/6/20 are showing up as unavailable, as I would expect, but any blocked dates before 4/6/20 are showing up as available. Anyone have an idea of what could be going on here?

Joe - I don't think you can post a widget on Facebook. Maybe I'm mistaken, but to me a widget is code (software) that runs on a website, whether it's one that you host using Ownerrez or elsewhere.

If you want to include a link in a facebook post, the most common way is to link to a page within your website. But Ownerrez does offer the ability to create a link that will display a basic availability (booked or not) for each property, and it looks just like any other widget would, but it would be 'hosted' by Ownerrez itself, no other website needed. Not sure if that's really what you want though, because once people click on your link they wouldn't have anything else interesting to do, like see photos of your property, or do any booking, etc. OwnerRez might have add a similar capability for other widgets besides the basic availability, I haven't looked too closely because it seems to me that they really all need to be kept on a website where folks can get all the information they need and then book.