General Help and Questions

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I will chime in. My interest is integration of Honeywell 9000 series thermostats...

partially. they have "verified" my property, but no change in payment methods yet - still shows Booking.com payments. Thank you for the advice - I will go with payment due at booking, free cancellation at 60 days or more as it is my policy on other sites as well. Waiting for payment enablement to see if they have CVV set up

Wow, that's a great idea! We don't have support for that now, but I'll see what it'd take.

We've considered integrating with cameras and other monitoring solutions, but as of yet have not -- our main integrations are door locks.

What sorts of features would be useful for a video or noise monitoring integration on a PMS? Automatically sending out noise complaint emails or some such? Actual video displays would probably be better done directly in their UI's, so I'm not sure what else would be useful on the integrations.

Have you heard back from booking.com yet?

For my properties, I've got it set to require address, phone, and card security code. That's the big thing. If your account doesn't have a switch to require card security code, contact booking.com support and they can add that for you.

In terms of payment policies, I'm doing payment due upon booking, but free cancellation until 60 days before arrival. They've got a pretty rich settings section for that, so some folks will do 30% nonrefundable on booking, the remainder 30 days before arrival, cancellation until 30 days before arrival, stuff like that.

Nope, you're not missing anything! Right now you can only email in the context of a booking, quote, etc -- we don't have email blasting or newsletter capability. Turns out that the legalities and requirements for a bulk email are different than the normal transactional back and forth emails you get for a booking, and our current email provider does exclusively transactional email to ensure the highest delivery rates.

We do have plans to add an email blast/newsletter module, but in the meantime the best thing to do would be to go to Reports and export an Email List, then import that into MailChimp. They've got a free version for up a list of up to 2000 contacts, so that's an easy way to go and they cover all of the email newsletter unsubscribing and contact requirements etc.

That's a good question. The search box up top is a full text search like Google so it decides which partial matches to find and looks for words, so half a name won't always come up.

Makes sense though, if you put in a partial name or prefix, you should always get a result. I'll see what we can do about that.

In the meantime, if you go to the Guests or Bookings grids and do a filter, that will do a normal wildcard search automatically, so a partial will come up.

@Marinas Edge -- we've tracked down an issue with the Evolve calendar system. They change the dates to be off by a day every morning around 1AM eastern, then change them back to the correct dates around 4AM.

If you want proof of that so you can contact Evolve support, let me know and I'll put a trace on your account and provide you with the specific files where they show wrong dates. Happy to help communicate with their tech folks to see if they can fix this bug -- it seems to be affecting all Evolve customers we've worked with so far.

I'm assuming they have some issue where their timezone code is off so that it thinks it's the wrong day when the calendar is viewed early in the morning, but they haven't admitted anything yet.

Not right now. We've got custom fields for bookings, but not for guests, yet.

What sorts of data points would be tracking?

Yep, you can do that exactly! We need to write some support articles to walk through the steps, but that's what we recommend as a standard process.

The contact info form on the renter agreement signing link will detect and blank out any of the @airbnb.com or @homeaway.com proxy email addresses so that the guest can enter a real email address. Once they do, that real email address will go on file. It doesn't remove the proxy email address right now, but we should add an option for that.

For Airbnb, you can set up a create trigger that'll go out automatically as soon as the calendar import picks up the booking because they include the email address there. Here's an example: https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/airbnb-request-for-contact-info-real-email-address-and-signed-renter-agreement

For VRBO, they don't include an email address in the iCal, but our reservations and channel bridge imports have an option to send create triggers when populating the email -- those imports do have email addresses, so you can set up a create trigger for VRBO that will be sent as soon as you do import the email address.

Curious if an import of airbnb or vrbo bookings will trigger a booking creation that could be used as an email trigger to send a request to sign a lease? If yes, does the email address that gets put into the lease form replace the email address from either airbnb or vrbo?

This could be an interesting workaround to get actual contact information for guests...

Damon

Ahh, good info to have. We may look into it at some point -- it'd be sweet to let folks with Android phones be able to do a one-button reservation process instead of entering each piece of info.

