General Help and Questions

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Hey all,

New to OwnerRez and just getting things configured.

I am a bit confused with entering a properties Description, Amenities, Photos, Rules etcetera under the Properties Info page.

Is this information being published somewhere? I thought that OwnerRez was a software tool only?

Thanks for the clarification!

Susan, do you have one property or multiple? We've had a beta program running for awhile for one-property sites. We're working on the themes and settings for multi-property sites still. If you have one property, send a support ticket in, and we'll put you in the beta immediately so that you can start using it.

Hosted Sites--The feature that would let us host a website right from our Owner rez account... Do you have a deployment date? Thanks!

We don't yet support importing inquiries from AirBNB. You'll currently need to answer them on the AirBNB side. That's on the to-do list, but even if we notify you of inquiries you'd still have to answer in the AirBNB site because they don't give out guest email info that would allow us to send email to the guest directly.

We do support calendar import from AirBNB so once a booking is made it will automatically update the calendar in OwnerRez: https://www.ownerrez.com/blog/two-way-calendar-ical-sync-and-convert-block-to-booking

Hi,

I've managed to setup the ical for Airbnb, but how do I connect it to Ownerreservations, so the emails come in etc?

In the Airbnb setup, this is what I see:

"We have not received any inquiries from your AirBnb account. Follow the instructions below or contact us if you need help.

Note: If you've manually connected this listing site using the instructions below, it will show "Not Connected" until we receive the first inquiry from the listing site."

The only way I can possibly see is for me to somehow auto-forward Airbnb emails to my ownerreservations email account. Is this what I should do, or is there something else to do to get connected?


Many Thanks

I figured my question out.

The guest will get the option to choose payment method on checkout, but only if it matches the rules. Credit card is always available, but check is based on the Days In Future setting under Pending & Offline Payments in the property rules.

By default, that's 15 days in future, but it looks like you've upped that to 45. Is the quote you're testing with at least 45 days from now? If not, try a farther future quote and you should see a set of radio buttons on the "How would you like to pay?" screen on the quote that lets you select "pay now by credit card" vs "send a check by mail"

Good catch. A separate sort order field for custom fields is on our to-do list, I'll see if I can get with Chris and get it increased in priority.

In the meantime, you can order them with a prefix that will sort alphabetically, a la: 1) 2) or a) b)

Ahh, that's a good idea. Right now we only require a phone on the billing info page if you're checking out via credit card, but it'd be good to have the option to require it on the guest info page as well.

I will talk to the development team and get it added to our list.

We are set up to take credit cards through OwnerRez but also offer the option of paying by check. I notice that the Credit Card information is required when filling out the Guest "Accept and Finalize" screen. That's fine because we use the CC for an Authorization on the damage deposit. But is there a way for the guest to select,"I'll mail a check"? that sort of thing. If they pay by CC, we'll add a 4% Surcharge but if they pay by check, no Surcharge. I can always send a revised quote deleting the 4% Surcharge if the guest changes their mind on payment method but it would be nice to have them commit to a payment method.

Thanks

Chris Powers

As I've entered the custom field definitions they all appear under "Other Information" which is great. However, they appear in alphabetical order by default. I can work with that, but is there any way to reorder them manually? Have them appear in the order of my choosing?

Thanks,

Chris Powers

When I look at the Quote Form for a guest that appears and click the "Looks Good! Request Reservation" link on the lower right it takes me to the page for the guest to fill in guest info. How do I make the phone number fields, or a least one of them, be a required field?

I spoke to Chris yesterday and am going to add some custom fields to gather additional information from my guests, but wanted to understand this "Default" page too.

Thanks so much

Chris Powers

Leave it to VRBO to make things difficult for everyone. Thanks so much for your quick response, Chris!

Yep, that's exactly what the issue was -- tentative reservations were being mixed in with real ones. The iCal format has a Confirmed vs. Tentative flag for that (which we honor), but of course VRBO doesn't use that flag. Instead they put the word "Tentative" or "Reserved" somewhere in the iCal summary.

I've updated our calendar synchronizer to look at the event description and ignore events with the word "Tentative" in them. This should solve the issue regardless of which link you use.

Chris,
Here is my VRBO iCal link:
http://admin.vrbo.com/icalendar/59531bf7123645279c323ae52a9458a6.ics

When I opened the tab to get the ical export link for you, I noticed a setting that I do not remember seeing before. There is a big green check mark next to these words... "Include Tentative Reservations in the calendar export"

I could have missed this setting before, but it's hard to keep up with VRBO's changes which are sneaked in from time to time.

So I unchecked the box and now the export link is:
http://admin.vrbo.com/icalendar/59531bf7123645279c323ae52a9458a6.ics?nonTentative

I suppose I will now need to enter the non-tentative link into my OwnerRez settings.

Let me know if you think this was the problem, or if it's something else.

Thanks!

Yep, looks like they are not following the tentative flag in the spec.

This was for 9/12-9/15 for Martina N., correct?

If so, I've made a hotfix to the calendar sync to work around this issue and flag tentative using other values in the iCal.

