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Those will all work with OwnerRez, but we can only push data supported by the version of QuickBooks. The big difference is class and department/location tracking which allow you to tag invoices with different dimensions like applicable property so you can report by property in QuickBooks. That feature requires the Plus version.

If you don't need class tracking, you can use either of the other ones.

Paul,

I'm only using custom templates, not any of the one's that OR has built in.

Take a look at "Thanks for Booking !!" I already removed the table structure which is an improvement, but I'm sure there is html cleanup that can improve it since many of the rows still don't wrap naturally.

Is there a way for me to do it myself? Would be nice to have a predictable way to test for the content to be mobile friendly.

Are these emails all custom templates (ie. that you created from scratch) or emails that are sent from the system as a hard-coded notification? If they are custom templates, then it should be easy to figure out and clean up the problem. Give me the names and I'll take a look at the raw HTML of those 3 emails. There might be some crud in there that can be cleaned up.

Thanks for the advice on iPhone, Rich! Helpful!

Hi Rich, the webhooks we have are limited to specific partners only as they are really tailored to specific use cases. We've love to open that up for wider access but it would take a lot of time for cleanup and testing that we haven't been able to allocate. You can find information about the API under the Account button > API Access option.

have you looked at standard set of OR reports? I think 2 of the 3 things you asking for already exist

Hi folks,

I'm eager to figure out a solution to generate periodic (weekly?) reports which would capture information about a variety of topics.

Example use cases:
- report for cleaner listing departure dates
- report for owners showing availability gaps
- report for owners showing the value of bookings this season

I understand this can't be automated currently in OR, but I've read that y'all have webhooks and a full API... Can you send me information on the webhooks? I use a crm platform (Podio + globiflow + procfu) which has a workflow engine that makes this kind of reporting possible, I just need a way to get access to the raw data.

iCal Setup (for OR admin/owner)
- in Owner Reservation, go to Properties, then pick a property and click on Calendar Export
- click 'Add Custom iCal Link' and check these two fields
[ ] Show the property name and location on each event
[ ] Show the booking summary on each event
- click 'Create iCal Link'

Here's the email I sent to the cleaner

Hi Cleaning Person,

You'll need these two iCal links for the units you clean for us:
[OwnerRez iCal link for Property A]
[OwnerRez iCal link for Property B]

Instructions for an iPhone
- copy one of the links
- go to Settings, Passwords & Accounts, Add Account, Other, Add Subscribed Calendar, then paste the link into the Server field
- Once you do this you should be able to go to your apple calendar, hit the Calendars button at the bottom center and you should see the link in the SUBSCRIBED section (will say something like OwnerRez Unit A)
- repeat for the 2nd link

These links will work in a google calendar or other calendars since iCal is a standard way for these things to work.

WARNING - when I tried the steps above on my wife's iphone the pasting didn't work. So I had to send the email with the links to my own cell phone, copy them from my email and text them to her. But that shouldn't happen to you, it was probably due to security settings on her phone due to her company security settings.

USING the Calendar - I think you'll find it mostly self-explanatory, but here's some things to note
- you can adjust the color of the entries. On my wife's iphone they defaulted to blue and purple
- when looking at a full month all you see are grey dots (not very interesting)
- but you can hit the list icon (upper right) to show less calendar but details about the daily events
- when looking at a list of events for a given day, you'll notice
- arrivals: checkin times start in the afternoon, usually 4pm unless I adjust it (like I did for a recent guest)
- departures: checkout times are typically 10am unless I adjust it
- in between days are listed as "all-day" events

At first I found it a little confusing, but it got easier when I was able to add in the unit name and when I realized that the checkin/checkout times help you recognize arrival/departures.

I have 3 automated emails that are sent, one at create and the other two are day before/day of arrival.

Two of the emails wrap and are therefore easily read on my phone, but the third doesn't. Each row just extends wide across the screen and in order to read the email I have to zoom in and slide the screen back and forth on each line. I suspect the issue is a table I had copy/pasted into the email. It's handy to have it, but it's kind of wide.

Before I start experimenting, I was wondering if there is an way to preview how an email will render on a cell phone. Or some rules like don't use tables or wide images.

Demo is tomorrow, we'll let you know how it and the trial period goes. And yes, your cleaners would benefit from being on the app assuming that their other customers are on it or there are other property owners in your area also using the app.

We are looking to purchase the right version of QuickBooks online to integrate with OwnerRez. There appear to be three versions available: Simple Start at $20/mo,, Essentials at $35/mo and Plus at $60/mo. What is the minimum capability version that OwnerRez integrates with?

Randy

I stayed with a new Airbnb owner in Newark last week, we went to a travel conference. I was going to recommend he use other OTAs, but then remembered that HomeAway and VRBO are only for entire homes. And he rents out about 22 rooms in several buildings.

I mean seriously, is there any point in excluding a broad category of rentals?

I have two adjacent 5 bedroom townhomes that are off the charts historically. but since there is one laundry room for the pair, I can't say there is a laundry room on HA/VRBO because that is shared! Argh.

Yep! We just pushed out an update this morning that added some of that status tracking in addition to a bunch of other improvements in error handling, pulling in Air future payments, automatically recording VRBO refunds, and allowing new listings to be mapped during the process vs. causing an error.

Right, yeah. We may add Firefox support for channel bridge at some point (FF does allow extensions on mobile) -- that wouldn't help iOS but it would help having a maybe more trusted browser on Android.

Names and dates should come over automatically on the VRBO iCal import. Looks like you don't have this set up yet, but go to the Calendar Import tab of each property and you can add iCal feeds from sites like VRBO and Airbnb.

