General Help and Questions

Sort by

• Newest Reply
• Newest Topic

Does any one have any suggestion for a property who is not tech savy at all how to use this software. My friends so who set this up is going back to college and i am now on own.

Each property will need a template and a trigger just for that template. You might be able to copy the body of the template from one property to the next to keep from having to retype the basics, but you'll have to make sure the "field" or link you've inserted in each template is specific to that property if you want to send different info for different locations. If everything is the same, then you should be able to use the same template.

Once you've got all your templates and triggers set up you can always go back and name them with some leading symbol/word that sorts them in a more logical order when you're looking at the main template or trigger page. Just make sure if you change the name of a template you go into the corresponding trigger and update the name of the template! Hahahaa!

To Clarify:
I have 3 properties that are completely different, different states, etc. In making my custom email templates, I THINK I have just realized that I can't set up separate templates for each property, but need to make custom fields for the body text for each property???

For instance the SD is a different rate for each property, so I need to customize that portion of the Security Deposit request/reminder. Then for the inquiry response, I want the quote, a little blurb about the property highlights, and of course the payment information (PayPal). And so on, for check in/out email w/ the document list for both. The documents would have to be a custom field of the uploaded docs? And the system would "pull" the correct info for each property? So the custom fields are the only way to designate which property the info is pulled from?

I just inadvertently overrode the templates I set up for one property UGH... So really looking for confirmation that my newest understanding is correct?

Hi! Glad to see you're still you're still fighting the good fight!

I'm not quite sure what the specifics are, but when I have different info that needs to go to people depending on varying circumstances, I do the following:
** Write the template for the first situation. Insert links or fields as appropriate. Name this template something specific so you know exactly which property/listing site/circumstance it's for.
** Go to "Triggers" and set up the trigger for that specific template. So for one that I have that's only for VRBO bookings, I go to the "Booking Relationship" section of the trigger set-up and pick "Listing Site" - "Only" - "VRBO". If you only want to send it to folks who've booked a specific property, you also do that in the "Booking Relationship" section.

Start over again for the next email template. You may want to copy the body of the first template, but you definitely need to create a totally new one with another name to tell you what it's for. Once that template is good to go, create another trigger just for it.

Other trigger options may make a difference in whether you send the template - if the booking is fully paid for, if they've signed your renter agreement, if it's just one of your properties or all but one, etc.

If you have 5 properties, you may end up with 5 templates and 5 triggers. Pain to set up, but amazing once it's up and running.

I had set up my first property and finally figured out how to make my custom template for the one, and it seemed to be working. I want the inquiry to include my "thanks for your interest" type message, with a little info about each property, the various SD charges, and how to book. I went in to add the next property, and it seems that I overrode the first template, now I'm at a loss as to how do this? For some of the templates, there doesn't seem to be a way to determine which property it would pertain to? I'm missing something.

Should I just set up two different templates for each autoresponder? How does the system realize which template to use, if there is no drop down for which property to use it for?

What I want is to have the very first initial inquiry answered with:
My little blurb about the property, the payment schedule, the SD and the quote/with the paypal link to pay the booking deposit. Would this all be in the "form" or do I have to include it in the body?

TIA

@Michael D Do you have any listings on the OTAs and let them do the taxes for bookings there, or do you opt to be paid out by them and remit those taxes yourself as well?

Thanks

We've been doing our own taxes for the past 3 years and no problem at all. In our jurisdictions, we two/3 taxes per property (state, hotel, and local sales). Before we used a PMS I used Quickbooks Pro desktop and ran reports at the end of each month. With our current PMS we just run a report at the end and it breaks out the taxes by jurisdiction by property. Now all I have to do is put the figures into the report format and remit payment. OR makes it a bit harder but still easier than QB Pro.
No need to use/pay for a service and/or PM> Takes me 15 minutes per month for all the properties.

