General Help and Questions

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Thank you!

Thank you, I am ok with 0, will test the other ones.

Paul,
I double-checked by looking at the "booking" I entered for my family's vacation week. If I go to send a "payment request" and look at the payment page via the link included, it does say "please send (full balance due)..." if I choose pay by check, even if I choose to pay 50% or a custom amount. That line never seems to update. Also, I've never actually paid much attention to this billing page, but if the guest chooses payment by check, there is no button to click or anything. I think if the guest chooses "pay by check" it would be great if like the "continue to confirmation" button that appears for credit card payments, instead you displayed a "print invoice" button that would let them print a copy of the payment request to include with their check. Just an idea. Many of my renters include a printout of my payment instructions when they mail me a check.

As for the CC surcharge, that never shows up. I manually created this booking for my family vacation, and now when I choose to pay by CC no surcharge ever shows up. I think that if you manually create a booking instead of sending a quote and having an initial credit card payment as part of the acceptance, that the CC surcharge doesn't work. I tried it on a couple of other reservations and the CC surcharge doesn't appear during the payment process.

From the app side of things...

Seems to be smooth overall. Their servers write to ours a couple times per day as needed. We have found them easy and straightforward to work with.

There is one thing that they are working on fixing. You need to have a "baseline rate" in OR first before their first sync/integration can kick off. Some users pointed out where they were getting a message "no availability for 365 days" or something like that. What that actually means is that PriceLabs was connecting to their OR account and not able to get a baseline RATE for a year and so they couldn't sync and their code bails out. As long as you provide some basic nightly/season rates, they'll take it from there and start writing in spot rates.

Hi Richard,

Sorry for the delay in responding. My first thought is - you'd need to ask ResortCleaning that! I'm sure that's not the answer you're looking for. 🤪

Let me reach out to my contacts on that side and get back to you. They developed the integration on that side, using our API, so we don't have docs on that. I believe that if you connect it (on their side) they basically pull in your bookings when they happen and you'll see bookings appearing in their app automatically which you can then schedule cleanings for and so on.

Sorry for the delay in responding, BlueMtnCabins. That's a great technique - I love it!

Use the {BTGUESTFEE} field code to insert the fees they paid. Couple caveats:

1) That will include all guest fees on the booking, even the ones that may be taxes the channel paid on their behalf. If you don't have that, then no worries.

2) This will only work if you've used Channel Bridge to bring in that fee data (or manually entered) it. If there are no recorded guest fees on the booking, that field code will be empty or show $0.

Hi Mitchell,

Sorry for the delay in responding. That would just be one 1 property. A property is one individually-rented unit. It doesn't matter how many national/regional listing sites (or even your own website) that it's booked through. That's just one property.

We have integration tools for all of those channels, some more than others. You would sync calendars or connect direct/API integration where possible.

Sorry for the delay. We're looking.

Good idea, Rich. Not sure we would do it exactly that way, but we could be watching for empty booking field codes that are marked as required and at least allowing you to filter for that (like not-signed renter agreements or balances not paid in full)

Hi Cathleen,

Thanks for reporting back. For anyone else that is wondering, you can adjust that on the quote rules. Look for the rules tab.

PS. I don't believe a non-admin user can delete forum topics. I'll leave this topic up with that answer so others can see it.

Fees are something you need to set manually in VRBO and Airbnb. We do set the cleaning fee, extra guest fee and pet fee in VRBO if we see that you have one in OwnerRez, but there are other types of fees that you may have (such as that damage protection or something else) so make sure to set those yourself. We don't set any fees on the Airbnb side, only rates. We are looking to expand the rate pusher to add more fees to both VRBO and Airbnb, but for the moment, make sure to set those manually.

Yes, on the channel settings in OwnerRez, there is a top area that shows the channel settings. Click the Change button and you can add a rate adjuster %. This will increase your rates (whatever they are, night by night) by that % just for this channel when pushing.

Thanks for the notice on the check always showing the total. We'll take a look. That might be because the arrival date of the booking is soon but then, if that were the case, the 50% option wouldn't show.

It adds the 3% surcharge at the end on the confirmation page before they pay. We do it there because they may change their mind earlier in the process and go back to a check or different payment method. By "invoice" page do you mean the page that first open when looking at the quote or coming from a Book Now form on your website?

The only spot to customize the messaging there is by using a custom form header and selecting that Quote - Overview page as the one to change. That's just the blue message box at the top though. You could also customize the header and footer as well under Settings > Branding but that remains the same throughout all pages.

Yes, you can apply it manually. When the guest selects it, two things happen:

1) A processing adjustment for 3% is added as a bottom line item on their charges
2) The booking rules are locked to "credit card only" on the payment methods or whatever method they selected

So if you do a manual booking, you can manually do both of the items above - change the charges and change the rules.

Good tip, Rich. Yes trigger emails will try again the next day if the "try again" option is set for missed triggers.

In general, triggers are kind of temperamental and hard to control because they tend to want to be stopped/paused at certain times that don't line up the same for every user. You might want to stop them on a certain booking, but only for that booking, and then resume it again later when you've checked something. But in general you may also want to have triggers try again every day until they work if it's a criteria-based reason that they were paused (eg. renter agreement not signed yet). It's something we're continuing to work on.

Just a tip for something I just learned ...

Yesterday I created a booking in OR and purposely left the 'send create triggers' unchecked because I wanted to send emails manually. To my surprise today the trigger emails were both sent again. Digging around OR I realized what I should have done...

Instead of sending the email from the top of the email screen by picking the template I wanted, I should have scrolled towards the bottom and clicked the send button there. Or at least click the "-Skip" button if I needed to send/modify the template.

