General Help and Questions

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Our prices on VRBO our 12% higher to cover their fees, I just want to make sure the fee structure will stay the same at 12% higher.

If you have manually entered booking data, it may indeed be best to use overwrite mode, so Channel Bridge doesn't get confused about what is and is not already present and result in a garbled combination.

It is rare that you would want the center option manual charges mode - this would only be necessary if the guest paid for their normal booking charges via the channel (the data Channel Bridge is importing), and also, you had additional charges and/or payments outside of the channel directly between you and the guest.

Can someone explain manual mode on Chanel Bridge settings? I read the articles but it still wasn't super clear.

Hi,

When generating a statement, the system essentially backfills any data since the last statement date. So theoretically you could do weekly statements per property.

To do this when generating an owner statement, Change the statement date manually to the day of the week you do your statements on (thursdays). There's no means automatically to do this, however it should generally work.

If you'd like a more long term solution, I'd recommend writing this up as a suggestion in our Feature Request forum, so other clients can vote up your ideas for new and improved features in OwnerRez:
https://www.ownerreservations.com/forums/requests

~Caleb

Hi Ata,

It looks like the guest paid column is currently set to zero percent, this is important as the system calculates how much can be remitted via the following:

Lesser of Owner Amount x Guest Paid % or In Period %

in this case since views the guest paid amount as zero, it's resulting in a total can remit value of zero. Taking a look at that booking on the transactions tab, are the payments marked as deposited? I would hazard an educated guess that they may not be.

If that is correct then you select to include bookings that are marked as undeposited during the statement generation process:

Of course if the deposit should be marked as deposited, you can manually mark it as such by clicking into the transactions tab of the booking and select he payment. There should be a "Mark as deposited" option present if it hasn't yet been.

In any case if you're still having issues, please feel free to reach out to our helpdesk with more details (I see you note you have I'll try to find that here in a second) and we can discuss this more in depth.

~Caleb

Thank you Steven for your thorough reply.  Unfortunately it doesn't get to the heart of the matter.  I have a feeling, from looking at OwnerRez and all of the posts on various sites (Quickbooks help sites, Reddit) I am not the only one to run into this issue.

First, although OwnerRez is clear that you don't support a full trust accounting model (https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/property-management-overview#accounting), it is nonetheless also clear that the basic model is that of trust accounting:

1. PM takes in all the rents and fees and puts them into an account, which I'll call the Trust Account. To avoid any chance of co-mingling of funds, I have (as recommended by my accountant and everything I've read on the web) created a separate bank account for each Owner.

2. PM pays ongoing expenses out of its own operating account (not the Trust Account)

3. At the end of the period (usually a month), the PM does the following:

a. Generates a statement to the owner detailing the rents, fees, commissions, etc.

b. Pays itself its commission from the Trust Account

c. Pays the Owner their rents (less expenses and commissions etc) from the Trust Account

This model, while "clean" from an accounting POV, is a freaking nightmare from a practical POV:

-- REQUIRES at LEAST two overpriced subscriptions to Quickbooks (1) for the PM operating account and (2) for a "company" that holds the trust accounts.  (You could even make a case that each trust account needs its own "company" subscription to Quickbooks for bright-line separation of funds.)  I have a desktop version of QB where I don't have to pay a subscription for each "company", but at the price of multiple manual entries of everything.

-- REQUIRES a separate bank account for each trust account. I had to switch banks to avoid paying fees on each of these, and it took quite a while to find one with no fees that wasn't also a total fly-by-night fintech play, each with dozens of horror stories on Reddit. Even so, the bank I found has a limit of ten accounts under the same EIN, so if my PM business is successful I'll have an issue down the road.

-- If I want to avoid the QB Online subscription fees, which I (and every PM) very much do wish to avoid, REQUIRES manual entry of each expense and each rental amount received TWICE: (1) in OwnerRez in order to generate the Owner Statement; and (2) in the appropriate trust bank account

-- REQUIRES manual entry in my PM operating account (even with an overpriced QB Online subscription) of each commission payment *and* each and every expense incurred by me as PM on behalf of the property in question.

So, in sum, for this model to work, I am looking at either

(1) At least $80/m at current price to Intuit for QB Online for two "companies" (Operating Acct @$25/m + Trust Account for multiple properties @$55/m since I need class tracking), which even though they're online and connected to OwnerRez (another $15/m for two properties), requires manual entry of commission into my Operating Account and manual entry of expenses into each Trust Account, OR

(2) No extra fees to Intuit by using an outdated desktop version, which I happen to own, but other may not, BUT manual entry THREE times for all expenses, and lots of other manual entry.

These are two very bad solutions.

I get it that OwnerRez is not an accounting program, and that you may not have accountants on staff, but this is a LOT of work with a great deal of chance for error. Furthermore, finding banks that will let you open multiple accounts (one for each property) either with or without fees, is a real pain. Whether or not OwnerRez is in a position to solve these issues, I sure wish there was a lot more help just to understand the issues.

