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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.

I must be doing something wrong, Booking ORB1239416 only $266 charge was imported (whatever that is) but not the overall booking total . The overall charges were as follows in VRBO:
4 nights $840.00
Cleaning fee $155.00
Tax $126.86
Service Fee - Learn More $106.00
Subtotal $1,227.86
Refundable damage deposit $300.00
Total payment $1,527.86
Total Fees ($106.00)
Payable to you $1,421.86

Booking ORB1187466 it imported the damage deposit $300 but did not reflect that DD was refunded thus overstating the total.
I tried both merge and overwrite.

Probably not yet ;) Did not know it existed.

I don't believe we have a way to integrate with Google Pay right now. Can you send a link to the info in Braintree about Google Pay?

Yep, OwnerRez is directly integrated with booking.com! Once you've got it configured, we'll automatically push rates and availability to booking.com and pull back bookings (with credit cards/payments) from booking.com.

Here's an article on the setup process: https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/connect-ownerrez-t-booking-com

Personally, booking.com has worked pretty well for my own properties. The big recommendation is to set strict policies (deposit due upon booking, free cancellation only for the first few hours, after that a cancellation fee, and a requirement for address, phone, and card security code).

The main issue folks report with booking.com is lookie loos that book and then cancel, even more than fraudulent bookings. With the strict policies above, that's much less of an issue. Even if it's a bad credit card, your calendar is only tied up for 24 hours and then OwnerRez will auto-cancel the booking if the guest doesn't get a good card on file.

So for my personal properties I've had a few of those where the card doesn't work or people cancel in the first couple days after booking. Other than that everything has run smoothly and I've got a chunk of bookings from them.

We've got a $50 discount code on LockState locks (ResortLock and RemoteLock) -- you can find the code in the Settings > Door Locks section of your OwnerRez account.

We don't currently have a discount code for eRentalLock.

I saw that! At least they're trying to make the reports better... but if anything it looks like that report has way less info than the existing payout summary report they had.

Have you had a chance to try out our Channel Bridge import for VRBO? That hooks in directly and downloads **ALL** of the info down to the last detail, including charges etc: https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/channel-bridge

http://productupdates.homeaway.com/post/2018/6/26/payouts-made-easy-introducing-the-new-payout-summary-report?utm_source=Community&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Owned:HomeAway:Blog:USA&utm_term=&utm_content=payout_summary_report_06_28_18

I do already have my settings set up to only import "Bookings" from Airbnb.

That is actually what I do -- I go into Evolve because it's my master calendar and I create an "Owner Booking" and then it usually syncs here, but this time it hasn't and I don't know why.

I haven't had any canceled bookings with Evolve ever since I began listing with them. I can't imagine why there are cancellations showing up in my calendar sync history at all.

You are hilarious. :o) I have no idea whether they were on purpose or not. In truth, all my settings here have been trial and error since the beginning because I don't understand what they are supposed to be set on, based on what I want to have happen.

All I really want out of life on earth is for all my calendars to be pulled into one place so I can avoid double booking. I was hoping that one place would be OR but I continually get warnings about possible syncing conflicts which I don't understand and I am never fully confident that I really know whether my OR calendar accurately reflects my actual reservations.

Ahh. Yes, our Airbnb import only imports bookings, not blocked off time. That's because Airbnb includes *everything* on their calendar as blocks -- from holidays to days in advance rules to days between bookings rules. The only way to get round that is to only import bookings from them.

If you want to block off time, the best thing to do is either put it in OwnerRez or Evolve. Ideally you'd put it in OwnerRez as the master calendar, but because Evolve doesn't import and only exports, that wouldn't automatically show up there and you'd have to block it off manually in Evolve. So it's easier to put the block in Evolve and have it come across to OwnerRez.

If you go through the Evolve calendar log and make sure the canceled bookings are actually canceled, that'll get your calendar straight. Did you set up the warning only on purpose? You can either turn that off so it'll try and cancel automatically, or leave it on and make sure to attend to those notification emails.