Just a small thing and obvious in hindsight...

What if you setup a tour as if it were a property? So you have your house listing and a tour listing. It wouldn't be perfect in that it wouldn't truly work as an add-on to a booking, but at least all of the data would be common, and you can view your calendars together. You can setup your tours as an optional surcharge in your house listing.....you'd just have to manually enter the tour booking or refer the guest to your "tour calendar" to reserve their slot. If you put the tour as an option they can choose when booking, then customize the booking confirmation email template to include the link to choose their tour date/time.

Tim

I'm looking at the "invoice" page of the payment request and a couple of things stand out.

1. If pay by check is selected, the line "Write a check for $xxxxxx to the order of xxxxxxxxx" always displays the TOTAL balance, even if only 50% is due and selected in the previous section.

2. If I set up a credit card surcharge of 3% and the guest chooses CC as payment, there is no place on the "invoice" page that indicates there will be a 3% surcharge. Is there a way to customize this invoice page and note this surcharge? It would be nice to add custom info elsewhere on this page as well - especially the text of the "grace period" section about cancellations.

3. On the payment confirmation final page I don't even see the surcharge being added. I see in the setup instructions that it says "Set a surcharge or discount that will be added to bookings made via quote or book now when a guest uses this payment method.
Note: This will set the payment type rule on the booking so subsequent payments remain the same type. "

Does this mean that ONLY payments made on a quote or book now will apply the surcharge? Is there a way to apply it if I manually add a booking and then send a payment request?

I'm looking at pushing rates to Airbnb & VRBO. The Airbnb push shows no fees, and the VRBO push shows one fee. I have 2 fees - $125 for cleaning and $59 for damage protection. Is there a way to make sure my fees get pushed along with the rates (or at least not changed) or do I need to reset the fees after pushing?

Also, I noticed that it says "No channel rate adjustment". Is channel rate adjustment available? I like to charge a little more on one than the other...

Thanks!

Disregard. I figured it out. How could I have deleted this topic?

Hi; When I send a quote, a rental contract is automatically attached. How do I disable sending the rental contract together with the quote? I will send the rental contract at a later date as it needs to be revised. Thanks.

Chris - It happened this morning, an email got sent with empty content for a custom field (key codes).

Seems like it would be a simple matter of programming (smop ;-)) to:

a) add a checkbox to custom fields ([ ] required for ALL bookings; [] required for future bookings)
b) have some code run across all bookings and display a number in red (same as inquiries)
eg: code loops across all booking start dates and does +1 if empty and based on the checkbox picked

This would be an obvious way for anyone on the website to quickly realize a custom field is missing and doesn't involve anything with sending/pausing/blocking emails

Chris - reminder to look at the VRBO report with payouts (see last post)

This blog post also may be useful in managing booking.com to your advantage.

https://blog.uplisting.io/the-ultimate-guide-to-hosting-on-booking-com

I have one condo unit listed on 3 different platforms (Airbnb, VRBO, Houfy). Is this a single property or three different properties? If it should be a single property, what are the issues of integrating the 3 different OTA's?

FWIW, this is the insight I have collected about dealing with Booking.com cancellations. Most from one post. Maybe here on OR or elsewhere - don't remember:

• Unless you choose the very strictest policy ("no refunds whatsoever of any amount paid at any time", regardless of how early they cancel -- which I wouldn't advise as it will alienate many potential guests and cost you a lot of bookings) then the next strictest setting is "full refund for all cancellations at least 60-days in advance", with all options after that being more and more lenient.
• There is a lot of cancellations from overseas, as people will try to use your address to show an American (or other country) address, for a variety of immigration or other reasons. Russian, etc. On the other hand, they are a really great source of foreign bookings, if that is your cup of tea...
• Guests tend to book and cancel quite easily and do not expect to hear from you unless and until it is within the "no cancellation refund" period. I've learned to charge the deposit amount and then only contact them once it is less than 60 days before check-in (or whatever your policy is)
• Must contend with some "deadbeat guest" bookings who seem to be unreachable or irresponsive after booking or whose card are declined or missing info; I've learned to avoid frustration by trying to bill their card once only and if declined, mark card as "invalid" then send them a link to the invoice letting them know they have 24 hours to pay (at least the minimum due) or their reservation will be canceled

Pun intended. So after close to 2 dozen bookings since last year for 2 of my properties, all but one (future stay) have fizzled out or cancelled. Not to say that this lone remaining one will not cancel too once we get closer to non-refundable period. Is that everyone's experience too?

To be embedded in email? I send post departure email saying "you could have saved $X if you booked with us direct", where $X is amount of VRBO fee. So far I have been populating custom field manually , but since I see it as a value on the booking as being imported form VRBO, is there a name? Same fort AIrBNB. TIA

Where would be a good place to start to understand the details of how OwnerRez and ResortCleaningApp interface? The ResortCleaningApp website is not very informative without setting up a personal demo. I was hoping you might have some inside info. Also, how expensive is the ResortCleaning App?

Now that you have integrated with Pricelabs, I'm curious if you or anyone who may be using it can comment on whether things are working as expected and were there any idiosyncrasies that we might need to be aware of?

Hi Paul,

Thanks! That worked great. The process to download from VRBO to Excel and back into OwnerRez was very smooth and simple.

Now I just need to get Airbnb working.

Randy

Hi. My lodging association is looking into using the property management tool for the sole purpose of customers being able to book online with association members without needing to go to each individual page for availability and booking. My question: Has anyone done this? Can you share the link so I can take a look? And for any property manager- what are the pros and cons of using this tool in OwnerRez? Thanks in advance!
Allison, Owner
Dam Near Lake of Egypt Cabins
www.damnearcabins.com