General Help and Questions

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Yep, the system in OwnerRez isn't built for sending out newsletters. Our email provider only allows sending transactional email related to a specific booking, not a seasonal blast. When you're doing a newsletter, different rules apply -- CAN-SPAM act, unsubscribe links.

Instead, look in the Reports section for the Mailing List report -- that'll give you a dump of email addresses, just export to Excel. Then if there's just a few do the BCC method Rich mentioned. For more, use a tool like MailChimp or Constant Contact. That'll let you import the mailing list and create a really nice looking newsletter template. MailChimp is free for up to 2000 email addresses, so it's a great way to do a professional newsletter out to your guests.

We don't have any charge for analytics in OwnerRez, that's just something you enter in on this side.

Did you work with a someone else, a different company or person, to set up your analytics? We don't offer that service here, we just have that box in the settings where you can enter the analytics ID and we start sending the data to Google Analytics.

"Importing" is a status that used to mean something but doesn't really anymore. Try going to Change Property Mappings, set the property to disabled, save, then come back and set it back to Everything. Typically that'll fix it.

You won't be edit the items in the listing that are pushed from OwnerRez on the Airbnb side -- they disable all of the buttons when API connected.

This might be self-inflicted. I've "snoozed" my listing until June 11th from Airbnb's dashboard, and after that I fully configured the OwnerRez API and (hopefully) all settings including taxes over on the OR side. I associated an OR property with my Airbnb property and allowed them to synch.

That all worked, I see photos and lots of other details that appear to be correct.

However, when I look at Listings in the Airbnb dashboard this property is continually showing "Importing" and it doesn't seem that I can edit anything else in the listing.

In OR for this property the Sync Status == Everything and the Listing Status == Inactive.

I'm a little paranoid about turning the listing on until I've exhaustively looked at fees, surcharges, rates, etc and confirmed that they are all correct. But perhaps my snoozing is interfering with the completion of importing?

If I were doing this occasionally I would just export the list of bookings that I want to email, then take the spreadsheet and grab only the email addresses. Then I’d combine them all with commas in between, And just paste them into my own email client. Or of course I could send the email from Ownerrez it self.

All you really need is a list of comma separated email addresses. Once youhave that you could paste it into any place where you were sending an email from

I think as long as you’re dealing with 50 or less you shouldn’t have to worry.

The Excel formula would be something like this, assuming that you have all of the email addresses in a single column, one address per row.

= A1 & “, “

If your email addresses are in a column starting at cell A1, type the formula above into the cell B2 and Then copy the formula down word. What you’ll find in the last cell in the B column will be all of the addresses separated by commas

I

I start at the beginning of ski season with a spreadsheet. An also at beginning of summer season. In between I make countless minor adjustments using the new rate calendar.

I agree I can track it outside of ownerrez with spreadsheets, and in fact I try to export a new spreadsheet after each session of changes with rate calendar. But even though I’m extremely experienced with excel it’s still a pain to try to determine how rates changed over time.

A database would Be a much better approach, especially if it could automatically display a small visual of rate changes per date.

So in short, it’s just too hard to do outside or OR, that’s why I’m asking them to add a history feature.

That would work, but I'm lazy! :) Not sure I want to be repeating that process 50 times or more. Would be nice to be able to send to everyone without going through something like that.

Lots of folks in my area (Smoky Mountains of TN) don't allow check-in or out on a holiday. Most of us also require longer stays for a holiday. I don't know your market so hard to say what you should do. Also, keeping housekeeping happy is SO IMPORTANT!

I recently had a conversation with our housekeeper about scheduling cleanings on a holiday (like Christmas or Christmas Eve). My solution is if we take a booking that checks out on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day I'll just block off that night so that we don't get a booking arriving on that day.

Yes, it means I might cheat myself out of one night's rent...but is the chance of this happening greater than the possibility that you might be hurting your opportunities of renting your holiday week by placing a requirement on when the guest can check out?

Hi Rich,

I'm curious...when you enter Spot Rates in OR, do you enter them directly on the Rates Calendar? Or do you use the OR import/export spreadsheet to do it?

If you use the OR spreadsheet then you could just create a new spreadsheet and save it to document those rates.

Or, have a "Master" spreadsheet to archive the rates and each time you change the spot rates just copy that particular OR spreadsheet onto a new page of the Master, with maybe the date as the name of the sheet?

Anyone else being charged a surprise $19.95 monthly charge for analysis? I have been charged since May.

Paul, is this connected anyway to OwnerRez?

Thank you,
Claudia

Hi Lydia,

This solution is not as smooth & seamless as a trigger, but it would work:

You could create your email template first. Then (even though you'd have to do this manually on each booking) you can use the "Scheduled Emails" option at the bottom of the "Email" queue/tab. That option allows you to select your specific template and then choose "Send on the specific date of" and pick the date from the date-picker calendar.

Hi Lydia,

I recently downloaded all of our reviews from both VRBO/Homeaway and Airbnb. I hadn't realised you could see the guest's review on the booking until you mentioned it in your post.

I just checked my reviews, and I see the same thing. I can see Airbnb reviews on the guest's booking, but not the VRBO/Homeaway. So, I don't think this is only happening to your reviews.

I'll be interested in hearing what the OR Support staff has to say about this.

I'm being dumb, again.
I know how to import reviews from OTAs. But, when I look at specific bookings, the only ones which display the guest's review are those who booked thru AirBnB. I know my VRBO reviews have imported to OR because I can see them in the list of reviews. But when I go to that booking, there's nothing under "Reviews." What am I doing wrong?

