General Help and Questions

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We do have a full API, but currently it's shared with a select few partners as the surface area is a bit tight. Can you give me an idea of the kinds of operations you'd like to do (add properties, create bookings, answer inquiries, rate quotes, etc.)? We'd be happy to open things up to you if we've got the right fit. I can send you over an API doc that will outline what we currently support if that would help.

That sounds like a great opportunity for owners to make use of their properties and share with guests. To clarify, when you say 55 or older, does that mean that the owners must be 55 or all guests and potential renters must be 55 as well?

Yes, you are correct -- if you use our credit card processing, the app is free. We can set up direct processing, or white label with you integrating with owners separately.

Was there an answer to the post?

I am a programmer and would like to know what I am able to work with. I am building a website for our community of 1200 homes with about 40% used as rentals since we are in a very seasonal town, Yuma AZ. Many older adults where I am going to have to hold their hand or just do it myself.

Most owners are wanting to rent their places for the season 6 months Nov - April

I have lined up a house cleaning service, that will enable property owner the ability to rent their places by the week or more important, I am going to extend the season to include May and June by offering workshops in Pottery, Glass Blowing, Wood Carving, Lapidary, Jewelry making.

The limit I face is that the community is a 55 year old or older.

Do I understand correct, if we use your credit card processing, then we will not be charged for the app?
Your comments are appreciated

Hi Claudia,

Yes, it's been awhile - that's because we've had to spend a lot of time with some of our partner integrations, both in terms of calendar syncing and payment processing. We're in the middle of a large months-long overhaul to payments and security deposits. We plan on some new onboarding features, better payment features, notes and auto-responders in the near future.

-Michelle

Hi All,

We haven't heard from anyone in a while. I was wondering if you guys were working on something or if things are status quo?

Any exciting changes coming? If so, when are they expected in?

Thanks,
Claudia

We don't have anything in place to do this automatically right now.

I've added rate bands like you've suggested to our list of ideas to research and implement.

Thank you, Chris. We'll give this a try! Will definitely save us some extra work.

Laurie

Thank you! We'll give this a try.

Laurie

There's not a "send test email" button right now, but you can do it like this:
- Disable the email template (so it won't automatically go out)
- Create a test booking with your email address
- Go to the email tab of the booking
- Add the scheduled email for the template you added (you can still manually add disabled email templates here)
- Click the "Send Now" button for that email to send a test -- you can do this over and over

You can also see a generic preview of the email as you're editing it by clicking the "Preview" button in the bottom right.

You can export any master grid (quotes, bookings, inquires, etc.) to Excel or CSV using the export button at the top right of the screen. When exporting, we add several extra columns that aren't on the grid, like email address, phone, inquiry source, etc. Filter the grid to show all, then click export, and that should give you a spreadsheet with all of the data you need.

We don't have a specific export for Constant Contact, but you should be able to pull the email and name columns from the normal export and make something that Constant Contact can handle.

Hi,
We've used Owner Reservations for 18 months now and really appreciate the system. It makes us more efficient in many ways. However, we band our rates by the size of the group staying at our homes, for example - 4 to 9 guests, 10 to 15 guests, and and 16-20 guests. We aren't structured in a way where we have a base rate which increases with each additional person, so we have to manually adjust each quote before it goes out. That's okay, but just wondered if there was any way to customize your system a bit more for our needs.
Thank you!
Laurie Elliott

We are going to construct several scheduled templates, and just wondered if there was a 'best way' to test these before fully putting them into production.

Thank you!
Laurie Elliott

Hi,
We are using 'Constant Contact' as a marketing tool and wondered if there was a way to upload/export email addresses collected on Orez with our quotes or bookings. Right now we add them manually to a spreadsheet and send them from there, but cutting out that middle step would be very helpful - and you have the most up-to-date info stored on your system.
Thanks!
Laurie Elliott

I figured that was my best bet, but trying to avoid cut/pasting whenever possible. Thanks for confirmation.

There's no way to automatically send the same email twice. You could manually go into the email tab of the booking and resend it, but that sort of defeats the whole point of what it sounds like you're trying to do.

I'd recommend just creating two separate email templates, and then copy/paste the body between them. You'll likely want to make the email body slightly different anyway, if one goes with the payment and one goes the week before the stay.

Historically, I have sent an email with basic information about a stay at the time of first payment, and then the same thing plus a few specifics (as well as anything that might have changed since then) 1 week before the stay begins.

Is there any way to schedule 2 of the same email without cut/pasting. I think I can't make the whole text a custom field, because I use a lot of {PXfoo} scattered throughout the checkin email.

Thanks for checking into it for me. Not going to work with my current setup, since I'm not synch'ing homeaway and VR so that I can use the pay-per-booking on homeaway to try to fill my last 4 vacancies for the summer. No biggie for this year, as we're closing in on full. Won't necessarily be using VR again, it doesn't seem as effective as it was in past years.

The way it works in OwnerRez, you'll create a Quote and send it to the guest. That Quote contains a link that lets them check out (using your merchant account), pay, and once payment is complete it will create a Booking for the Quote.

To see this process in action:
- Set up your merchant account info by going to Settings -> Payment Methods
- Create a quote for one of your properties
- Go to the Payment Form tab on the quote. This is the checkout screen that is sent to guests.

