General Help and Questions

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Hi Claudia,

We're working on something we call "global settings". It's basically taking all the property level settings - the options you change and set at the property level - and moving them to the account level. That way you can change settings in one place and have it affect all properties.

This has become more and more necessary as we've worked with owners that don't understand where the settings are and/or have multiple properties. Most owners with 3 or more properties don't have different rates, taxes, billing settings, leases, etc for each property. All or most of their properties have similar settings.

You'll still be able to set settings at the property and quote levels.

This wasn't something we planned, but there are some changes we'd like to make to the system in 2013 that require us having settings at the global/account level. It was getting too difficult to ignore.

Upcoming roadmap:

- Reporting
- Expanding inquiry workflow
- Adding payment options and reminders
- Expanding payment forms
- Templates for security deposit emails and the booking confirmation email
- QuickBooks integration
- Inquiry widgets and generic inquiry email parsing
- Updating design throughout UI

As always, these are subject to change at any time.

Hope this helps,

-Michelle

Hi Michele,

Could you please tell me what the next sprints will be involving and when they are expected?

Thanks,
Claudia

Yes this helps, will try this out! Thank you!

Hi Jon,

I believe our rate settings can accomodate that type of structure. Open your property in OwnerRez and click on the Rates tab. Then do the following:

1) Created a rate period if you haven't already
2) Once you have a rate period, click to view it
3) Add a charge type
4) Under the Charge Type dropdown, select "Single Night"
5) Set the Rate field to the amount you charge PER NIGHT for the 2-4 night stays
6) Finish the other options and Save

That will take care of 2-4 night stays. To handle the 5+ night stays, do the following:

1) Open the rate period and click to add another charge type
2) Under the Charge Type dropdown, select "Week"
3) Set the Rate field to the amount you charge FOR THE ENTIRE STAY of 5 nights
4) Change the Included Nights field to 5
5) Uncheck the "Calculate the rate for extra nights by using other charge types" field
6) Another field will appear below it called "Use Custom Rate" where you'll fill in your PER NIGHT rate for everything after 5.
4) Finish the other options and Save

On the cleaning, we don't have an option to add it some of the time, but you could add it to every booking and then manually remove it on the ones where it isn't charged.

To do that, click the Add-Ons tab and add a Surcharge for "Cleaning Fee" with the amount (or percentage, which you can enter as well).

Then, when a new quote is created, simply click Charges and take off that line item if you don't want it to be included. It's very fast to edit/remove charges from a quote or booking.

Hope this helps,

-Michelle

I just ran across this site, referenced from a Yahoo Vacation Owners forum. It looks very promising, with a reasonable pricing structure and features. A few questions:

1. Our current rates provide a discount for 5+ nights of rental (one rate for 2-4 nights, min. 2 nights, and another for 5+ nights). We don't care if it's weekdays or weekends. Is there a way for ownerez to accommodate this structure?
2. Currently we charge more for cleaning based on # of days (one flat rate for 2-4 nights, one for 5-10 nights). Is there a way to handle this?

Perhaps it's time to change the way we do billings, if what we're doing is pretty non-standard...but it has worked for us.

Hi skikirkwood,

The 'Tax' line items calculate against all taxable line items ABOVE them. So in order to have the current tax line items update, insert the new row of charges ABOVE them. Or you can add more tax line items below the new charges.

The charge grid is very editable. You can insert/remove rows anywhere you want. The 'Taxable' flag only signals tax lines below to calculate on those rows. The tax lines can be anywhere on the grid.

The guest does NOT receive a new email automatically for the new charge. We don't do that because we don't know if that's your intention. Often, the owner only wants to adjust the charges (fixing typos, moving line items around) without alerting the guest.

You can certainly send them a manual email on your own, explaining the new charges.

You can also collect a payment by clicking on the Payments tab (under their booking) and clicking the "Collect New Payment" button. Any credit card they've used in the past will be on file for a quick collection.

-Michelle

I have a group renting my house right now that wants to stay an additional night. So I believe to charge them for this I can edit the charges for their booking, add an additional night's charge, and they will get an email with a link to pay for the additional night. Is that correct?

I tried to do this, and selected the "taxed" checkbox for the new item, but the tax line item did not appear to be updated.

Thanks. I am more interested in Damage Insurance.

Claudia

Hi Claudia,

Travel Insurance is already in the software. You can enable it to show up on any property or quote. If you're referring to selling YOUR OWN insurance, we are still not ready to integrate that yet.

Accident/Damage Insurance has not yet been scheduled for development.

-Michelle

Any updates on when and if these two items will be offered?

Claudia

Hi Claudia,

At the moment, there is no option for creating different templates based on the property. That is something we will be adding in the future.

However, you can insert a field for the property name which will show the guest the right information. So instead of hardcoding in the SC property name, insert a field instead which will make sure the correct property name comes up based on whatever the inquiry had.

Hope this helps,

-Michelle

How do make different templates for different properties? Right now, if I try to answer an inquiry for my SC property, the PA property comes up.

