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The contact over there is Jesse Ehret -- I sent you both an email a couple days back with full contact info, did you get that?

Thanks Chris - who is your contact there as I've not heard anything from them. And have also put in a contact request through their website

Thanks for the quick reply Chris !! All makes sense

We both do -- we'll send you directions to update your DNS to authorize us as an allowed email provider for your email address. Once you do that, we'll set the FROM on our end so the email starts flowing that way.

One requirement is that you need to use a private or business email address instead of a Gmail one. In other words, you can do this:

misty@mycabins.com

but not:

misty@gmail.com

This is because you have to own, or be able to control, the domain name so that you can set DNS records in place. This is a technical requirement of being a Verified Sender and it helps with deliverability (not having messages go to the Spam folder).

Do you have access to a business or private email address that you can use? If so, email us at help@ownerreservations.com and we'll get the process started.

Sure thing, some answers:

- "Your Booking ID" is just a reference code for later. It's not required, but if you do a bookings import first and then a charges or payment import later, that's an easy way to link them up -- looks like that's your column G
- OwnerRez Property Id is the OwnerRez ORP number found in the Properties list. You can also use the name of the property in OwnerRez as long as it exactly matches
- BookedDate is required, if you don't have it you could use the arrival or pick some other date
- Adults and Children you can leave 0 if you don't have them
- First/Last Names are marked as required on that sheet because they're highly recommended but you can leave them blank if you want
- If all you have is Total and Commission, I'd set Rent and Total columns to the Total (your column D) and leave the Surcharge/Discount etc columns blank and and then set the HostFee to the commission amount.
- Host fee is used to track stuff like booking site commissions so it's not exactly matching a management fee but it's the best way to keep those separate. If you put in a discount, you'd end up with a lower total showing up in reports later.
- Listing Site can be the Rental Service Name (column F). First go to Settings > Channel Connections and add a Custom Source for that -- it'll match up by name.

The Charges import lets you get more detailed on an invoice. It's basically doing the same thing as the Rent/Discount/Total columns in the Booking import, but lets you specify names, tax status, etc. You don't need the Charges part if you don't have detailed information -- just use what's in the booking import.

You do probably want to do a Payments import. If you don't the bookings will all show as unpaid because they have an invoice but no payments. Easiest thing to do here is to put one payment for each booking, link by Your Booking ID (your column G), and put the full amount and use the payment date the same as the booked date you pick.

I have years of data with the cols below. I can massage an excel spreadsheet into whatever format is needed.

(listing columns as rows for clarity)
A Unit = 1234
B Arrival Date = 1/1/2017
C Departure Date = 1/3/2017
D Total Paid by Guest = $331.02
E Commission Paid to Rental Service = $151.03
F Rental Service Name = Mountain Resorts, LLC
G Booking ID = 3G93849

Seems like there are imports for Payments, Charges and Bookings.... Here's my assumptions, please comment

(UPDATED - I realized there are reqd columns)
1) Please confirm I should only use Import Bookings, not the other two
2) Please confirm these mappings:

Your Booking ID -> G
OwnerRez Property ID -> G (same as 'Your Booking ID' ????)
BookedDate -> B (I don't have this field, so seems best to make it obviously fake to avoid confusion in reports)
Adults -> ??? don't have this data, can I use zero? Or best estimate (2 adults)
Children - > same question as for adults ??
First Name -> should I use same name for all (eg: FakeFirst)? Or uniquify? (eg: FakeA, FakeB, etc)?
Last Name -> should I use same name for all (eg: FakeLast)?
ArrivalDate -> B
DepartureDate -> C
Total -> D
??? -> E *** see below
ListingSite -> F ???

*** Column D (Total Paid by Guest) is useful to me because it will help in future rate setting
Column E is about 45% which is what I paid for a rental service for years (was fully staffed service with front desk, maintenance team, etc)
I'd really like to preserve Column D, but also account for Column E as a sunk cost. Maybe use DiscountTotal? Hostfee? GuestFee?

Thanks Paul; I'm interested. Question, who does the configuration, OwnerRez or myself?

I talked to SafelyStay on the phone. Basically for $29 per guest (3 days), you get:

Verification of Booking person (200 databases, yada yada)
Up to $10,000 of contents coverage damaged by guest for pretty much any reason, deductible only $100
$100,000 liability and building coverage.

