General Help and Questions

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Michelle, re: speed. I just did 5 or 6 new bookings and added/deleted charges for them by hand. Everything was blazing fast. ~Sam

I suppose. I haven't received the email I just sent myself, after entering the amounts and the payments. States... This email was last sent on Apr 24, 2012 at 2:15 PM.
and I haven't received it yet, 4 minutes later.

CP

Hi Claudia,

The release was put out last night and is fully done now. Shouldn't be any slowness. I just looked at some pages and it seems to be running as fast as ever for me. Definitely not anything like *minutes* to save something. Could it be your internet connection?

-Michelle

Amendment to charges takes a long time to update. Seems to take over a minute. When I do the collect payment, it takes about two minutes to update.

Is the system slow, because of the updates you are doing today?

Claudia

Open the charges for the booking, click the "Change Charges" button, and edit to your heart's content.

The charges grid is very versatile. In the Rate field, you can use positive or negative numbers, decimal values or percentages.

The green "+" icon to the left of each row adds a line item above the row. The red "-" icon to the right of each row deletes the row. The "Add Charge" button adds rows at the end.

More on that here:

https://www.ownerrez.com/blog/editing-charges-is-now-easier-and-faster

OK. For the future, 90% of the bookings for Hilton Head Island are 7 nights. VERY FEW are for less than that. How can I manually do it, for those very few?

Claudia

Yes, it was as I expected. You don't have any charge types in your "Spring 2012" rate period that covers this scenario.

If you open your "Spring 2012" rate period for this property, notice that you only have one charge type:

Week, set as 7 nights, for $925

This booking (# 252034) is only for 4 nights. You'll need to add a "night" charge type or something else that is shorter. Otherwise, the system won't be able to auto-generate your rates for anything less than 7 nights.

Once you've done that, do the "Reset to Property Rates" again on the booking charges, and you'll see the rent appear.

-Michelle

Your rate periods, for this property, must not be configured properly to cover the dates of this booking. That's why it's only adding the tax and surcharge line items and no rent. I'll take a look at your rate periods and see where the problem is.

(If you want to edit the charges manually, then yes, you would hit the Change button and edit the grid - adding and removing line items - by using the various edit buttons)

How do I do that? It will not let me fill in the amounts? Do I have to ADD CHARGES and do everything separately?

I tried Changing and hitting "Reset to Property Rates" but it won't reset to property rates.

Claudia

The total charges for that booking are $0.

There are three line items, which you can see here:

https://app.ownerrez.com/bookings/252034/charges

But they all equal $0.

Enter the charges (rent, etc) that you originally charged the guest for this booking and that will produce a Total Charge for the booking.

Booking number 252034

You may have skipped step 2:

Once you enter the charges for the booking, there will a balance and you can collect or schedule payments.

If you've already entered/confirmed the charges, give me the booking # so I can look into it on this end.

I have entered this one booking three times, but I can't get into the payment section. It tells me...

No scheduled payments can be added because this booking is paid in full.

Since the amounts keep coming up, automatically, as ZERO.

What do I do next?

Claudia

Sounds good, Michelle.

Thanks,
Claudia

Hi Claudia,

You could always adjust the charges (enter a new line item saying "BROKEN WINDOW $300") and then collect a regular credit card payment for it, using the payment area. You can collect as many payments as you like.

Now remember, if you don't have the guest's permission to use their credit card and you begin to process extra payments, they may complain to their bank about you and file for a chargeback.

It's always best to come to an agreement with the guest first on what all they're paying, and then get their confirmation that you'll be using their credit card again.

-Michelle

I understand. However, I would think it wouldn't be that difficult, since you do have other forms or screens which already provide the DAYS. It would be a matter of taking that field and plugging it in.

Thanks,
Claudia

Welllll.... maybe. I get your explanation but that could be difficult to program and display. I'll pass it along (like everything!) but it may not be easily doable. I'm trying to think through the ramifications.

-Michelle

Hi Claudia,

No, it won't stop the booking. It basically just creates the booking with the same name as the quote.

So if the quote name was entered as "Susy _" (because there was no last name given) then the booking will have the same name. And of course, you can always modify it in the General Info tab of the booking after the fact.

We're adding another screen to the quote acceptance forms so the guest can correct/adjust the name on their booking.

-Michelle

I understand. Thanks. I will do that. How about the DAYS showing. Is that possible?

Claudia

Hi Claudia,

In the future, we envision hosting a CRM-style system where each user (you) gets an @ownerrez.com email address and all emails are sent from it. Then, when guests reply, their email goes back into our system and we track both inbound and outbound emails against the guest. There is a lot of stuff to cover here including a much more robust guest/contact system so it won't be coming for awhile.

At the moment, we've programmed all emails that are sent to include a REPLY-TO header with your email address so that when the user clicks "Reply" in their email client, the message is sent to you. That way you can answer them and address their issues.

To summarize, email between you and your guests is handled by you in your own email client and not by us. (For now)

-Michelle

Yes, but when you generate a booking, you need their full name. From the quote section, they can book right there. Will you stop the booking, if no name is there? Then what would you say to the customer?

Claudia

How would you do this, charge them if you damages were over security deposit?

Claudia

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll pass it along to the dev team, but I know they value simplicity and cleanliness in the design.

-Michelle

Hi Claudia,

The rate engine will attempt to put in the number of charge types (night, weekend, week, custom) with how many there is.

For instance, suppose that they booked for 3 nights during the "Off Season" rate period. The first line will read:

2 nights (5/1 - 5/3) at Off Season rates

In your case, I believe you're using custom charge types to define 2 night rates as different from 3 night rates as different from 4 night rates, etc, etc. That's causing the system to plug in the custom name instead.

So go to your rate periods, open the charge types and change the Name field to "2 nights", "3 nights", "4 nights", etc.

That should correct the problem.

I hope this isn't confusing.

-Michelle

Hi Claudia,

Currently, our system requires a last name in order to create a new quote, but we'll changing that. It's caused some conflict because - as you pointed out - some people send inquiries without a last name.

What most users do currently, when a inquiry comes in with no last name, is to put in an underscore ("_") or dash ("-") for the last name so that the quote can generate.

In the future, we'll be changing it to require a first OR last name, but not both.

-Michelle

In the case of a wire transfer, you would take it offline and then record it as a manual payment in the system.

You could bill them another payment, using the credit card info they submitted previously, but you would of course make sure they understood and agreed to that. You could also contact them to send you month offline.

No, you do not ever have to see their credit card information unless they are giving it to you over the phone and you are manually entering it into the system.

The vast majority of the time, they will enter their payments directly and the scheduled payments and security deposits will be collected based on that same credit card info.

A debit card that has the Visa or MasterCard logo on it would be accepted and work just like any other Visa/MasterCard card. If it isn't backed by Visa or MasterCard, than it wouldn't work.

We currently do not have any eCheck options but that is something we're considering adding in the future.

If added, that would basically be where the guest enters the routing and account number for their checking/savings account, and it would be debited directly. Sort of like how your utility company does with "auto-draft".

The merchant account we offer, through Sage, includes MasterCard, Visa and Discover. We can turn on Amex for you too but you get a separate statement directly from them.

Technically, our merchant accounts also include JCB and Diner's Club too, I believe, but I'd have to check into that to be sure.