Hi support,

I am curious if you have a merchant page that we can use with owner res. We already have a merchant account with Authorize net and would love to intergrate your system however I do not see where I can set up a check out page once I add listings....

Please advise,

Pat

Hi Jacques,

I spent some time looking into this for you. Since I don't have direct access to the owner side of a VacationRentals.com listing, I have to give you third hand information.

It has been said that the previous ability to sync with iCal no longer works, and HomeAway uses their standard one-calendar system throughout. So when you go to "edit calendar" in your VacationRentals.com listing, you'll see the HA calendar system embedded.

It has also been suggested that you _should_ be able to login to the HomeAway website as they use a single sign on system everywhere. Just use your VacationRentals.com credentials when logging in. If that works, you can provide that information to our system in the Settings > Linked Accounts area under HomeAway and we should be able to keep it up to date.

-Michelle

2 of my 3 properties only have vacationrentals.com listings. Is it possible to auto-update this calendar or only if I also have a paid homeaway.com listing and link them?

Hi Jacques,

I believe that HomeAway will, if you ask them, sync the calendars on their side so that any listing on VRBO, HA or VacationRentals uses the same calendar. That would allow you to only keep one listing updated, which our system can do. But you should be able to update both listings independently as well using our system.

At the moment, we don't have logic in the email templates other than field codes. The field codes allow you to 'drop in' booking, quote or inquiry information so that the email templates looks different for each guest, of course, but we don't have a logic or text language that allows you to do "if else" expressions or things of that kind.

As an alternative, you could craft one email for both and simply say "If your arrival is on Fri - Sun, your check-in time is [x]. If your arrival is Mon-Thu, your check-in time is [x]". That's not quite a nice, but it might do the trick?

-Michelle

So, I have a few more :).

I have been mainly listing on vacationrentals.com in the past, and that's where my main booking calendar is located. I understand I will have to manually put the data into ownerreservations.com - no problem. But, I just also listed one of my properties with homeaway.com and it has a blank calendar. Should I have my 2 listings "mapped" to keep them synchronized, or should I let the software here push it down to both sites separately? Does it matter if I add the listing sites before or after I manually enter the actual dates booked?

Is there any logic available in the template emails? I like to tell them their checkin and checkout times in an automatically generated email, and weekenders get different times than full weeks. Maybe there's a different way to do that.

It helps very much. Thanks!

Hi Jacques,

Our system will keep your calendars up to date on a lot of listing sites. We do update VRBO and HA calendars, and so that should keep VacationRentals.com up to date as well since VRBO/HA use one integrated calendar for all three sites.

Unless I'm mistaken, I believe that VacationRentals.com also accepts iCal imports which we provide so you can keep it up to date that way as well. I might be thinking of a differnet listing site though.

At the moment, we only sync OUT not in. So our system will not automatically "pull in" the listings you already have. You can enter those bookings manually, or I can provide you an Excel spreadsheet you can use that we can import for you.

At the moment, each property in our system has its own rate and billing settings so you'd have to enter your rates 3 times.

That's exactly how our system works for owners who do check payments. Create a quote (click Quotes > Add) and fill it out. Then use the Email tab on the quote to send it to the guest. When the guest gets it, they can open it and click to read and sign everything online. The instructions tell them how many days they have to send in the check until the booking is auto-canceled. You can also view the same quote info that the guest sees by clicking Payment Form on the quote directly after creating it.

Hope this helps,

-Michelle

I just signed up for my test month, and am anxious to use this service to reduce my time committment to bookings, as well as finally being able to easily take security deposits!


Can I integrate the existing calendar I have on vacationrentals.com or do I have to do that manually? When I take a booking here, will it be able to update my calendar on vacationrentals.com automatically or do I have to do that manually (since homeawayconnect is dead now).

I have 3 properties with nearly identical seasonal booking rates, which are pretty longwinded. Can I copy the rates and make adjustments or do I have to enter it all manually 3 times?

I currently take checks, at least until I get the merchant CC thing set up. I think the process should be that the person can reserve it themselves when they sign the renter agreement, but it expires in a few days if I don't enter a received check in time. I tried a test booking, and it seemed like I couldn't finalize the booking without saying I received a check, and they hadn't signed the renter agreement at that point.

Hi Ella,

Great question. Scheduled emails are sent once ever day between 1-3 AM EST. If you set a scheduled email to be sent for 0 days, it will be sent the next morning (assuming it's after 1-3 AM EST).

We have some designs for scheduled emails and templates that will add a lot more flexibility. For instance, the ability to send based on events and not just time. An "event" is something like when a booking is created or when a second payment is collected or when the booking is paid in full.

-Michelle

I'm curious, What is the frequency of sending the emails?
It does seem that under the "0" setting emails get sent next day or late at night.
I've set up directions with the booking confirmation for now, as Michelle suggested, because of that. The paragraphs allowed there are a bit short, hence why seperate email made sense to me.
Ella

Thanks, that fixed the problem.

Really appreciate your fast response, you guys are awesome!

I looked into the details of the email template and it looked like the HTML was slightly corrupted at the end, possibly from by hand editing, and this was causing the editor to crash.

I fixed the corruption and everything looks good again on this end. Try resending the email.

We're looking into this.

Are you seeing the issue with any other bookings using this email, or any other email templates?