General Help and Questions

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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?

My guest forwarded me an email she'd received (our Check-In details email) and it was not formatted correctly, lots of jibberish. I opened the template and it displays fine from the system.

I then went in to "send again" and the system hangs. I've tried on IE 11 and Chrome, both hang.

This is for Booking # ORB281808 the "Check-In email".

Please advise, I need to get them their check-in details :)

Damon

Yes, exactly right.

-Michelle

Hi Ella,

You probably want to use a Booking field code, not a Payment one. Something like BGFULL for the name and BGEMAIL for the email address. BGFULL is the full name of the booking guest. BGEMAIL is the email address of the booking guest.

-Michelle

Got it! Needs to be changed to {CEMAIL}, not {PAYBGEMAIL} (as there were no payments made)

It did not work.
Under emails for that "booking" ( deleted url ) it says " This email failed to be sent. Reason: A 'TO' email address is required." In my template I have {PAYBFULL} for To: field . It seems to be correct. Any ideas?
Ella

Hi Ella,

The other option - if you want to send directions/instructions at the time of booking - is to add custom paragraphs to the booking confirmation email. You can find that under the Property > Email Settings > Booking Confirmation To Guest. You can add as many custom paragraphs to the email as you want. This email will eventually be changed to an email template - we're moving everything to the email template system - but will work for the time being.

-Michelle

After playing a little in the bookings section I did discover that if you put 0 it does indeed schedule the email to be sent on that day. :)

Hello,
Will putting "0" days after booked send an instant or same day email to the guest?
Thinking of providing directions to guests right after booking was made.
Thank you
Ella

Hi Ella and Claudia,

No updates on this yet, but it's still on the roadmap.

-Michelle

Good question. I was JST talking with my sister about this option the other day and didn't know what happened to that. She hasn't signed up yet until she has more assurance that the guest saw certain things on her rental agreement.

Is there an update on this?

Thanks,
Claudia

Hello,
Just wondering if there is an update on this :)

Hi Claudia,

Currently there is no way to use a template for that email, but that's a known problem we're working on fixing.

-Michelle

Is there a way for us to enter a template for these alerts? Currently, my housekeeper receives an email for any changes in dates, and there is nothing in the body of the email, only your standard… this was sent to you, etc.

Can it have the same information that is sent to the guest, when there is a date change? There is a template out there for that.

Currently, the only thing telling the third party the change in date is the subject.

Thanks,
Claudia

Update: I believe this was a caching issue now. I closed IE and re-opened and all was fine :)

Damon

I'm doing some clean up and adjusting amounts owing vs. amounts paid. For some reason the amounts owing showing up on the Bookings listing doesn't match the amount owing after I make adjustments to the charges from within the booking Window. ORB279150 and ORB261694 are 2 examples of this.

I suspect it is timing related since I made the changes quickly, but wanted to let you know.

Damon

I'm not a programmer, but I know a bunch of them :) Can you email me some documentation or give me a rough idea of how much coding time it might take?


Damon

Hi Damon,

We have some web hooks and APIs available that you could get access to, but you'd need to do some custom programming to integrate. Is that something you're interested in?

-Michelle