General Help and Questions

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PM - How to send owner statement to two owners? 11 replies

Daniel
Feb 27, 2020 1:31 PM
Joined Jul, 2016 18 posts

I found a workaround for this.

I created an email template that I call Owner Statement and in the "To" field and inserted both email addresses.

PM - How to send owner statement to two owners? 11 replies

Ken T
Feb 27, 2020 12:44 PM
OR Team Member Joined Aug, 2019 1704 posts

We've been discussing this and trying to see if there's a fairly easy way to add this ability, so we could just get it done and out there.

Surcharges bundled into the "rent" charges line on quotes 3 replies

Ken T
Feb 27, 2020 12:43 PM
OR Team Member Joined Aug, 2019 1704 posts

No, no update on this yet, but I don't think they would generally see a % increase for a season.

Requesting Credit Card for Payment/Security Deposit 5 replies

Ken T
Feb 27, 2020 12:40 PM
OR Team Member Joined Aug, 2019 1704 posts

Hi Beth,

You're misunderstanding the message. Requesting the guest's credit card this way, will do exactly what you want - it'll store their information for future use, and then when the scheduled transaction time arrives, it'll use it to make the payment. Not before.

Property Search Widget - what does Details button do? 2 replies

Chris Hynes
Feb 26, 2020 1:12 PM
OR Team Member Joined Oct, 2012 1403 posts

The details button will go to the Property Url you have set on the General Info tab of each property. Sounds like you don't have one set yet -- populate that and the button will start working.

Property Search Widget - what does Details button do? 2 replies

Rich S
Feb 26, 2020 1:10 PM
Joined Dec, 2018 302 posts

I'm not seeing a way to control what the Details button does with this widget. Clicking on it does nothing.

I'm using webflow for hosting.

PM - How to send owner statement to two owners? 11 replies

Alece
Feb 26, 2020 7:33 AM
Joined Jan, 2020 251 posts

Wanting to revive this to see if there's any possibility of OwnerRez adding in the option of more than one contact for an owner. I manage multiple properties that have more than one owner and would love to streamline this setup/access in the Owner Settings rather than customizing email templates with multiple email address if at all possible. Perhaps we could simply add more email addresses in the current email field, just with a comma separating them?

Thanks for your time and consideration, Chris!

Security deposit for 3rd party bookings 8 replies

BlueMtnCabins
Feb 25, 2020 10:14 AM
Joined Jun, 2016 1172 posts

Resurrecting the topic.
I want to hear from members how use sec dep (CC hold) on the following:

1. Have you ever had to charge from sec dep? If so, was it difficult?
2. If you had traditional damage deposit and switched to sec dep, did you have increase in damages/mess created by renters?
3. If you use sec dep, AND if you take payments by venmo/check/zelle, how do you handle it? Do you male people who paid by check, foe example, send you a check for sec dep or make them use card to do a sec dep hold? What about those who pay by venmo/zelle?
4. If renter paid by paypal, how do u handle sec dep?

Surcharges bundled into the "rent" charges line on quotes 3 replies

Vacation R
Feb 24, 2020 6:26 PM
Joined May, 2017 4 posts

Any update on this feature? I don't want guests to see what increase % I might have for a season

How "Confirm Booking"? 0 replies

SPSA
Feb 24, 2020 2:46 PM
Joined Feb, 2020 21 posts

I manually enter a booking. I'm taking care of it offline. THen I get these random emails from RemoteLock (My lock integration provider) and it says that this booking has ".....yet to be confirmed". Does anybody know what this is about? Is there an official way in OwnerRez to "Confirm" a booking? Currently I create a booking...and that's it.

Quickbooks Set Up- Looking for some tips 6 replies

Julie A
Feb 24, 2020 1:23 AM
Joined Mar, 2019 24 posts

Toni, are you a property manager using the PM features?

Rate Calendar: what do these options do? 1 reply

Chris Hynes
Feb 22, 2020 12:20 PM
OR Team Member Joined Oct, 2012 1403 posts

Those are different selection modes for the calendar.

With Toggle, you pick one day at a time and clicking adds or removes to your selection.

Range is click and drag to select. You can also Ctrl+Click new ranges to add to your selection.

Columns is click and drag to select like Range but it goes by columns (i.e. day of week) vs a date range like Range does.

Rate Calendar: what do these options do? 1 reply

Valerie R
Feb 22, 2020 10:45 AM
Joined Sep, 2019 122 posts

I am using the Rate Calendar to set some spot rates and I notice on the right hand corner of the calendar these options:

Toggle
Range
Columns

If I click on any of them, nothing happens.

I'm curious what the purpose of these options are?

I've read the "Spot Rates" article below, but it does not mention these options.

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/spot-rates

Does anyone know?