However, it looks like it doesn't change fees at all. From the article:

"There are no additional standard fees for processing Google Pay transactions – pricing for Google Pay is the same as your other credit card transactions."

So they don't charge extra for Google Pay, but you still pay the same rate you pay for any other Braintree credit card transaction.

Here it is:
https://developers.braintreepayments.com/guides/google-pay/overview

When I go to the GUESTS tab, I see a list of all my guests. It's a table, really, with headings such as Name, Email, etc. I would like to be able to add additional columns there so I can easily track other data points. Can I do this?

Thanks!!
Monica

a lot of problems can be solved if u use OR calendar as master, not the other way around. I use OR as master and it syncs both ways to/from HA, Airbnb, Tripadvisor etc. I do not maintain all those separate calendars.

So sorry to ask so many questions today!! :)

I noticed that the search box in the upper right of the OR screen won't find a partial match. I wanted to find a guest, but I couldn't remember the exact spelling of their last name so I put in just the first five letters, thinking the system would find it, but it didn't.

Is there something special I need to do in order to get the search to find results on a partial match? (Like can I use quotes, boolean logic, etc?)

Thanks!
Monica

One more thing to add... I also realized that I can't generate a NEW email to an OLD guest via the guest's profile.

I have looked everywhere I could think of and it appears to be impossible unless you look up the old BOOKING on the calendar and then hit "Email This Guest".

Am I missing something?

Thank you!

Monica

I have a handful of regular guests that I'd like to send a group email to. I thought it would be under the GUESTS tab, and that I could select each guest by their checkbox, and then there would magically be a button that said "EMAIL THESE GUESTS" and poof I could choose a template and email them all at the same time.

Is this possible? I can't imagine that it's NOT, I just can't figure out how to do it.

Thanks!
Monica

Yes. Chris and I have spent a lot of time on this and it's something wacky on the Evolve end. Unfortunately, alll we can do is call them to complain that their hinky calendar is jacking with our OwnerRez. (((sigh)))

I wish I could tell you what settings to look for here to avoid OR blocking your calendar incorrectly.

Monica

I am still trying to set them up. They automatically enrolled me in Booking.com payments which I do not want to do - I want to do payments via OR/stripe. I sent an opt out request on jun 22nd, looked today - still shows Booking.com payments. I will not go live with those.

Chris, can you share your settings example for cancellation policy, cancellation fee etc. I just want to make sure I set up in a way that discourages tire kickers and fraudsters. TIA

Possible to integrate these?

Ring Video is the leading camera/video doorbell so you can talk with/see guests via your cellphone.

NoiseAware is the only noise monitoring solution for VRs and helps avoid problems with neighbors.

Hate to mention competitor (they were my second choice), but here is their page about integrating with those two and others. Maybe give you ideas. You were my first choice because your amazing automations. But you need dynamic pricing...
https://www.orbirental.com/partners/partners.jsp

One of the most useful features I use OwnerRes for is the automatic emails. Even when I get bookings through AirBnB or VRBO, the system automatically imports the booking and sets up the automated emails for my renters. It is awesome.

I am just wondering. There seems to be some pretty sophisticated logic on the email triggers and I have them triggered 20 days before arrival, two days after arrival, etc. Is there a trigger that we can send on particular days during a renters stay? Case in point – The neighborhood garbage day is on Friday mornings. I would love for an automated trigger to be created every Thursday during a renter’s stay – to remind them to take the pails to the curb. I do this now by manually scheduling acanned email for each Thursday that they are there. But it would be so nice for the system to do it for me instead ;-)

In Braintree I can enable it as one of accepted payment methods, just as with which credit card to accept... Hope that helps?

So I'm finding that Evolve's calendar synch is sometimes a day off and blocks my calendar on OwnerRez. Anyone else having this issue?

nevermind - found it!

I don't see a link to the page where I create my widgets.

Thanks Chris, so good to know. I appreciate your experience with all of this.

sent

Shoot an email over to help@ownerreservations... let set up a call and get everything sorted.

Can you send the file you're using over to help@ownerreservations.com? We'll take a look.