There are higher coverages, but this is a nice supplement to a difficult building I have (part commercial spaces)

Yea, I had looked at Party Squasher - but both my properties are right next to others, in town. I think that is good for out in the country

I'm not sure if it does, but you can select rentals as one of the categories on Google Play if you would like to select in settings that you occasionally accept business payments. Which is the setting that I currently use. I haven't looked any deeper...

Yes, do that under your global Files. Click the Account button drop-down (top right) and Files. There you can upload any type of file. Once uploaded, the button on each file will give you a "copy link" you can use in any email or renter agreement. BlueMtn is also correct that you can embed/upload inside any email or renter agreement at that moment.

Thanks for the recommendation! We'll look at them. I met with the Party Squasher guys last week btw. Interesting device.

The old "Google Wallet" product was something we were going to add, as another version of PayPal you could accept, but the Google Wallet terms specifically forbid lodging/vacation rental type business. So we never moved forward since VR users would end up having it turned off by Google. I dunno if Google Pay has the same requirements, but I bet it does.

The fees do not push over at the moment. That is coming - we have that on our QB To Do list - but at the moment only charges and payments get synced across. We recommend syncing payments to "Undeposited Funds" and then manually creating Deposit records in QB with the appropriate payments and fees to match your bank statements.

Good idea. We'll double check that to see why the language is clearing that off when the full payment is required.

HI Cathleen,

By default, all outbound email that OwnerRez sends on your behalf (from you to your guests) is addressed from a FROM address that looks like that but the REPLY-TO address is your actual email address. This is to meet certain web standards and make sure the email is delivered to the inbox (not the spam folder) at a higher rate.

You can join a "Verified Sender" program if you configure certain DNS records and then we'll be able to set your FROM address to your actual email address. Let me know if you want more information about joining that program - it's free, just takes some configuration.

Why is my email address not verified? When I go to settings, theming, account theme, it shows my email address is not verified. How does my email address get verified? Thanks.

Hello! :)
If I add check as an option instructions are automatically created on check out page. However, If I require payment in FULL, the following line makes no sense "If you'd like to pay the total amount up front (which is $...) or any amount in between, you can do that. However, if the check is less than $..., it will be rejected. "
Specifically: "OR ANY AMOUNT IN BETWEEN" should be removed.
Can you remove that for payments in full?
Thank you for assistance.
Ella

How do I pull in the host fees I see in OwnerRez from my channel manager imports into Quickbooks correctly?

That might be interesting to have Google Pay, Apple Pay and everything else available.

Not only saving the card fee, but probably harder for the guest to do a chargeback!

https://pay.google.com/about/business/implementation/

You know, I never thought about it. And probably not wise to post phone numbers or email here (I get enough spam!).

There isn't a person to person message function on this forum, is there?

Maybe just post the instruction snippet here?

I believe Google Pay might have their own info on implementing that OwnerRez could use.

How about enabling Google Pay on it's own? (bypassing Braintree or other processors). This would be sweet. Google does not charge any fees for sending/receiving $ . Valid Debit Card, Bank Account or Google pay balance is all that's needed. AND at that point, we can discount as we don't have processing fees! Better than sending a check, payment is instant! :)
Please consider/update :)
Ella

Hey, BlueMtn

Could you send that e rental lock information to me? I will be setting up my email templates over the next week or so,

Sorry, Glenn. It wasn't ignored on purpose, I promise!

There isn't a way to do that currently, as you already know, but it's something we've kicked around internally. It's difficult to create a scheduled time for that. We'd have to say trigger off of "middle of the stay" and a certain day of week. Other users have use cases for this too, so it's on the radar.

Hi. I would like to request if you would link to the following service (they are well known in the VR industry, and have been around 6 years of so.) SafelyStay.com. If you can't, can I link to it from my hosted website?

This basically offer Guest Verification, Liability insurance, etc for a reasonable price per booking (I plan to charge this to the guests).

But it will be clumsy to use if their service is not linked to my guests booking activity in OwnerRez.

This is their API description: https://www.safelystay.com/technologyplatform. They say "Since our APIs are RESTful and JSON based, they can be accessed using standard HTTPS protocol and we provide detailed descriptions (including input/output)."

Can we create a custom template? This is something different than just a legal agreement or email template. This would be a few documents I would like to create a hyperlink to, FROM email, legal agreement, etc.