General Help and Questions

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Yes, Amex does their own fees and statements. When we set up your merchant account - if you choose to go with us - we always turn on a new Amex account for you unless you don't want that. Amex sets their own rates and fees, and we have no control over that. It's usually 3-3.5% and a statement fee of $5-7 per month.

If you use our 2.95% flat rate (with no other fees), then it's the same rate for all MasterCard, Visa and Discover transactions. Doesn't matter what other kind of card they use - business, international, debit, rewards, etc.

We also have a lower 2.25% rate deal but it contains fees for monthly, PCI, per-transaction and all the different card types.

In my opinion, the 2.95% flat rate is the better of the two.

And of course, you are free to go get your own merchant account from any of the many thousands of online resellers that are out there. As long as they are on Authorize.Net or Sage, we can integrate with them.

Silvia, I'm going to break up each part of that into multiple questions...

The full amount is deposited into your account and the fees come out at the end of the month. In the payment processing industry, this is know as "100% deposit". Back when we were picking a payment vendor to use, we made sure to require this. We don't like when fees are taken out of each deposit because is gets very hard to reconcile your payments with your bank account.

Michelle,

I look like a piece of cake after the above post. :)

Claudia

In the Quote section of the email, can we have the number of dates in that field? What does the "1 Spring"? It would be one reservation, either way. As it reads now, it states.....

Rent 1 Spring (5/11, 5/12) at Spring rates $650.00 $650.00

Instead, can we have something like...

Rent 2 night stay (Fri, 5/11 - Sun, 5/13) $650.00 $650.00

You know me, I would like those TOTAL NIGHT STAYS in there, and DAYS.

I don't know if I explained why I like these things. TWICE, renters had to leave a day earlier than what they thought, because their wording was not the norm. They would request dates, and not think that the last date they requested is the day they exit. So, when I would send them the quote, it all looked fine. NOW, I send the nights, and the days, so that they understand better and might catch it, if it states 2 nights and they are thinking 3 nights. So, I put as much information as possible. I even go to the extent of saying the words... CHECKIN DATE: Friday, May 11 CHECKOUT DATE: Sunday, May 13... for a 2 night stay.

I felt horrible to cut two people and their families short by one day. But, it was their mistake. Luckily, one of those families loved my house and has come for the past 4 years!

So, that is why I feel the nights and days on anything can avoid problems.

Claudia

If a customer replies to the quote, it is sent to our personal email. Wouldn't it go into your system? Wasn't it actually sent from the @ownerreservation email?

Are any changes coming for this? I am not sure what it should be. Should it be all part of one...ownerreservation? Or should it be separate, when they hit REPLY?

Claudia

How about a sort in the inquiry/booking/quote sections?

Nevermind. I see you have that already! You guys are good! However, you should put the arrow or something there, to let people know you can actually sort in those fields. Until I was thinking that maybe there you can do it, I didn't know it was there. No indication of that. :)

Claudia

Hi Michelle,

I am curious about the credit card processing - I used to have a merchant account and I couldn't figure out how much they charged me - well actually I could if I subtracted the amount I charged and the amount they deposited into my account. I have a few questions:

1. If I use your CC processor (Sage) do they deposit the full amount and then at the end of the month take the fee? Or do they take their fee and then make the deposit? Kind of like Paypal does except they don't deposit into your account but their own account which you need to transfer to your account (after they have released their hold on your money).

2. Are the fees the same whether the customer uses a reward card or not (most people now use only reward cards of some sort), what about across credit card companies? I remember MC, VISA charged the same amount (as long as it wasn't a reward card) and Amex was a separate arrangement and fee but processed with that credit card company.

3. I'm sorry if this is on the site already but since we are on the credit card topic, what credit cards does your processor (Sage) support? I imagine Visa, Master Card, ???.

4. Echecks will be a feature that interests me - would a debit card be allowed and how would it be considered - an echeck?

5. We don't need to see the customers credit card info correct? I disliked so much having to take the customers credit card information when I was taking a charge, that is another reason I switched to Paypal - the customer had full control of the information and dealt with Paypal directly. But if we need to charge them using Sage from the security deposit we do have a way to do so without having to see their CC information?

6. What happens if the charges are over the security deposit and the customer as per the rental agreement is responsible for that amount - how do we get payment then? Maybe this belongs in the security deposit topic?

7. How might a wire transfer be dealt with? Not that I have any at the moment, but I do get Europeans every once in a while and (I believe) they tend to deal in wire transfers as a norm.

Sorry for all the questions.
Thanks, Silvia

Hi Claudia,

At the moment, no, but our release for payments by check necessitates having that and it has become high priority.

-Michelle

No, and for good reason - you can have many quotes for the same date period. We thought about this some time back, but it got far too difficult to implement so we moved on. How would you envision the calendar displaying, say, 10 or 15 quotes for the same overlapping date period? The only designs we came up with where horribly complicated and confusing. We've thought about some new options but nothing has been formalized.

-Michelle

I sent you an email offline with my cell number. Please do give me a call at your convenience.