Requesting Credit Card for Payment/Security Deposit 5 replies

Beth
Feb 21, 2020 11:25 AM
Joined Feb, 2019 2 posts

For the bookings accepted through Vrbo, my rental contract requires the guest to make their second payment through my OwenrRez/Strip account rather than on the Vrbo platform. When requesting the guest submit a credit card the only option I can find is the one to submit a "new" card. The header reads "This page will help you update your billing information so that future payments and security deposits use a new credit card instead of the one on file. Use the fields below to enter a new credit card and select what types of transactions it should be used for." Is it possible to change this heading or am I missing an option to request CC info without requesting payment? The guest does not have a CC on file as they made the initial payment through Vrbo.

Thanks,
Beth

Hosting Fees default commission... 6 replies

Chris Hynes
Feb 20, 2020 7:05 PM
OR Team Member Joined Oct, 2012 1403 posts

That setting is on the settings for each owner -- the Channel Fees section. By default the channel fees are set to be prededucted from owner earnings and also for commission not to be calculated on them.

Resort & Parking Fee Set Up 1 reply

Chris Hynes
Feb 20, 2020 7:04 PM
OR Team Member Joined Oct, 2012 1403 posts

You can do this because there's some magic for nightly surcharges that goes on in the background depending on the channel:

- For VRBO it will be sent as a separate fee because they do support nightly fees
- For booking.com, you configure fees on the booking.com (we send nightly rate and are not able to send fees other than guest fee)... then whatever charges booking.com sends back based on that we will use
- For Airbnb, any nightly surcharges will be added to the nightly rate pushed

So if you create the nightly surcharge, it should work -- of course, make sure to test on each site and review that you get the expected result.

Short description - about the space - long description 1 reply

Chris Hynes
Feb 20, 2020 7:00 PM
OR Team Member Joined Oct, 2012 1403 posts

Yes, Airbnb doesn't have a long description like others -- they use the short description and then several other fields.

Accommodations Detail is the one that syncs with The Space on Airbnb. Here's an article that breaks it all down: https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/channel-management-api-integrations-property-field-differences

Short description - about the space - long description 1 reply

JD
Feb 19, 2020 11:11 PM
Joined Jan, 2020 3 posts

Hi
I have recently created a vacation rental website www.rentalhomescabo.com on ownerreservations and integrated it with Airbnb and VRBO. However I am noticing on Airbnb that my description area, sentences are being cut off. Where is the field that syncs with about your space field in Airbnb? Is that the long description or short description?
Thanks

Direct Website Rates 6 replies

Carole R
Feb 18, 2020 4:59 PM
Joined Feb, 2020 1 post

Where is your website. Looking for two units for snowbirds next winter. Centurydrive@hotmail.com

Noise complaints and noise policy 1 reply

Chris L
Feb 18, 2020 4:33 PM
Joined May, 2017 208 posts

Check the community.homeaway.com and community.withairbnb.com forums. Lots of posts there about noise, parties, rules/restrictions, and solutions like NoiseAware and others.

My impression is that NoiseAware is fairly pricy but is kind of the gold standard in the "noise awareness" industry. There's another option, Roomonitor, that Airbnb is currently partnering with for a huge discount (https://www.airbnb.com/d/partyprevention).

Fortunately, the target demographic here in Branson doesn't really lend itself to parties (and implementing a 2-night minimum tends to screen out even the very few whose goal that is), so I haven't found value in noise monitoring solutions and haven't implemented them myself. I have a much bigger problem with *my* guests complaining about noise from neighbors (feet tromping around all day and night upstairs, the couple next door getting in arguments, etc., and one 1-star review I got for construction noise after a hailstorm shot holes in our building's siding. If I could install a noise detector that would alert the HOA or cops to noise from neighbors, now that I might find value in! :P

Any way to make multi-property ribbon look better on mobile phones for cleaners? 2 replies

Rich S
Feb 18, 2020 3:54 PM
Joined Dec, 2018 302 posts

Tim said:

Here is what the multi-prop widget looks like on my phone:
https://imgur.com/Uh72LWJ

Is there a way to make it more usable?

and remember to tell your team to turn the phone to landscape. On mine it switches to showing a full month so much easier to read.

Any way to make multi-property ribbon look better on mobile phones for cleaners? 2 replies

Chris Hynes
Feb 18, 2020 2:19 PM
OR Team Member Joined Oct, 2012 1403 posts

Yes, the widget is designed to automatically resize smaller on phones. However, looks like your site layout is actually doing the opposite and zooming farther in on mobile, making the text bigger but keeping it from laying out correctly.

It also has quite a bit of whitespace on the sides -- looks like about 20% of the horizontal space is taken up by whitespace.

Remove that extra whitespace and the zooming and that should solve the issue. Looks like you're on WiX so you'll need to tweak the separate mobile layout. Check out steps 8-9 here: https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/wix-widgets

Here's an example of what the widget should look like on mobile (this is on an iPhone 5, so quite a small screen):

Any way to make multi-property ribbon look better on mobile phones for cleaners? 2 replies

Tim
Feb 18, 2020 1:28 PM
Joined Oct, 2018 51 posts

Here is what the multi-prop widget looks like on my phone:
https://imgur.com/Uh72LWJ

Is there a way to make it more usable?