Right, BUT it only happens to work in OwnerRez because you're logged into gmail and have permission to see that image. Log out of gmail or view it in an incognito tab and it will show broken. I pulled the URL for that image so you can see what I mean:

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=faffa9aa35&view=fimg&th=15f314e3f04bb5ac&attid=0.1&disp=emb&realattid=ii_15f314b73d6bb7ce&attbid=ANGjdJ9zwTWjzMfGvL-QZflta4Qx27LqBHaLSWpB-b_vDlZB9Ov6ABvHanrh8rrDKkZsCgNe596OyfU6lWLp_bVfkn59frOHRvxq_bcrs9Z8qlEQRqQc0C84svUkQLY&sz=w942-h482&ats=1521493321436&rm=15f314e3f04bb5ac&zw&atsh=1

That's the source of the image -- and it's linking to your gmail account.

If you follow the instructions I sent earlier to download the image file and then upload it to the email template, that will solve the issue.

I thought I updated my calendar on Airbnb about four days ago, to show a booking from July 4 to 8, and it isn't syncing to OR, even when I hit "sync now". That is the specific issue I am referring to.

But now I wonder if I DIDN'T do it through Airbnb but instead put it into EVOLVE because then Evolve "feeds" the Airbnb calendar. That's probably what happened.

I'm so OVER managing all this shit in multiple places. And I only have one little house. I can't imagine how people with multiple properties deal with it. Yikes.

Chris,
The image shows up here in the preview on the OR site, NOT in gmail. I was in gmail looking at the confirmation copy of the email and the graphic was broken. That's why I think gmail has nothing to do with it.

1) That's because my screenshot is from your Evolve calendar (the HomeAway iCal in that list). You had mentioned Evolve specifically: "The calendar here is still not pulling new owner bookings from Evolve into OwnerRez calendar" so I gave instructions for that. I'd recommend running through that log and making sure all of those cancel items are actually canceled since you have that one set to send a warning instead of actually cancelling it.

2) The sync is updating from Airbnb, but there are no future bookings to pull which is why there are no new sync items in the log. The only future booking in the Airbnb iCal right now is for Bianca Bernwinkler -- and you actually created that booking manually in the system before the sync was able to. That's why there are no sync log entries for that booking in the Airbnb import -- because you created it not the import.

Do you have a booking number for the canceled one from Airbnb that didn't sync? I can check and see if it's the same scenario.

In future, if you want to update the calendar ASAP, don't create the booking directly but instead go to the sync and click "Sync Now". That way the calendar import will be connected to the booking and know that it needs to manage it for any date changes or cancellations.

Make sure you actually have a file that you're uploading as an image. If you drag/drop an image from your gmail, it will insert a link to the file on gmail. It'll look fine to you because you're logged in to gmail, but nobody else will be able to see it.

To fix this, go and download the file to your desktop. Then go to the custom template, edit it, remove the broken image, and upload a fresh one from the file on your desktop. That'll store the image on our servers so everybody can see it.

I just sent an email using a custom template and again the graphic shows up in the preview here on the OR site, but in the email it came through broken.

Unfortunately I didn't realize the graphic was broken until I saw *my copy* of the email in my inbox. So I have to assume the guest's image is broken too. I'd give you a screen shot but I don't see how to do that here. I don't think it's my settings (otherwise the preview image wouldn't be showing up right?) so I have no clue how to fix it.

Thanks,
Monica

Two things:

1. When I followed your instructions and I clicked on the Airbnb calendar link, I don't see the same history you see. It shows me only ONE line in the history.

2. I'm referring to the sync not putting from Airbnb, despite that I have recently manually hit the "Sync Now" button.

I do have OwnerRez calendar syncing with Evolve, even though I know Evolve does some effed up things that I still don't comprehend. But I thought the Airbnb sync would be easy and work accurately with OwnerRez. Is that not the case?

Thanks,
Monica