There are very few resources on the web for guidance either on the accounting side or the property management side (lots for longer-term rentals, very little for short-term rentals.

Given that OwnerRez customers are pretty much shoe-horned into this model (as opposed to, say, taking a straight % co-host payout from Airbnb), I would have hoped that there would be a LOT more help provided for novices like me.  Instead, none of these complications are flagged in advance, and once I dove in, there were no resources for me to follow to try to work this out.  The other companies you put forward don't help because they solve problems that aren't the ones I have, and they also charge fees.

I urge OwnerRez to do more to explain this and to help. It took me a long time just to be able to answer your answer coherently.  This a time-consuming and expensive pain in the ass just to move the exact same charges from software to software, with the possibility of error being introduced at every turn.

Hi, I just sent in a support request and I did not get an autoresponse saying that the request had been received.  Should I assume that the request was not received and that I should send it again (I sent it by email to help@ownerrez.com). 

Thanks.

I see no tickets from you within the last week, so, as happens sometimes with email, it may have gotten delayed or lost.  It might still show up after a bit, but if not, yeah, you should resubmit.

Hi, I just sent in a support request and I did not get an autoresponse saying that the request had been received.  Should I assume that the request was not received and that I should send it again (I sent it by email to help@ownerrez.com). 

Thanks.

At this point, please write in to the Helpdesk for further assistance, because we can't post specific details about your account here in the public forum for the world to see.  If you can provide screenshots with specific examples of the problem, that will make investigation quicker.

Thanks much 

I did connect API to Airbnb, and I need some help

1. prices still didn’t sync 

2. I set seasonal nightly minimum of 3 days by default for May through October, however the calendar on Airbnb still allows 2 nights min on weekdays and 3 one weekends

3. I opted in for the feature that prevents orphan nights, however, I don’t like the message that says “host is not available to check you out on that day” I would rather have a message in minimum night is 5 for example, any way to change that message?

thanks 

OwnerRez is only able to push rates to Airbnb and Vrbo via an API connection, which I see you have not yet established.  That's the solution for this problem:

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/channel-management-api-integrations-airbnb-setup-connecting

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/channel-management-api-integrations-vrbo-setup-connecting

However, I see that you have a Jumpstart call scheduled with our staff.  If you don't feel comfortable proceeding with the API connection on your own, your Jumpstart agent would be glad to walk you through the steps.

Good afternoon. 
I integrated Ownerrez with pricelabs, I tested it through “rate checker” and it seems like prices are synced between Ownerrez and pricelabs, I deactivated pricelabs minimum stay feature to allow Ownerrez to control it 
However, neither prices, nor the new seasonal nightly minimum that I set in Ownerrez is actually being reflected on my calendars on Vrbo and Airbnb 
Can someone help me?

Thanks 

We do as well, Ken is it possible to book a walkthrough meeting with you? You are always so good at answering our questions, and explaining them in a way we understand. Thank you!

I have contacted you via your recent support ticket.

We do as well, Ken is it possible to book a walkthrough meeting with you? You are always so good at answering our questions, and explaining them in a way we understand. Thank you!

Hello, so we are doing a statement for an owner of ours and on the statement preview it says the guest has paid zero but on the booking itself the guest is fully paid. Is this a glitch or did we enter something wrong? We also sent an email from agent@ata and made a previous post about the statements as well. Thank you

I just had this happen. Price Labs shows a minimum 5 night stay, and Booking.com just booked it for 1 night.

Hello, we have over 60 properties and as such have decided that a weekly payout would work best for our owners. How it works for our business is after the guest pays, which could be after arrival if they're a long-standing client, we do the payouts on Wednesdays and the statements on Thursdays. We have a lot of month long bookings that don't always pay until after the first of the month. We always do the statement dates by the arrival dates, but the system wont let us do multiple statements for the same date, on the same property. Switching to a monthly statement isn't an option because it would take my assistant/booking agent at least a day if not more and my owners want to get paid ASAP. Any advice would be very much appreciated on this. 

In that case, collecting payments directly from the guest would be a violation of Vrbo TOS - you'd need to work through Vrbo to handle that.

Thanks, Ken, I'll dig into that in the morning.  As to a security deposit thanks for the suggestion and I agree security deposits can be valuable.  I use them whenever a younger guest talks me into staying at one of my properties.  But the question then becomes how much of a deposit do I take $250, $500, $1000.   When I have charged a deposit it's been $500 so this instance would have exceeded the limit.   I'd also point out in 15 years of doing this with anywhere from 3 to 10 units I've only had malicious/negligent damages 1 other time.  That's somewhere between 3k and 5k guests.   I charge a small damage insurance fee for up to $500 in non malicious or negligent damages and it pays for things like broken plates and things i'd be embarrassed to confront a guest about, avoids having to do a through inventory after each stay, and avoids tying up a guests funds.

