General Help and Questions

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I synch the OwnerRez calendar with AirBnB. On Memorial day I had an opening but my calendar in AirBnB showed "Memorial Day" as blocked. It turns out that Memorial Day from OwnerRez was passed through iCal as blocked to the AirBnB calendar. My AirBnB to OwnerRez synch then showed "Memorial Day" as blocked on my OwnerRez calendar. Not sure if this makes sense, but I think this is what happened.

That should work, but VRBO are always changing their formats.

What if you try a new link with all of the options checked?

I've created a custom iCal link with guest info and property location for export to VRBO. On their calendar it still just shows "untitled event" as if I had used the default iCal link. Do you know if VRBO is blocking the details?

Screen shot of my custom iCal link --> http://i.imgur.com/h4BXQsJ.jpg

OK, that's some good info to have -- particularly the idea on outputting into the iCal export.

We are starting the planning on this, so I'll keep you posted as we get into development.

By default, all email will use your account email as the reply to.

If you want, you could go into the email template settings and change the FROM to use a different email. Are you looking to have a different FROM email per property? You can accomplish that using custom fields with a different value set for each property.

Normally, though, I find that the single reply to is better so folks don't get confused if they are inquiring for multiple properties etc.

If you have your own domain name with email configured, we can actually set up to send email directly from that address -- let me know and I can walk you through the setup steps for that.

Hi,

I have two properties.

How do I set two emails that will have a 2 different "From" so the guests know that I am responding with my business email.

Is that possible? Or we only have one email account that we use to respond to the guest regardless of what property it is.

It would be nice if we could input and track cleaning dates easily. To me the most important dates for a reservation are the arrival date, the departure date, and the cleaning date. Often the departure and cleaning date are the same, but occasionally my cleaners cannot schedule due to long weekends, volume, etc. Hence they may not be able to clean for one or two days after a reservation. I can certainly create blocks to ensure that my properties are not rented before cleaning can come in, but it is hard to track the cleaning dates in the system. Yes I can create a custom field (and I have done that) but it would be so much easier if it was a standard and important date like arrivals and departures. Also I rely on the calendar and the ics output a lot to ensure all is aligned. If the cleaning could show up on the calendar (not as a blocked day, but just information) and could be output in an ics file with a start and finish time defined, then it would be immensely helpful to ensure that I do not book a subsequent booking before cleaning can be done.

Glenn

What are you looking for exactly? A way to add a cleaning date that shows on the calendar but doesn't block off the days? Between reservations or during?

Is there any easy way to add a cleaning date to the dates section of a reservation and have it show up on the calendar? I cannot always get cleaning scheduled on the departure date for a guest and this is now becoming a bigger issue for me to keep track of cleaning. I love OwnerRez and have been using it for years, but I fear that I am going to have to look for another solution soon that tracks reservations *and* cleaning dates associated with the reservations as I am spending too much time with manual calendars and then ensuring that my cleaning blocks are in place.

DISREGARD ABOVE - I found the setting

There are two options you can do for this.

First off, you can alter the settings on any given booking or quote. The Payments tab on the booking shows what is scheduled, and you can add or remove scheduled payments there. In this case, you could have removed the scheduled payment or change the date on it. Or go to the Rules tab to control the schedule for the second payment.

If you want to turn off automatic payments entirely for future quotes/bookings, you can do this in the Rules section of the property. Set the collection to "Do Not Collect" vs. "Collect Automatically" and make sure that the email reminder is enabled.



That will send the guest a notification email with a payment link vs. charging their card automatically.

I have a 2 payment system set up. 200 at booking then balance due 60 days prior to arrival.

I had a guest who needed some extra time to pay and I agreed. Last night, her card was charged "automatically" and over drew her acct.

I'd rather have guests authorize each payment VS automatic charges to their accounts.

Am I missing a setting?

Thx in advance

Multiple accounts with less permissions is on the roadmap for later this year.

Currently, though, it's just the one admin level account per user.

Can you describe a bit more about your situation? How many properties do you have, and are they all owned by the same owner or is it more of a property management situation? How are you looking to split up the permissions? I may be able to suggest some workarounds.

Hi! I have a question.
I was wondering if there was an option in this software to have a general administrator that can manipulate all, but also other people from the same company or business that can login and just change some specific things (for example, just be able to edit the information of only one property).
Thanks!

Oh, very sorry... I just noticed that the field code list for Form Messages does not include booking field codes, only account and property level ones. We do actually have booking field codes for Form Messages working in **development**, but that was never released. So you would not (currently) be able to show the guest the adult/child numbers yet. You could, however, at least draw their attention to the fact that they need to check them. Like "MAKE SURE ADULT/CHILD COUNTS ARE RIGHT" which are available in the renter agreement. We will have that updated live in the near future so that booking field codes are inserted in Form Messages.