OwnerRez recommends collecting and remitting taxes yourself, rather than letting the OTAs do it for you. Up until now my property manager has always handled this on my behalf, and now the OTAs. So I realize that now with my own website I have to be involved as well. I am just wondering how other homeowners handle the collection and remittance of taxes. Do you do it all yourself or is it done by multiple sources? TIA

lololololol!

Oh. Well, I'm not a lawyer, but as I recall from my b-school law classes, I think it's pretty unlikely that the presence or absence of an abbreviatory period would make any difference in any sane jurisdiction. A general principle of contract law is to consider the clear intent of the contract as written, and I don't see a lot of room for debate on that regardless of the period.

Of course every jurisdiction is different, so to be absolutely sure, you'd need to consult an attorney in the jurisdiction you operate in. In my personal, non-lawyerly opinion, they'd say "No" and happily send you a bill after they finished chuckling. :-)

Nope - continuing the chat about adding a period after Jan Feb Mar, etc. Format says an abbreviation in the middle of a sentence should have a period to show there are additional letters that weren't included. All the contracts I've done I would write "contingency to be satisfied on or before March 13, 2020." Using your date format that would come out as "on or before Mar 13, 2020." My question is does it make a difference, for a legal document (a guest contract/agreement), that you aren't writing it as "on or before Mar. 13, 2020." Like I said, picky.

Not sure what you're referring to, or how the presence or absence of a month abbreviation period would affect a contract. Maybe you posted this comment on the wrong thread?

And your legal folks are perfectly on board with that being accepted as part of a contract? (My "other life" involves a lot of contract work.)

Being a bit of a grammar pedant myself, I do sympathize with your desire to properly signify the abbreviation.

But I don't think the engineers would consider this to be a particularly urgent matter to fix, I'm afraid. Also, the world seems to be going more and more towards not including the periods anyway.

OK, gentlemen! That jumped WAYYYY over. Hahahaaa! Mine was a simple request - that OR format it's dates to put a period after any abbreviated month name. Ken?

Email templates are already Rich Text Editors, so yes, you can set CSS inside of them as I've described above. Properly done, this CSS would apply to anything in the resulting email, including the data generated by field codes included in the template.

"Seems like I could add anything I want to an email template in terms of formatting using css, right?"

Yes, that's exactly right - including completely bollixing it up. Remember, email templates ultimately become an email that somebody is going to read in one of a million different email programs, whose support of CSS is nothing like as solid or consistent as with browsers.

"But I'm pretty sure even if that works I couldn't do anything to a block of insertable text unless OR updated that capability within the definitions of the field itself."

Not quite. When the email template is sent, the field code is simply replaced with whatever the content of that field is supposed to be. Whatever formatting is wrapped around the field code, will be applied to the value of the code. You probably already have this in one of your templates - are any of the field codes bold, or a different color? When you send the email, it'll be the actual value of the field that's bolded or colored. This is a very common usage, it's just not obvious what's actually going on under the covers.

And as noted earlier, if you program a custom field code to be Rich Text, then yes you have the capability of setting CSS inside the value of the field itself. I guess you're right that this isn't contained in the *definition* of the field, just one instance of it. Not even sure how we'd implement that, it would be a complex and confusing corner case, so I wouldn't expect that functionality.

Ken - I agree about the regex, but I'm curious about your css comment.

The scenario I was envisioning is when I want to highlight a single word within a block of OR's insertable field text such as the table of billing details, for sending in an email. I don't currently have a website, but making emails readable is super important and sometimes css can help with that.

Is it possible to use CSS at all within email templates? I did a quick search and didn't see anything. I currently don't have any need to do that, but it might be handy sometime. And I hadn't noticed the <> in the text editor but seems like I could add anything I want to an email template in terms of formatting using css, right? But I'm pretty sure even if that works I couldn't do anything to a block of insertable text unless OR updated that capability within the definitions of the field itself.

None of this is any kind of priority, there are lots of other fun features that should be ahead of this I think ;-)

Strictly speaking, you *can* use CSS within custom fields.