I'm trying to figure out if it's possible to send a trigger email on a specific date. For instance: Would like to send a Merry Christmas, or maybe a Happy New Year message to all previous guests.

Has anyone had any experience with Lynnbrook or Costco handling chargebacks?
In talking to Costco, the pricing is as follows:
1.99% + $0.25/transaction
Application fee ($25) and monthly stmt fee ($5) are waived for executive members
But to process online requires a gateway, they use Converge, $149 set up and $5/mo
The will connect for free set up to other gateways, but those seem expensive, too.

How does Lynnbrook compare? Do all set ups require the set up fee and monthly fees?

Has anyone used NationalBankCard.com?

Yep, that makes a lot of sense for tracability.

Right now the closest thing for that is to run a booking detail report and look at the ADR column. That'll get you the average rent for the booking at time of booking, but it doesn't track to the level of the individual night rate.

Chris - next September as I set my winter season rates again I'll want to know what nightly rate I booked at for every night of every booking in the season. So that I can better prepare a new spreadsheet of spot rates for the next season. I'm not sure there is a way for me to get back to that granularity by any kind of OR booking report exported to a spreadsheet. And sounds like spot rates won't help me either because they could potentially (probably on accident) be changed by me during the many times I'll update them. Not sure how big of a deal this is, but it's part of why I'm asking to have a history for spot rate changes. And would be really nice for that history to show the rate at which the date was booked, regardless of whether it changed later on.

We don't auto import the descriptions in OwnerRez or via channel bridge -- if it did update that was from running the "import listing" tool at some point.

The overall description sections are used for all API's however each one uses different fields: https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/channel-management-api-integrations-property-field-differences

For the description, HomeAway uses the large Description field but Airbnb does not -- they use the Short Description field and then other fields like Guest Access and The Space. So you will actually end up with different areas to set descriptions for each of them.

Yes, OwnerRez pushes all rates regardless of whether they are booked. That's what you want so that if a booking is canceled you have the right rate in place.

Rates pushed won't affect something that has already booked. But if you're trying to reduce rates because you're expecting a booking, I'd recommend making the change in OwnerRez and pushing from there -- that way you won't have to worry about overwrites.

Sure thing, some answers:

1, 2) You should be able to enable professional hosting tools yourself in the account menu -- see screenshot. I don't think it requires a business verification --I just tried this with an account that's not set for a company and it was able to enable the pro tools.

3) If you go to the Local taxes and laws section in Airbnb for your listing, do you see the Custom option? Look at the screenshot here: https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/channel-management-api-integrations-airbnb-common-issues-questions#taxes

If you do have Custom available to you, you can configure taxes that way.

If not, you can have OwnerRez factor taxes into rates. To do this, go to the channel bridge or Airbnb API settings and set tax calculation to "included in Airbnb amount". This will cause OwnerRez to add any tax applicable to the Airbnb listing site to rates during pushed and back it out when bookings are imported. So go over to the Tax area and set the listing site criteria on the ones that Airbnb already remits to "Everything but Airbnb". And the ones you want to add rates, set those to All so that they do apply to Airbnb.

You could also do this yourself manually by setting the rate adjuster like you mentioned, but if you do that we won't know to back out the taxes again on the booking import.

Yep, it really depends on your volume. Stripe has a higher percentage rate per transaction, but no monthly fee. While Lynnbrook has a lower rate per transaction but has a monthly fee. If you're doing more than 20k/yr or so it usually pencils out in favor of Lynnbrook even after the monthly fee.

To do this, create a separate Christmas Week season for just that week (12/21-12/27) and set the allowed arrival/departure days on that to not allow arrival/departure for Tue/Wed. Make sure your rates for that period are also associated with that season and you should be good to go. The Arrival/Departure rules will be sent to Airbnb through the API.

Anyone using API and has a way to block people from checking in/out on certain dates? For instance, I am fine with my house being booked over Christmas, but don't want to have people checking in or out on the 24/25th of December as I don't want to scramble for a cleaner. On ABB, I could block that, but now that I am switching to API, I don't see a good way to do that this month and in the future.

My understanding from speaking with Lynnbrook is that they would be more expensive for me than Stripe, based on the monthly fee.

That's the virtue of Stripe - they're a bit more expensive than Lynnbrook, but they're willing to work with low-volume accounts.

I spoke with Lynnbrook recently and they suggested that i NOT go with them based on my low volume. I have one property and currently payments are handled either by my property manager or by the websites themselves. I am in the process of setting up with OR.

So needless to say I am confused by this conversation and which route I should go.

Still working on getting set up with Airbnb for a ski condo in Colorado (town of winter park, Grand county)

Q1 - I can't get Airbnb support to help me enable Professional hosting tools. I'm on my third support person, I keep just getting boilerplate answers. Any suggestions?

Q2 - I see that if you have business verification it can help to enable professional hosting tools, but I'm running my condos in my personal name, not in an LLC. So I don't have an EIN

Q3 - Maybe I can do what I need within OR and their API, I see that in the Airbnb Channel Bridge I can adjust Rates & Surcharges by a percentage which is what I want, do I then choose the "Included in Airbnb amount" option?

hoping someone can guide me here !

I was told by CSA that we, in Texas by law and per TDI, could not force travel insurance or damage protection. Guests have to be offered as a choice. We used to build travel insurance into rate with a note to contact us if guest wants it removed - we were told, guests have to specifically choose to add travel and not just decline it. If guest declines damage protection then we can hold a refundable security deposit. We hold anywhere from $800-$1500 as a option to damage of $49. Anyone rarely chooses security deposit. Please let me know if someone knows differently.