General Help and Questions

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Hi Michelle,

When does this happen? I have one that I deliberately left to expire (yesterday). Today, it is still on the calendar as booked. If I look at General Info, it states it expired.

Claudia

Hi Claudia,

It goes into 'canceled' status which means that it disappears from all calendars and the dates are free to be booked again. Both you (the owner) and the guest receive cancellation emails, with an explanation of why it was canceled. This all happens automatically.

If you want to find canceled bookings (suppose you want to look up all records) you can do that on the bookings grid by selecting the 'Include Canceled' checkbox on the filter bar. You can find the bookings grid by clicking on the Bookings menu and clicking Grid over on the right.

-Michelle

Hi Michelle,

What happens when a "Booking" expires? It stays on the calendar as "booked" and gets lost in the abyss or a letter notifies you of this? Can there be an alert?

Thanks,
Claudia

Exactly, the guest would nearly never be filling that out.

Claudia

Yes, in the way I envision it, you AND the guest would both be able to mark it as declined. You could mark it from the control panel, and the guest could mark it on the public quote form. Again though, I doubt few if any guests would actually do that. It would mostly be for your records.

-Michelle

Sounds good!

Claudia

Decline sounds good, but it would have to be the owner that would say it, possibly. They probably will not come back to the quote, on their own, to just fill in DECLINE. However, when I send out my followup letters, that is when they would tell me and I would fill it in, at that point. You know what I mean?

Claudia

Yes, we're calling it "notes" internally, but the idea is the same. You'll be able to create notes and link them to inquiries, quotes and bookings.

-Michelle

Hi Claudia,

I think what we want is a single DECLINED flag with a possible explanation. Sometime's the guest will say "too expensive, sorry!" or something like that that you would put in the explanation.

We could have a button on the quote itself with "Decline" on it so that the guest can say it themselves and provide their own explanation, though few probably will.

NO ANSWER is taken care of by the expired status. If someone doesn't answer for a few days, the quote will automatically expire. To me, EXPIRED = NO ANSWER.

Thoughts?

-Michelle

Will there be a comment box, at any point, so that owners can right things about the renter. This would only be for our records. Whether it is during the inquiry stage or after they book.

Claudia

Do you think you have an option we can click on to state UNINTERESTED or NO ANSWER?

Claudia

Hi Claudia,

If a guest hasn't accepted the quote yet, the T&C are whatever you have them set to for the property. The T&C are only saved as a PDF snapshot when the guest accepts and finalizes the quote (turns it into a booking). Once they do that, you can see the PDF snapshot under the Legal tab of the booking.

-Michelle

Good morning all!

Where do I see the Terms and Conditions that the potential guests are sitting on? At times I change my T&C because something comes up at the VR Forum I belong to. At this time, I go back in and change my T&C, to add or remove something. Since the quotes stay there for maybe 10 days, I will forget what if the potential guest has the old version or the new version of the T&C. How can I go back and look at the T&C they have?

Thanks,
Claudia

The guests you are manually entering right now will not get emails asking for their upcoming payment or security deposit. You have to actually schedule payments and security deposits for them in the system, which means you'll have to call them and ask for their credit card by phone (or ask for it by email).

In the future, we'll be adding reminder emails so that they get asked by email to send a payment. When that happens, they'll be shown a form that shows your payment methods (credit card, check, etc)

For those that accept the quote and pay by check, their scheduled reminder email will be fired off [x] days before the due date, where x is whatever you require for the grace period.

Again though, the scheduled reminder emails have not been released yet.

-Michelle

I was typing up a response, but then I remembered this blog post from last year:

https://www.ownerrez.com/blog/new-model-for-holiday-charges

That covers the details pretty nicely.

-Michelle

If I have a customer that paid the deposit and their arrival date is July 15 and my payment schedule is 60 days prior to arrival the balance is due. What will happen, when? Automatically, on May 15, the system is going to ask for a credit card information, since their is none on file.

Will it give the customer an option to pay by check? If so, on checks, it should be asking for it before hand, since it is DUE 60 days prior to arrival. Is there a place to enter, for checks, 75 days - to give them time to mail it and it arrives 60 days prior?

Claudia

How does it know when it is a holiday? It only asks how much more. But where do I enter a holiday time frame?

Claudia

No, you're specifying how many are *included*. Then, to the right of that, you're specifying how much each extra pet is at a rate per night or per stay.

-Michelle

Oh, I thought that it meant 1 pet would be $75. Ok.

Claudia

Hi Claudia,

In your rates, do you have 1 pet included or 0 pets included? If 1 pet is included, then entering 1 pet won't add any extra fees. If you want a pet fee for ALL pets, then set "Included Pets" to 0.

-Michelle

I have been creating bookings and adding Pet Fees. Why doesn't it already include the pet fee if I specify 1 pet? Also, when I click on the TAXABLE, it doesn't seem to calculate that amount. I will send email.

Claudia

I just did that. I wondered how I didn't notice it before. LOL

Claudia

I don't like things left OPEN, when I know they are no longer interested, or haven't answered. I like everything neat and in a bow. I know, I am a pain. :)

As long as I could go in there and change the EXPIRATION DATE, then that would be good. Unless... in the future you have an extra option stating... Uninterested or No Answer, etc. :)))

Claudia

Hi Silvia,

You're welcome!

Yes, it would be a manual entry. You can enter manual payments at any time.

As of today (we did a major release last night) you can now put add check payment methods to your account, so the guest can see check as an option (and your instructions on where to send it) when accepting the quote. There are rules associated with that for the booking to auto-cancel if their check doesn't show up in a few days.

-Michelle

Hi Claudia,

Don't delete anything. If you do that, you'll lose valuable tracking info. You'll want to see, in our future reporting module, which listing sites sent you the best inquiries, which converted to bookings the most, etc.

You can certainly change the expiration to be expired if you want, but there's really no reason to unless you no longer want the person to be able to accept it. Just leave it as it, and it will expire on its own.

Our software takes care of automatically expiring quotes or preempting them (if someone else books the same dates). Once you respond to an inquiry or quote, you don't need to do anything else to get it to become inactive. Just let it go and the system will take care of it.

Again, DO NOT delete anything UNLESS you created something by mistake. It's best to leave the records around so you can find them later.

-Michelle

How does one handle inquiries that people do not respond to, or are not interested? Do you delete those? IF so, which area do you find them all in?

What is the process for these transactions, after quoted. Do we change the expiration date to today, so they don't stay OPEN?

Claudia

Arrived, on second request.

Hi Sam, that is the first place I look, since many have landed there since I started.

Claudia

Claudia, please check your spam folder if an email hasn't landed in awhile. Our system sends many thousands of emails per day. Sometimes the ESPs slow us down. Thx, ~Sam

Hi Michelle,

Thanks for all the replies.

How would the booking proceed if the customer insisted on using a different method of payment than you currently support, for example using AMEX card(though you support it, it's an extra charge, etc) or via check or via Paypal or wire transfer? I guess since the booking may have originated in your system or not, how does one go about collecting and recording that in the system, would this be a manual entry? Is there a featuer to bypass the payment request - though I suspect we may not know of the conflict until the customer is ready to pay.

Thanks, Silvia