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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
Sorry for the lack of docs around Channel Bridge and our channel management at large. We've been pushing updates faster than writing docs. ….A general problem around here.
Our channel integration varies based on the channel and what is possible (ie. what we've been approved for, partnership wise, or what the channel is technically able to do). Channel work is probably 75% of what we do so it's constantly being updated and worked on.
We have two basic types of channel management - API Integrated channels and Synced channels. Again, this is based on the limits of each channel (either technical limits or them not approving us yet for something more).
"API integrated" channels means we have a partner level agreement with the channel and our servers talk to their servers. The rates, rules, availability are automatically pushed back and forth and there's nothing you need to do manually. Bookings are sent over to our system automatically as well. In the case of TripAdvisor, the listing content (photo, amenities, descriptions) are all pushed across too, so if you change any of that in OR, it will change on the TripAdvisor side. We are finishing up a large API integration with HomeAway where all of that will happen with HomeAway as well. That's in the final stages of testing with a pilot group of users. Currently, we have API Integrated integration for Booking.com, CanadaStays, TripAdvisor and (very soon) VRBO/HomeAway. We're also working on API integrations for Airbnb, ECBYO and some others but those are farther out.
"Synced" channels is where we support calendar integration (iCal) and inquiry parsing where we support standards that all channels adhere to (like iCal) and import/export what we can. We've done a lot of work to make our parsing and iCal support as smart as possible for things like booking cancellations or moved dates but there are natural limitations.
Early on, we realized that:
1) We could not have API Integration with every major channel we wanted (or at least not as fast as possible), and
2) The "Synced" style with iCal and inquiry parsing wasn't going to cut it because bookings only come in with dates and guest name and everything else was left out. Also there are time delays between iCal updates.
So we built an in-house tool called "Channel Bridge" that simulates the user with the goal of copy and pasting data between their channel account and their OwnerRez account. The idea is to find and extract booking data from VRBO and Airbnb so that you can fully flesh out your bookings in OwnerRez and keep them up to date - guest email, phone, charges, payments and more. You want all that in OwnerRez so you can manage bookings directly without logging ina nd out of channel constantly, and you want your down-stream stuff (reports, search, QB integration, etc) to be accurate across all bookings whether channel or not.
Channel Bridge is a work in progress and it will be for a long time. It's a fairly difficult problem area to work in, but there is a lot of potential. At the moment, it involves some manual steps (eg. downloading bookings then importing those into VRBO) but our goal is to make it more automated.
We also recently added rate push to it so that, if Channel Bridge is installed, you can push rates through it from OwnerRez over to the channel.
Look under the top Guests menu. Then click the Reviews menu in the sidebar under that.
I've been reviewing the "Reviews" section and attempting to test it out. I'm looking at the Searching and Exporting Reviews writeup and it says "To get started, click the global Reviews menu". The sample screenshot shows the Reviews button to the right of the PM button. My OwnerRez does not have the Reviews button. Just the PM and then the Tools button to the right of it. How do I get the Reviews button to show up?
1) I looked at channel bridge for the first time. OTAs - in the left hand menu, I see Airbnb & HA/VRBO.
How does this work with FlipKey, Booking.com and other OTAs?
2) Do you ever plan an OR app? :)
OK. In addition to doing VRs, I also plan to have a serious side business doing tours starting late. And of course, I would like to sometimes have people take my tours and stay in my VRs. I plan to use Bokun (owned byTripAdisor) as my tour mgmt software and OR for VR mgmt software.
The problem of course, is that Bokun has crappy/simple-minded accommodations functionality and OR is not really a tour system.
So (only in the case where I sell both to the same group as a package), I wind up splitting the booking for the same group on two different systems. And their data on two different systems of course.
Was thinking maybe doing something with tours and combining the package off my OR hosted website. The tours are on a different website of mine connected to Bokun. But somewhat stuck on how that would work well. Or any clever way to make this work.
Open to ideas?
In VRBO
- Reservation Manager
- Payout Summary
- download spreadsheet
While displayed report shows summarized payout totals, the spreadsheet shows detail by payment.
I took a second look at this and it may depend on your payout schedule with VRBO.
What report inside VRBO is showing the actual disbursement dates to you? I'll have a look and see if we can pick up that data as well.
To enable the channel, go to Settings > Channel Connections, click on the CanadaStays channel in the list, then use the Change button at the top to edit it. Check the "Active" box and save it to enable it.
That'll activate it on our side, but you also need to create an account on CanadaStays and contact their PM support to get the sync enabled on their end (for this connection, they pull from us). Have you done that yet? If not, email chloe.nielsen@canadastays.com and get the ball rolling on that end.
yes, we want it online now. First to test and understand what the channel offers (with test bookings and the calendar blocked out). Then we'll want to open the calendar and take future bookings once we get a little closer and are sure of the open date.