I am sure it is in here somewhere, I just don't seem to be able to find it.

Thanks,
Claudia

That is the WORST interface I have ever seen. But thanks - I think that did it.

David

VRBO's contact system has always been a little screwy. You have to use the "Add Contact" dropdown to add another one. But you should be able to have a unique email address for each unique property. We have users that have 6 or 8 properties in VRBO, and I have not heard of any problems from them. Please let me know what happens with this.

I think that VRBO may have changed something - we have two properties linked to the same account - it seems that VRBO is now only allowing one set of email's for both properties. In the past I think I could specify different emails, but now when I change it in one listing - it changes it in the other. The result is that OwnerRez makes inquiries for both properties look like they are for the same property. Any one else notice this? I am going to send a note to VRBO to see if it is a temporary issue.

Veronica - Thanks! It had been so long since it set-up the calendar I forgot that the connect ID was different. That did the trick.

David

@David

Are you using a HomeAway**Connect** account? As I understand it, the login email/password and property number are based on the Connect system which is at www.homeawayconnect.com. If you already have a Connect account, make sure the VRBO and HomeAway listings are both showing up there. Just a thought.

I have a new Calendar sync issue that just arose.
We spun up a new property and purchased the "bundle' from VRBO that gives us a VRBO listing and a HomeAway listing. The issue is that is it not a 'traditional' HomeAway listing (since it is part of the bundle) - it is the same listing number as VRBO with VB amended to it. When I try and calender sync from OwnersRez to HomAway I put in the credentials for HomeAway and the listing number and I get a "The login credentials succeeded, but the property ID was not found." message. If I try and put a VB at the end of the listing, OwnersRez removes it. The listing number is 444546vb.

Thanks,
David

We are planning on adding both property-level templates and conditional fields.

Property-level templates will basically be just like the templates you see now only you can create different ones for different properties.

Conditional fields will allow you to change what text shows based on some kind of condition. EG. "if property is [x] then do..."

At the moment, we're finishing search (to be released today or tomorrow), widgets and some basic reporting. Then it's back to email templates and inquiries.

The listing numbers from VRBO, Homeaway etc... are not flowing through to email sent through OwnerReservations. I looked at the template fields and couldn't find it. Guests keep requesting that info so they can tie my response back to the original listing.

I have more than 1 property so I cannot hard code the info into the body of the message, I need a variable field.

Can you help me with this please?

Yes, you could very easily do that as well. Just define another rate period called "Holiday Season" or whatever with those specific days of the year and give it its own rates.

You're very welcome. I saw a voice message from you as well. Someone will call you back by end of day.

-Michelle

We generally have Holidays (like 24, 25, 26th) rather than just one day. Would it be better to just add a new 'season' rather than clicking your holiday premium box?
Thanks for your quick repies!

Hi J.Villalobos,

Assuming we're talking about non-CC payments, no. Neither has been released. We changed priorities over the summer to work more on email related issues as you may have noticed from the blog posts and releases.

To be clear, CC payments are all handled automatically and you can schedule the timing on those just like the security deposits.

This is only referring to non-CC (check or cash) guests.

-Michelle

Hi J.Villalobos,

Quotes are automated in that the line items are calculated based on your property rates.

You can set different rate periods for different times of the year including: seasonal, specific date ranges or "default" which covers anything outside the other two.

Then, inside each rate period, you can specify your nightly, weekend, weekly, etc rates with lots of customization as to which days of the week are allowed, how many adults are included and a lot more.

Holidays are above and beyond that. Holidays allow you to add ANOTHER surcharge on top of your normals rates (either per night or per stay) if a holiday night is triggered.

For instance, suppose someone inquired about Dec 20-27 and you have the holiday premium set to add $50 per stay. The quote might automatically calculate something like this:

Rent 6 nights (12/20-20) at December rates $800
Rent Holiday premium for Christmas $ 50
Tax Local lodging tax 5%
------------------------------------------------------
Total: $892.5

Does that make sense?

-Michelle

Thank you! Perfect!

Michelle-

Just read the blog write up... and as I'm just looking into using the software, I'm wondering if anything has been updated since that blog post.
We have High Season, Low Season and Holiday SEASON rates rather than an individual day. We also have tiered pricing per person. Are your quotes automated?

Have the reminder payment emails been released yet? OR... do you have an alert to remind me that I need to email them?

Hi J.Villalobos,

No more update or ETAs yet, but thank you for checking back and nudging it. Payment reminders and scheduled non-CC payments are highly requested.

-Michelle

Hi J.Villalobos,

I have no ETA yet on that. It hasn't crept further up the priority list yet because it isn't often requested or mentioned.

So much to do!

-Michelle

Hi J.Villalobos,

We've been refunding the new FANF fee for any customer that has had it appear on their statement. We've also changed banking partners to a different group that guarantees the flat 2.95% without any FANF fees. So it's just the flat 2.95% at the end of the month.

-Michelle