General Help and Questions

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To pay Occupancy Tax, I need to provide the total revenue per property, and the total "exempt" revenue per property (Exempt = Bookings on which tax has already been paid, such as AirBNB). The county website then subtracts these to determine the revenue on which tax is due.

There is no good report for this in OR.

The only way I can do it is is run a Tax Summary report including all listing sites, then run another report with just AirBNB.

Surely there is a better way to do this.

Tim

I was wondering what other hosts are experiencing with the new VRBO premier host and cancellation policies.  Starting January 1 2024, VRBO added two new criteria for premier host status: (a) Maintain a 95% or higher acceptance rate and (b) Maintain a 1% or lower owner-initiated cancellation rate.  I had one booking that came in a couple days before New Years Eve last year, and my cleaner wasn't available so I declined the reservation without ever taking payment.  Unfortunately in the OwnerRez->VRBO integration, VRBO considered this a cancellation and counted this against the "1% cancellation rate" criteria.  VRBO IPM support was completely unhelpful (They sent a ridiculous email stating that "Cancellation" and "Declines" are the same thing, contradicting their own documentation).  Eventually after escalating to the head of VRBO customer support and multiple phone calls and emails, they waived the cancellation penalty and reinstated my premier host status.

Now VRBO has a new policy effective May 23, 2024, where a cancellation will incur a 7-day temporary listing level suspension in addition to a cancellation fee.  Unfortunately the problem I had over new years just occurred again, a guest made a reservation request, then immediately followed up with an email that said they couldn't afford the price and asked me to cancel.  I never charged their card, cancelled the reservation, and VRBO marked that reservation as a cancellation even though it was never confirmed.

Does anyone know if you just ignore a reservation request in VRBO, does it mark the reservation as a declined reservation or a canceled reservation?  Or is there a better way to handle situations like this?

Thanks!

No, I'm not aware that using the API has any effect on cancellation penalties.

I have to cancel my first reservation since going live with OR with API connections.  This is at the guest's request but Airbnb is dragging their feet on handling it on her end.  I think I remember reading somewhere that with the API connection there would no longer be penalties to the landlord if we cancel.  Am I remembering correctly or just wishful thinking?  Thanks

Hi Heather,

A common method of setting a 2nd payment trigger outside of relying on the system message and changing the system messages template. would be to use the "Scheduled Time" Type of trigger for however long before the booking is due. and then setting the criteria to only send to bookings that have a partially paid status or zero paid status. Of course there are a few similar ways to approach this but depend on exactly what you're attempting to accomplish with the trigger.

Again however you can always update the default payment reminder system message with an existing template. This can be done via Settings > System messages select the actions drop down for the appropriate system message in this case "Send Payment Reminder to Guest" and then selecting either "Use an existing template" or "Change Message.

If those options still don't fit quite what you're looking for, any suggestions you may have we always appreciate being written up as a feature request here https://www.ownerreservations.com/forums/requests so other clients can vote on your ideas.

~Caleb

No worries, happy to help!

Many thanks, so sorry for being such a pest.  Have a great day!

You are correct, you cannot turn it off, because it already is off.  :-)  We don't turn Damage Protection on by default.

Hi Ken, I found that section but cannot seem to turn it off?  Am I missing something?  Thanks

You can check the status here:

https://app.ownerrez.com/settings/damageprotection 

How do I make sure the Damage Protection Coverages is not activated on my OR account across all properties as we collect a refundable security deposit.  Thank you.

Perfect, that helped me find that I had set it up correctly before . . . but embarrassed to say I couldn't find it.  All set now.  Really appreciate the quick response!

Here's our support doc on how to do that:

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/capture-additional-fields-on-checkout-quote-acceptance

If you're still having problems, please write in to our Helpdesk with the example where it didn't work, and we'll take a look.

Can someone direct me to where to set it up for the guest to upload their photo ID? I thought I had that all set but it doesn't seem to be working now on our first reservation through OR. Thanks.

Thanks Ken. I found the section under property description. The fine print. You can tick a box in there.

Sorry,

Could-we close this topic? It looks like they are all working fine now. Thanks for the usual support.

Hi,

Is anyone else having the issue with booking and calendar widgets which are set to "all properties" but showing for all properties data from the default property (i.e. first property on the drop-down lists)?

It looks like it's since yesterday.

Thanks

There is some limited ability to control specific data included, but, we do plan on adding more fine-grained permissions over time.

I'm not quite sure I understand the details of your accounting question though, perhaps you can write in to the Helpdesk with a specific example?

It would be super helpful to have more flexibility on what an owner sees on their portal. For example, show the reservation # but not the details like the number of adults, children, pets, and the source listing.

Also, have the option to show owner revenue after a statement is published. We markup the rates depending on the OTA and manager income. However, the markup is included as part of the rate. This confuses the owner because they don't know the 'true' nightly rate.

I wish the payment fields could be added to the booking template info as well. I think it's important to remind the guests what card they scheduled their final payment on. As most of my final payments are over $4,000.00 it could mitigate a lot of problems. I spent one full afternoon creating a custom email template with the payment fields only to discover that I can't set up any triggers for payment templates. It was a HUGE waste of time and very frustrating. 

This is exactly what Im trying to do.  I cant figure out how to create a trigger for a 2nd payment reminder email, as it appears that triggers are only allowed for "booking conversations".  I must be missing something?  

Unfortunately, Booking.com does not have a "House Rules" area in the same way that Airbnb and Vrbo do.  You could mention it in any of the property description fields, but, at present those are also configured directly in Booking.com, not OwnerRez.

I am looking for info on how and where we put the info requiring a rental agreement with Booking.com. I keep finding the Airbnb and VRBO information but am going around in circles with booking.com.

Help as ever gratefully received.

James

Unfortunately, no, this is not possible, because Vrbo has no custom quote API, nor can you generate OR quotes and send them to Vrbo guests who have not yet booked.

Ok, so pre-approval not needed. Though what if I wanted to send the guest a quote for different dates? Is there any way to do this through VRBO or OR?

Please get rid of the conflicts on VRBO. Other hosting sites have figured it out. The red conflict is a huge problem, especially when Airbnb or Book.com have an issue. It takes hours and days to figure it all out if the conflict was not there in the first place it would make life easier. API does the same thing.

PLEASE YOU CAN MAKE OWNER REZ A STAND ALONG JUST LIKE AIRBN VRBO AND BOOKING.COM! 

Facebook has some funny caching issues. Here's more information on how to fix that:

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/hosted-facebook-sharing 

How do I get my Facebook post photo to be different when I share the OwnerRez link to my property on Facebook.  When I put the web link in to Ownerrez website, it is pointing to an old photo and despite making some changes in various places, it is not changing.  TIA!

Thanks Ken!

This can be a complicated question, and we'd be glad to discuss in more detail via a Helpdesk question, but, the short answer is: for both Airbnb and Vrbo, you need to establish a separate connection in OwnerRez for each separate Airbnb and Vrbo account.

Now, how you choose to divide things up is up to you.  Some PMs choose to have each of their owners in separate Airbnb/Vrbo accounts.  Others prefer to have all the properties, even with different owners, in one giant Airbnb and Vrbo accounts.

Once you have an established API connection to an Airbnb or Vrbo account, you can push a new property listing up into Airbnb/Vrbo via that API connection from OwnerRez.  But, that will create the new property listing inside of the existing Airbnb/Vrbo account, which may or may not be what you want.