Thank you. It is not API integrated, but rather ical and pulling contact info via Channel Bridge.

the guest is seeing a note about paying a security deposit and then payment information after clicking the link in the "Sign the Rental Agreement" email, which is confusing because they have already paid via VRBO and the security deposit is covered there.

Something is off here - Vrbo guests should not be being asked for a security deposit credit card.  If this is a platform booking where Vrbo is collecting payments, you are not allowed to take the guest's card yourself for a security deposit.  If you are using the Vrbo API and doing your own payment processing, then Vrbo passes the guest's card information to OwnerRez automatically, so it is available for payments as well as security deposits and there is no need for the guest to provide it again.

Can you write in to the Helpdesk with the specific booking where this occurred, so we can investigate?

Hi!  I was wondering if it was possible to change the landing page after a guest clicks the link in the email that requests signing of a rental agreement when the guest has booked via VRBO.  Right now, the guest is seeing a note about paying a security deposit and then payment information after clicking the link in the "Sign the Rental Agreement" email, which is confusing because they have already paid via VRBO and the security deposit is covered there. I was hoping to streamline that landing page so that my channel guests do not see information that does not apply to them.

There are several different aspects to answering this question.

Strictly speaking, it is not possible to "send a request for a payment invoice through OwnerRez", in the sense of sending a guest an add-on quote to their booking for them to accept or reject.

However, for any booking where you are the merchant of record, you can freely change the Charges, adding whatever is needed.  And since you would already have the guest's credit card on file from their previous payments, you can simply charge the new balance on the Transactions tab.  The guest is not directly involved.

You can send them an updated full invoice as described here:

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/template-receipt-billing-summary

Normally, we would recommend using a security deposit hold to provide for this situation:

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/security-deposit-holds

In this particular case, it's too late for that, but requiring security deposit holds for future bookings may make things easier should this happen in the future.  Note that security deposit holds are not insurance, and do not have any cost unless you actually need to keep the money - then you have to pay normal processing fees on the amount.

How do you send a request for a payment invoice through OwnerRez after a channel booking.  In particular, this one was Vrbo, the guest broke many items.   Please don't tell me about OwnerRez's insurance options.    How do I invoice a guest beyond the channel booking fees?  With Vrbo we are the merchant of record.  It seems that we should bill from OwnerRez and not from the channel.

I thought i found the answer but it's not working as I would expect.   Go to the specific booking  Select <Transactions>  select <Request>  then select <Request Payment>  I then select <specific amount>  then fill in my comment & choose <compose email>.  After doing this it takes me to a payment screen showing $0 balance and there is no history of email to guest.   So after entering the transaction (twice now) there is no sign of it.

Thanks very much, the is the expensive mistake caveat ? 

Hi Liz,

This is a recent change from Booking.com that we've begun researching but they seem to have made more changes. Could you please write an email to help@ownerrez.com with the subject "Booking Messaging 225032" and we can provide you the URLs to add on that page for testing?

Here is a very general example:

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/review-request

As to when you should send out the request, that's up to you - you may get different or better results at different timings, depending on your guests.

If you need more specific assistance, please write in to the Helpdesk with details of what you're trying to accomplish, and we'd be glad to give more detailed instructions.

Sending emails, and sending messages via the Vrbo internal messaging system, are two completely different systems that do not connect.  They even have different capabilities, such that many common email functions like formatting text can't be sent via the channel messengers.

However, you can configure duplicate sets of templates in OwnerRez, so as to send common messages by both email and channel message.

Emails have many possible reasons to not be delivered, but the most common is that they are misidentified as spam by the guest's email system.  OwnerRez has limited and control and visibility over this, but, it's good practice to suggest to guests to check their spam folders.

As far as emails sent from Vrbo, OwnerRez has no control or visibility over those - you'd need to reach out to Vrbo tech support for assistance with your Vrbo account configuration.

If you have a specific example of something not working as expected, please send in full details to the Helpdesk and we'd be glad to take a look.

I have guests that checked out a few months ago from my direct  booking and I thought a review trigger template  was set up when I did the set through Ownerrez.
Where do I find the steps to set up a trigger for direct booking reviews.  Do I set it up to trigger on check out day, or 2 days after? 

Thank you.

Hello all.

when we get a vrbo booking request through ownerrez we receive an email from ownerrez stating that we have a booking request. (Normal)

When I send a reply to the the booking request in ownerrez via “email this guest”, the message does not post in vrbo communication area so I have no way of knowing if the reply was sent to guest or not. It does show in the “email history” tab in ownerrez. I seem to remember that in the past it did show up on vrbo.

I have also contacted several of these guests directly via text and they inform me that they have in fact not received my reply.

Something else that I have noticed is that we no longer get an email from vrbo. It seems to me that we used to get a notice from vrbo and ownerrez via email.

Am doing something wrong in the way I reply or do I have an integration problem?
Thanks in advance for any assistance.

Steve