Noise complaints and noise policy 1 reply

Sarah H
Feb 18, 2020 8:05 AM
Joined Jul, 2019 109 posts

We recently had an incredibly poorly timed incident. One property I help an owner manage had folks call the police at 0300 and disturb the neighborhood. This happens to be an HOA community (the only one I help manage in an HOA). Details don't really matter, I understand why neighbors are upset and drunk loud guests would upset me too.

That said - how are you working to manage noise in properties that have neighbors?
I prefer to engineer this issue out with location - meaning I would like to only help manage properties that don't have close neighbors, but that is not an option on this property.

I found a company called NoiseAware. Has anyone used this before? It's a noise monitor.

What expectations do you give guests regarding noise? Do you have policy in place for violations?

Hosting Fees default commission... 6 replies

Andrew D
Feb 17, 2020 3:56 PM
Joined Mar, 2019 1 post

Sherri, i am having the same issue (and do the same as you) can you help me understand where the setting is so that our commission is not including the airbnb host fee as our agreement with the owner is that we take a commission on the reservation amount only not including taxes, channel/host fee, or cleaning fee.

For clarity, if a guest stays for 1 night for $100 and the cleaning fee was $40, and host fee was $4.20 (3% of $140) and the total payout was $137 , we would take 18% of that. I need to know how to set up the owners and owner statements to only calculate the 18% commission off that amount only.

Resort & Parking Fee Set Up 1 reply

Salty Snow Prope
Feb 17, 2020 3:07 PM
Joined Feb, 2020 3 posts

Hello

We have been running our listings exclusively on VRBO that past 7 years and have recently decided to make some major changes to increase exposure and direct bookings hopefully; which have lead us to signing up for OR and getting our listings set up on Airbnb & Booking.com.

My question revolves around how you as owners are setting up fees in OR to be pushed to Airbnb beings their set up for fees is different than that of VRBO & Booking in the sense that you can not set up a per night fee.

For two of our listings we have a nightly parking & nightly resort fee that you can charge in someway through VRBO and Booking but not through Airbnb. I'm hoping to be able to set rates in OR and push to all platforms (VRBO, Airbnb, Booking) but can't wrap my head around how to best incorporate the parking and resort fees being the escalators can not be used since the percentage would need to change as the seasonal rate changes?

The only thing I can think of is to eliminate all fees on VRBO & Booking as lump them into the nightly rental price; but I am not reallly fond of that idea because it raises the rate and the parking is really an optional fee that I would like guests to know about if they choose to shuttle to the unit?

So open to thoughts and suggestions as to how you all are doing it as maybe I am over complicating and thinking this. Thanks in advance I do appreciate it!

VRBO rate push issues 1 reply

Chris Hynes
Feb 17, 2020 11:35 AM
OR Team Member Joined Oct, 2012 1403 posts

The new Channel Bridge version 10.19 has been released to solve the issue.

Make sure you've got the latest: https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/channel-bridge-updating-to-latest-version and you should be able to push rates to VRBO/HomeAway again.

Minimum stay if Friday/Saturday included 2 replies

Chris Hynes
Feb 17, 2020 8:43 AM
OR Team Member Joined Oct, 2012 1403 posts

Unfortunately, this is a limitation of Airbnb (and HomeAway as well). They evaluate min nights based on arrival day only. I'm not sure why.

OwnerRez for direct bookings evaluates min nights based on every day of the booking. For HomeAway we actually enforce this via API because they allow us to pass back a "stay not allowed on that day" message to the guest. But Airbnb only has a "this is unavailable now" message that would be very confusing to the guest, so we let their rules stand.

Arrival restrictions 3 replies

Chris Hynes
Feb 17, 2020 8:40 AM
OR Team Member Joined Oct, 2012 1403 posts

I'm not aware of any workaround if you want the day restrictions -- that just seems to be an artifact of how they display them. I agree -- it's extremely confusing... to the point that while we were developing the API integration we thought we had a bug doing extra blocks. Then we realized that we were sending the right data, it's just a strange display they do on the calendar picker.

Mark ups 2 replies

Chris Hynes
Feb 17, 2020 8:37 AM
OR Team Member Joined Oct, 2012 1403 posts

If you're giving some money to the owner and keeping some as the PM you can control that split and it'll correctly factor in to the owner and PM statements. Is that what you're looking for? Like a cleaning fee where the owner is paying the cleaners so you want to send them $100 of the cleaning fee and keep $20 for yourself?

Or are you expensing the entire $120 cleaning fee to the owner, but want to track that you sent $100 of that to cleaners and kept $20 for yourself? This isn't something you can do yet. OwnerRez doesn't currently track payouts to vendors like cleaners, so there's no way to get down to that level on an expense split.