**WARNING TO OTHER READERS** - you can REALLY mess things up doing this if you don't know what you are doing. CSS is very complicated, with unpredictable effects. You should always test *extremely thoroughly* after making any manual CSS configurations.

That said...

Here are the instructions for setting up a Custom Field:

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/custom-fields

Notice that one of the options is whether you want to use a Rich Text field, or not. For most purposes, we recommend *not* using Rich Text because it adds needless complexity. E.g. just use plain text for your WiFi password or door code, you can do any formatting needed in the Email Template where the field code is used.

But, if you are using the field to generate a formatted block, what the Rich Text editor is actually doing is creating HTML under the covers. Most users don't know HTML and won't ever want to see raw code, but you can both see and edit it if you want to, by using the Edit HTML button in the editor. It looks like this: < >

And just like any other web page using HTML, you can insert CSS statements into the code. The Rich Text editor itself often won't properly render your CSS, but if the field is eventually being displayed in a browser (such as, on your Hosted Website), the browser will see the CSS and apply it.

Regex is a whole 'nother kettle of fish. I quail at the thought of trying to support users doing that, or trying to fix the confusion that can arise. I wouldn't anticipate that level of programming complexity will ever be available.

Let's ask the OR team to provide regex and css handling within custom fields so we can modify them on the fly, like adding a period at the end of Mar or changing font colors!

But the tag inserts the full date, not just the month. So wouldn't that be putting a period after the year?

Can't you just hard code the . after the tag? Seems to work for me.

I like Valerie's idea. VRBO automatically sends these emails based on payment owner set payment schedules - e.g. 1-2-or 3 payments and the time they are due e.g.-all at the time of booking or final payment in 1 or 2 installments. It would be awesome to be able to set up automatic reminder emails to our direct booking guests when the next installment is due.
Tracy

It's hard enough to manage the nightly rates for my three properties, they change many times throughout each season. There's no way possible for me to keep accurate rates on combined properties..

Is there any way that OR could incorporate mutual blocking spot rates?

For instance when a mutual blocking property is enabled, it obviously understands the related properties. Could it create a table of spot rates for that combined property? If that can be done then just some additional code to update the mutual spot rates whenever the underlying spot rates change, along with a setting for push rates to update any mutual spot rates that depend upon spot rates.

Picky, picky, picky - I know it's legal to abbreviate the name of a month in a document, but I notice when that's done using BARR and BDEP the abbreviation does not have a "." at the end. (Mar vs Mar.) Any way to fix that or is there an option for a "long date" with everything spelled out?

Right now, OwnerRez has no ability to schedule anything by time of day, other than recording approved checkin and checkout times. We're hoping to add that later this year.

It is possible to create a surcharge or discount that applies only to a specific channel, and align it to a season so it only applies on specific dates. That might be a way to accomplish part of what you're trying to do here.

It's not quite that smart. :-) From the perspective of OwnerRez and your listing sites, A, B, and C are each independent properties, with their own set of rates and rules. So you can easily configure the rates of C to be a bit less than what A and B's rates combined would have been. Mutual Blocking just blocks off the calendar dates correctly, that's all.

Thanks - this is encouraging!

Does this feature allow me to manage my A,B,C property rates, fees, etc and then allow them to be added together to form the A+B rate?

And is there possibly a feature to incr/decr the total rate by a percentage, for instance maybe I'd be okay giving a 10% discount for anyone booking A&B together.

Yes! That's the Mutual Block feature:

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/combined-properties-blockoff-lockoff

I'm considering putting together two extra combinations of my three VRBO properties in order to meet VRBO's reqt to have 5 properties to use their API.

I have properties A, B, C, and I'd consider offering B&C as a 'lockoff' since they are side by side with interior doors, and I could offer A&B&C for a large party needing 3 spaces.

Just don't know if OR can handle the calendar sync behind the scenes to only allow booking if either B&C or A&B&C are unbooked.