-Paul

You can manually adjust it to whatever you want. The subject is shown in the quote email form before you send it. When we release mail merge fields for the email bodies, we'll make sure to put them in the subject lines as well.

How does your system handle when the inquiry comes in without a Last Name filled in? You can't book a transaction without it. VRBO and such do not require a last name.

I was just going to try the first one and when I went to enter a Quote, there was no last name.

Claudia

Can the calendar also display open quotes? It would really be nice to see who has requested dates, and be able to see what the quote was for those dates.

Claudia

When the quote is sent, can the subject state the name of the renter, along with the dates requested. At the moment it states my house and the dates requested....

[Quote # 14990] Claudia's Vacation Home - PA for 5/11/12 - 5/13/12

Thank you,
Claudia

Hate you?!? Oh please, you're nothing. I've had people ask the same type of questions and then get MAD at the answers and start arguing and being offensive. You've been great!

Answer: open the booking, click the Legal tab, click the Open Archived PDF button.

You can also use that area to send them a request to sign a new agreement. Or if you've entered the booking manually and they never signed on to begin with.

Do you hate me yet? :(

How do I see the terms and conditions that the renter agreed upon? I tend to change my rental agreement, at times. I belong to a vacation rental forum and things come up, at times, that make me modify my agreement.

How do I see the one that was actually agreed upon, a the time they booked?

Claudia

Are there reminders, to alert customer that their balance is due, if they paid by check? Or reminders to send them Welcome Packets or anything else, which the owner sets up?

Thanks,
Claudia

Excellent news on the widget and I didnt even think of the @inquiryspot option. You probably figured out already I manage several properties. I am excited about what I see so far in your system and would be interested in learning more as well as sharing more about our business with you. Is there a place we could connect online outside this forum or speak by phone?

Thanks

FYI, you can also send inquiries from your website right now by simply sending email directly to your @inquiryspot email address.

If you look at the inquiry instructions page which is here:

https://app.ownerrez.com/inquiries/instructions

It shows a unique @inquiryspot email address for each property.

Any email you send to that address will be handled gracefully by the system. If we don't recognize the email (such as coming from VRBO or HomeAway) we give you an editor that lets you quickly enter the inquiry.

Funny you should mention that. The very next sprint - we're releasing a major update today and tomorrow - involves updates to the inquiry area with a possible embedded widget for your own website. I say "possible" because it might fall to the sprint after that depending on some scheduling. But it's coming right around the corner.

-Michelle

I understand. Would it be possible to create an inquiry form on my site that that could integrate with OwnerRez?

I really couldn't say. Over the past 6 months, we've had a large influx of new users each with their own questions and ways of doing things. It's provided a huge amount of feedback that has caused us to re-prioritize our roadmap half a dozen times. We don't build things just because one or two people requested it - that's a bad way of designing software - but there are a fair number of things that users have correctly pointed out are more important.

I could tell you 6 months, but that could easily change again.

On the other hand, we've noticed that a fair number of things would benefit by the API being out earlier such as mobile apps, calendar and inquiry integration.

OK, not a big deal, any ballpark idea of when it may be available? Don't worry I wont hold you to it. :)

At the moment, the API is still under development. We have references to it sprinkled around the website because it's something we've been working on (and use ourselves) for the last year or so. But it's not ready for prime-time at the moment.

-Michelle

A a manager I prefer a flat fee, providing a choice of FF or PB would be a great move on your part and allow you to capture business from both owners of a single property and owners / managers of multiple properties.

Hi Claudia,

1) Enter all your reservation into the system as manual bookings. You can do this from the Booking menu by clicking the "Create Booking" button and select the "Create from scratch" option. Make sure to not send out emails by un-checking the options at the bottom.

2) For each reservation, go to the Charges tab and make sure it reflects the actual charges you billed the guest for originally.

3) For each reservation, go to the Payments tab and enter a manual payment for each one you've already collected. You can select "Credit Card Processed Elsewhere" as the type of payment if it was a credit card. Otherwise, check and cash are two other payment types.

4) For the reservations where the guest still owes you money, you can schedule a second payment under the Payments tab. To do so, call them and get their credit card info by phone to enter into the scheduled payment fields. Or you can have them pay by PayPal as you did originally and enter it as another manual payment.

We are working on Scheduled Payment Reminders that work like Scheduled Payments, only the guest receives an email about paying their second payment and then is presented with a list of options.

-Michelle

Is the info on your API available? I would be interested in finding out what features can be integrated into our website.

Thanks

No limit. You can enter as many properties as you want. Our pricing model - due out in a month or two - is based on bookings so the number of properties doesn't matter.

That being said, you may find that if you enter a LOT of properties, the booking overview calendar is difficult to manage. It can only show 8 or 10 properties side by side before you begin to run out of room. We haven't developed a "ribbon" style availability chart, but that's on the dev roadmap for the future.

-Michelle

Thanks for the prompt response. A common email may work and the alerts are definitely useful. I have multiple properties I own and manage, is there a limit to the number of properties I can enter?