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You've imported a couple dozen reviews, but OwnerRez isn't always able to match the reviews to the correct property. For your collected reviews, it doesn't know the right property for any of them. If you know what property they are for, you can do this yourself under CRM > Reviews. Click the review, Change Details, and select the right property. Then they'll show up.

The Airbnb API connection automatically imports new reviews, but you aren't using that. You can import reviews using Channel Bridge, but you have to do that manually.

Smoking is controlled under the Amenities settings for a Property. There's no option of "smoking outside", but there's one for "ask owner" which would probably suit.

Chris - I think this thread points out the need to add a report to list custom fields ;-)

Hi, I tried searching for the answers but couldn't find them. I figured out how to import my reviews from ABB and uploaded them to OR. I have created a widget that I will be adding to my own website.

1. In the widget area, there is also the option to post a link to the reviews page. When I preview that, none of my imported reviews show up. Is there something else I have to do? https://app.ownerrez.com/widgets/e5459555e47a4c6bb8b62f438afd3ba3?view=form&propertyKey=2290226818a741219f8794c50df6ab79

2. Does OR recognize which property the imported review is for and attach the review to a particular property on OR? If not, can I go in and assign the imported review to the correct property?

3. I have download the chrome extension, will all my ABB reviews going forward automatically come in to OR or do I have to do the imports periodically?

Thanks!

Thanks, Chris. Those instructions were interesting to see; I didn't realize we could download information from the Bookings tab.

I've tried your suggestion and I think this will work...the listing site ID does download so that I am able to quickly search the bookings using that ID number.

At the end of each year I send a Bookings/Payments report to my clients for their bookings in that year. It is helpful for them to have the listing site ID number on that report so that they can match payment notifications sent from that site to the booking on the spreadsheet.I can use your instructions to quickly download the bookings and grab the listing site ID number to put into my report.

Thanks again, I appreciate your help!

How do you manage smoking at your property.

I would like to indicated folks can smoke outside, but not inside. AirBNB shows smoking as either allowed or not. Thoughts? I do not remember how VRBO indicated this.

Thanks for the additional info. In Canada we do e-transfers, which are instant and confirmed or they can’t be sent. I assumed e-checks were the same but sounds quite different.

A bit more about the reasoning here... The hold-up on e-checks is primarily because they're not a true online payment method like credit card. With a credit card, you charge it and know that it's been charged immediately.

When you do an e-check, it takes a few days to settle into your account, or it can end up not clearing into your account up to a week later.

e-checks can also have a reversal or chargeback up to 60 days.

If your bank can process e-checks for you, you can go into OwnerRez and add a Custom Instructions type payment method and include e-check information there, and then once the check does clear you go into OwnerRez and record that transaction.

None of the reports per-se have the listing site reservation number on them but there is a data export that has it.

Go to the Bookings tab and go to List view, then use the Export button in the top-right to export to Excel. That will include the reservation number (and a ton of other stuff about the booking).

At this time, OwnerRez does not support e-checks, so even if a provider did, we aren't compatible with that. We've thought about it but haven't yet seen a good interface and provider for doing so. No doubt we'll run across one eventually and start supporting that method.

I looked through the forum history but I could not find a discussion on this......

Do any of the merchant account providers accept e-checks as a form of payment?

If you wanted to manually enter the reservation number, or cut and paste it from every booking record, you could make a Custom Field and put it there. But when you run the Date Range report it may not be the only info that shows up in the "Other Fields" column. Not sure that gets you what you want. Hopefully one of the brilliant OR folks will have a much better idea! :)

Thanks, I'll give that a try.

What I'm trying to capture is the Reservation ID numbers for VRBO/Homeaway/Airbnb bookings. I wondered if I entered that number into a Custom Field if I could run a report to see all of them at once.

Actually it's pretty easy once you know how, just not obvious.

Go to the Support area - you can use the button in the menu stripe at the top of the forums. That offers a large Search bar, that you can use for searching.

Yes, you're searching the Support docs - but as it happens, it's also searching the forums too, and any matching forum post will be returned in the result. :-)

Just wondering how I can search a past topic in the forums?

Not sure if this is what you want, but try "Reports", then "Stay Reports" then "Date Range". I use that to see the Custom Field I have for their individual door codes. (I also check the box to include notes associated with bookings.)

Is there a report that captures Custom Fields?

Thanks so much Lydia! We love to hear how OwnerRez helps you in your business and I personally get great satisfaction out of every new feature we add that saves you time or helps you connect better with guests.

Merry Christmas to all of our users and may your New Years 2020 be very prosperous!

Yep, that makes sense. We have plans to revamp that entire section and make it much more customizable.

On behalf of so many folks, let me take a minute to thank all the wonderful people at OwnerRez for everything they've done this year. Yours is an amazing addition to our rental world and your friendly support is so appreciated. We can't wait to see what you have in store for 2020!

THANKS FOR EVERYTHING!

Chris: I was wanting to give them some specific instructions on how to send me the one other item they need to complete their reservation. I have customized the messages in the quote/booking process so was hoping I could do the same with this. I'll find a work-around. Thanks!

There's not a good way to exclude direct bookings with an Everything But type trigger. For that to work you'd create a custom listing source and set that on all of your widgets and inquiries and bookings (if you have it on a widget, it'll flow through to inquiry and booking automatically, but if you created a manual booking you'd need to set it manually).

Instead of that, I'd recommend rephrasing it as an only trigger and pick all the listing sites you want, then uncheck Airbnb.

We've got plans for a channel source overhaul that will split out channel and listing site, and then let you target direct bookings separately in criteria, but no ETA on that yet.

Right now there's not a way to customize the message at the top of the lease signature form -- only the step 3 of the quote process.

What do you need to customize in this message?

Yes, you could do an adjuster on the channel or a listing site specific surcharge and those would be added to the rates.

Right now Airbnb is the only channel where channel bridge will factor back out the taxes you configure though.

I though VRBO was allowing you to set a % for extra taxes? Or at least, back earlier this year when they started remitting taxes they said that was "coming soon". Crazy they still don't.

If you can get to 5 properties, of course, that all goes away because with VRBO API they use the tax settings from OwnerRez and pass it all through to you instead of remitting on their own.

Lydia - when I've done this I just created a custom email template using the 'booking' type and I overwrote everything in the email space with the text that I wanted. And I also adjusted the subject line. Maybe you are using one of the premade templates? I've never needed any of the premade ones, just customize a booking template to match whatever you want.

I am putting together a template which will be used to request additional info from a guest and get them to sign the rental agreement. The default message at the top of the page says:

"Please verify your information before signing the renter agreement."

I would like to change that message. Where can I do that?

Thanks!

Since Oct 1st on VRBO I've been issuing a followup payment for an additional 8.5% taxes (town & village), since VRBO only collect state and county taxes.

I was advised by VRBO to do this instead of increasing my rates proportionally, but it's an inconvenience for me and a kind of bait/switch for guests.

When I recently enabled the Airbnb API I decided to include the extra 8.5% in my rates, and I imagine that will work well also.

I'm thinking I could configure OR to push rates (I only use spot rates) that add the 8.5% taxes, same as I'm already doing with Airbnb.

Does anyone have a recommendation one way versus the other?

I see how to exclude the big booking sites from a trigger, but how do I prevent a trigger from firing when someone books direct with me, such as converting a quote to a booking?

Thanks, Rich, this is handy information! :-)

@Rich

HAHAHA :-D

Merry Christmas!