Go Settings > Form Messages > create. Then select page (of the quote acceptance) you want to work on. It will pre-fill the editor with the normal/default system message. From there, edit it and insert a message with the field codes you want to draw their attention to. Use bold/colors etc, to make them stand out. See here:

Thanks Michelle for a prompt reply. Where/how do i edit form header to warn renter to populate number of people vorrectly? Thanks!

Hi BlueMtnCabins,

Good morning! Couple thoughts on this...

The renter agreement fields are actually based on the BOOKING field codes (or adult/child or whatever else) and not the quote or inquiry.

After a booking is created, the legal agreement is stamped with the field values that are current for the booking at the time the legal agreement is made.

If you were to send the guest another copy of the legal agreement to signed later on (even if they already signed on), it would attempt to render the agreement body with the current field values. So you could update the booking and re-send the legal agreement link for them to sign again.

Does that make sense, or confused?? :-)

Now in terms of the quote acceptance workflow... Yes, whatever adult/child value is set on the quote at the time the guest goes to book, that will pass along to the booking and the legal agreement will show that. So if the quote adult/child counts are wrong, the initial legal agreement will show the wrong ones. But it's on the guest to see that and know they are committing to (and signing) a legal agreement that show a certain number of guests. If they're lying about the numbers, or made a mistake, they should see that. You could always highlight this at the top of the renter agreement so they see in bold the numbers they are committing to.

You could also include header information on the pages BEFORE they get to the legal agreement telling them to make sure they are correct and contact you to change the quote (or go back to the Book Now widget and use right numbers) before getting to the legal agreement. If you edit the form headers, you can embed booking field codes there.

It would be great if I could use OR renter agreement, but i noticed that the only option to fill in the number of adults and children is to have it default to what is on the initial inquiry - which is often incorrect(traveler may select default 2 people or omit children on various sites).
Is there a way to add fields to renter agreement so that renter is forced to enter/update them before hitting "accept"?
Otherwise I have to continue to use signnow for renter agreements where I can have them initial every page and fill in adults and kids.

Nope, that's it. VRBO is really stingy with the info in their calendar feed :-/ AirBnb at least gives email and phone, TripAdvisor gives guest count. VRBO only gives name and dates.

We're working a couple of other possibilities to get more info, maybe parsing their emails etc.. but that's what we have for now.

They don't tell us when things change, so we have to check in 5 or 10 times a day to see if anything is changed. It may be a little bit but shouldn't be days at a time to wait.

If you just got a booking and want to bring it in now, go into the calendar import -- there's a "Sync Now" button you can whack at any time to make it do an immediate import.

I want to make sure I am not missing something. When my reservations import from VRBO all it has is the dates and name. No other information. Is this correct or should cell phone and email be transferring too. Also, they do not come in unless they are overnight. So I am assuming that is because it is taking a LONG time...certainly more than a couple of hours.

Marcy

Awesome! Thank you, Chris!

That informational text is only shown in the preview -- to make sure you don't wonder why it was blank. Good point that we should clarify that so you don't wonder what the real email will look like.

When an email is sent, any fields with missing values aren't rendered at all. You can test for yourself by going to a booking for that property with no PXHOTTUBCODE, using the "Email this Guest" button and switching to that booking template:

It seems like that when a value in a custom field is not defined, the system automatically displays "[Custom field PXHOTTUBCODE is empty for this property].

I have some properties where hot tub code is required and some properties where guests don't need a code. I would like to use one welcome email for all properties, but when the error message "[Custom field PXHOTTUBCODE is empty for this property]" is printed in the welcome email, it's not really helpful information to the guest and it signals that something is wrong.

Is there a way to turn the "error" message off and simply leave it blank when there is no value? So in the case that the field value is not defined - they don't need the code - it would not print anything in the welcome email.

Thank you.

Daniel

Great idea! I'll note it down and see if we can get a report in for that.

In the meantime, you can see the custom fields on the Stay Reports. If you pull a date range report for the next year, you can scan down the custom fields column and see which ones have fields set. Hopefully that'll help a bit.

Hi, I have a two properties each with lock codes I can set remotely (using Vera and Zwave). Unfortunately it is not one of the e-rental locks that was just added as an integration point. I import bookings from Airbnb and VRBO and that is pretty easy. I have set up a custom field for the lock code so that triggered emails can use it.

However each time I import new bookings, I have to go and click each one to see which ones are new (ie. the custom field for my lock code is blank). There there a report I can show that will show each booking and allow me to select custom fields to add to it? That would save a lot of time for me. I can then import new bookings and run a report to see which ones have a blank lock code and then update those ones.

Glenn

Can you give me a bit more detail about where you're seeing that issue? You should be able to copy/paste anywhere. We don't have buttons for that because browser security limitations don't allow us, but you can copy/paste by Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V using the keyboard, right clicking and using the menu, or tapping and holding if you're on mobile.

Do any of those methods work for you?