I'll have a look at this. Can you send me the link for the VRBO iCal in question? I believe they're changing up some stuff with that sync, so we may need to adapt on our end.

VRBO Guest requested a booking (I have BIN), but I did not accept the booking since she complained about the VRBO fee in the booking request itself.

So, I manually entered an inquiry and sent her a quote through OwnerRez. When the guest tried to proceed with booking from her quote email, she received a message that the quote was no longer any good. I'm thinking this is because the OwnerRez calendar sync pulled in her tentative reservation from VRBO and blocked them on OwnerRez.

I have since removed the ical blocked dates on my calendar in hopes that when she tries again tomorrow her booking request will go through.

If anyone knows what I should do or not do now, please help! Thanks!!

If you have travel insurance enabled, the guest can choose it during checkout.

Then, regardless of whether they chose travel insurance, you'll see a Insurance tab on the booking. If they did choose the insurance, you'll see that there. If not, it gives you the capability to send them a link to buy the insurance separately (since they've already completed checkout).

I'm testing the system so I was probably NOT looking from the Guest side!

Thanks so much.

Do you want to apply it to all bookings or based on a rule? Or just manually added when you need it?

If automatically (to all or rule based), set the criteria on the discount to apply (either all bookings or specific bookings based on. For example, you could do a last minute booking discount by arrival within 10 days out. If you leave the criteria at "all bookings", it will automatically be applied to everything, and you'd need to manually remove it if you don't want it to apply.

If you want to manually add the discount, you don't need to add a Surcharge/Discount record for it. Currently, that section is only for automatically applied items, based on those rules you configure. Eventually we'll allow you to create manual ones there that you can select from the charges grid (like taxes work now), but we're not there yet.

If it's a manual discount, the best way is to go into Charges and add the discount directly there. That grid is fully editable, so if you added a new Rent line item after the last existing Rent line item, with a Description of "Discount" and a Rate of -10% -- that's going to be the best way to add a one-off discount.

I've created a 10% discount in Settings. How do I apply that discount to a quote or booking? I'd be applying it to rent.

Hi Chris,

Yes, that's how it appears on the live quote that the guest sees. Maybe you're looking at the quote (and its charges) in a different place? That only shows in guest-facing areas like online when they go to accept/finalize and in emails to the guest.

If it's not showing there either, did you maybe turn it off? Check your Settings > Travel Insurance settings for that property.

-Michelle

Good Afternoon,

Did you just change the way that the AIG travel insurance shows up on quotes and bookings? I thought I saw an optional line item show up on either quotes or bookings or both. I thought there was an optional check box and a 7% charge that would appear if checked. Now there just seems to be a link to the insurance purchase page, which is fine, since it looks clearer that we are not getting the money. Just trying to get a handle on how that works and appears to guests . . .

And on that 2nd question about security deposit holds, yes you can have the guest do a hold by credit card even if they paid by check (assuming you have a credit card payment method configured).

Under the booking > security deposit tab, you'll see a guest link. They can use that link to submit a security deposit. There will also be a reminder email sent to them several days before their arrival (based on your property rules) which will give them the same link and ask them to send in a security deposit. Look at the booking > security deposit tab and make sure the reminder is turned on.

Hi Nancy,

Once you've recorded the booking and charges, and you've recorded the payment they made, you can send them the guest payment link under the booking > payment page. Open that link yourself in another browser tab and you'll see what it looks like. From there, they can select a payment method to pay you with. If you have check configured as a payment method, they can select it and it will show them who and where to send the check to. Does that make sense?

-Michelle

Actually I asked this same question back in April, but I'm still having a problem.

Here's what I just did: I cancelled the old booking, then filled out a new quote for the Johnsons showing that they had already paid $500 toward the total. They had asked me for a breakdown of charges so I wanted to send them an invoice/payment request that reflected that.

I converted the quote to a booking since they have already paid their reservation deposit of $500 by check a long time ago before I was on OwnerRez.

I am confused now how to send them a payment request. They want to pay by check.

Also, if I had already imported this back during the trial period, will I have to pay for this booking? I don't really mind doing that but I have about six or seven upcoming that I will have to do this same thing to, and I want to be sure I understand if I might have a simpler way to do all of this.

Sorry for the confusion...

Hey guys, I made some mistakes months ago when I first started on OwnerRez, when importing a bunch of bookings I'd made through other means. I didn't understand the process at the time and it's been a while since I've had a booking other than through AirBnB, so I'm not quite sure how to fix it.

So basically I have some upcoming guests for this fall and winter that I have listed in OwnerRez under "Bookings" when in fact they don't know what they owe, what they've paid, and when the next payment is due. For example, the couple coming in October, the Johnsons, have paid me $500 but owe me the full balance this month. I can't find a way to send them an invoice with a breakdown and payment request without it triggering me for their credit card number, which I do not have.

Also, can you tell me how I can handle security deposit "holds" when they only pay by check. Can I have the system ask them for a credit card hold as well when the time comes due?

Thanks!

Great response! Works well. Thanks so much.

We just pushed up a hotfix that adds this support. You can now go into the reports section and choose "arrival" or "departure" instead of just "dates of stay".

Let me know if this solves the query for you.