So iCal will keep the calendar up to date automatically, and then channel bridge will merge with the booking and add the other info like guest email, party size, financials etc. Alls you really need to copy over is the email address so you can email them, and channel bridge will add the rest later.

Today I noticed that my 37 bookings showed a collection of different statuses after I did an import. Some showed unchanged, some updated and there was a 3rd label (new?).

It looks slick, and reassuring to see old/untouched items not being changed.

I bet I could run Yandex on an old android phone connected via wifi only.

I'm a little leery of putting a russian based closed-source browser on my primary phone these days, and buying a tablet seems silly for a single operation once in awhile.

Question - if I want to manually create a booking using my Ipad and OR through safari browser, what's the minimum information I'd want to copy over from the VRBO website? Is it enough to capture first/last name, email and arrive/depart dates? Maybe I also need the VRBO booking ID so in the future (some days later probably) I could use chrome with channel bridge and it would merge/overwrite and life would be good?

Same request - for a fee like $1 per cleaning it's a no brainer for us to use this, but our cleaning person cleans 20 units and we are just 2 of them.

But if it's handy to the cleaner I be she'll get other owners on board with the app as well. Keep us informed please !!

No, Channel Bridge is currently developed as a Chrome extension, so there's no way to run it without Chrome. Since Apple blocks all non Safari browsers from running on iOS, and since Safari doesn't support rich extensions compatible with other browsers, there's nothing we can do about that, unfortunately. I'm always hoping they'll loosen up the restrictions on apps, but it's been 10 years and nothing yet.

Do you happen to have an alternate Android device? We've got some folks with Androids using the Yandex Browser: https://browser.yandex.com/ and running Channel Bridge that way.

For sure. The only one that doesn't appear to completely hate owners is Booking.com, but then Booking.com's engineer team is kind of all over the map with their settings and features. In general, they tend to lean in the favor of owners and develop tools that owners need, but they have QA problems in keeping all that consistent.

VRBO, Air and TA appear to completely hate owners. Makes me wonder what would happen if owners had a "boycott the channels" and disabled their listings for like a week. If most of the inventory disappeared and VRBO and Air lost 90% of their revenue for a week, I would wonder if they would change their attitude towards owners.

Please share your thoughts. I only do 20-30 rentals a year so for $20-30 it may be worth it to me just to be able to coordinate my cleaners more efficiently/automatically.

I emailed them for more info...

Tim

We're warming up to the Resort Cleaning app as we learn more about what it does for the price. I think we'll see where we are after the demo and 30 day trial.

Randy

"draconian treatment of owners"

They all seem to do that in one way or another.
...One owner says she is averaging about 5% loss on AirBnB due to their self imposed "Extenuating Circumstances" that makes the owner the free trip insurance provider.
...The opinions of HA/VRBO people about their required payment processor and chargebacks/etc.
...Booking.com with their 15% owner commission and the high rate of cancellations.
...Property Managers
...The ridiculous cancellation metrics used by some

I will be new starting in a few months, but I am going to use them all in the beginning to get rolling, with the goal of repeat/referral/direct booking eventually. But I still always plan to use them for shoulder and off seasons. I am also going to plunge into SEO, Craigslist (yea yea), blogging, working with other area businesses, etc.

I am mostly trying to understand their warts. The OTA stupidities just seems to go with the territory. If anyone ever opens up a robust, well advertised OTA that treats the owners and guests like gold, I think they will outclass the competition in time.

great, I will try , thank you

That's the "send me a copy" copy you are getting. The guest is getting one too. If you look at the outbound email (top Email menu) it will show you all the email going out, including ones to you and the guest.

Sort of, yes. You can just not send the second quote email. You would change the "available" reply to use the same message body (same field codes, etc) as the quote email so that it looks the same. All of those templates are the same type of message templates, under the covers, with bodies and field codes that can be customized to say whatever. We just create helper templates to assist in responding with certain default messages.

It must have changed, at least for the PMs that use our API integration. Even with one payment made, the contact info is shown (we have it in OR immediately) and you can email them.

Randy, we haven't partnered with any other cleaning apps specifically, but they could have used our API and built in integration on their end without us knowing. Jim and the guys at ResortCleaning are pretty good so we haven't felt the need to branch out or look for other partnerships in that area. You might want to ask other housekeeping apps if they integrate with OR to see if they've used our API.

I guess I did not explain it well. if you are set up as 2 payments (1st deposit, then payment), and not 100% upfront., TA does NOt release renter contact after deposit is paid. meaning you can only send rental agreement and get ID from renter AFTER they had paid balance also. That was my experience last year - I do not know if it changed as you describe.

The PMs that have set up TA integration are getting inquiries and bookings for sure - there's a steady stream of them coming through per day/week - but it's definitely a lot less than in years past. I think their dev team killed that user base after gobbling up FlipKey and VacationHomeRentals years ago. They tried to roll those user bases into the main TA rentals and they basically just killed off what was there.

FYI - You can send a renter agreement to the guest after the fact (and custom/HTML emails directly to the guest email address) but only after they've booked. And your house rules should mention that the RA is coming. There are no problems if you do that.

I was the OP of that topic. I have not had an inquiry (3 properties) since Dec or even a single booking in probably 6-8 months if not more .
problems are abound - draconian treatment of owners (uuuuge cancellation penalty, censorship of emails), NOT releasing renter contact even if renter paid deposit (i.e you cannot send them rental agreement) and so on. But kind of moot point as THERE ARE NO INQUIRIES AND BOOKINGS anyhow.