Latest Activity...
Just took a look at the New Booking Overview Page.
You asked for comments/suggestions...
You really need to focus on reducing clicking around OwnerRez screens everywhere, and this layout, while improved, doesn't do that.
An example to make the point:
You have a 'Change/Move' button over on the top right side of the screen. Why?
If I want to change the check-in time, I should be able to just click on the Check-In time and change it! Same with the property, date of arrival... basically anything on the screen. Click on what I want to change and change it.
But instead, it's click on the 'Change/Move' button, click in a field to change, change it, click save, go back to the overview screen... too many clicks and screens! This bad design pervades OwnerRez.
Another example:
When one wants to change Charges, which always should have been right on the summary screen, one shouldn't have to click to get there, but you do. So you click on Charges, but can you make changes on the Charges screen? No! You have to click 'Change' before you can do anything! Why? Why doesn't charges just go to the screen that one can make changes on without an extra step in between? What is gained by all of this extra clicking?
And the ridiculous being forced to move things up and down on the charges screen, and it affecting what is taxable and what isn't, is just such amateurish, horrible UI design! If an item is taxable, it's taxable! You don't have whether the tax is applied based on where it appears on the screen! Silly! The display should automatically order itself based on what is being displayed! Rental charges at the top, discounts on rental charges (if any), (with a Rental Charges sub-total GD it!!!!!!!), then optional items (also with a sub-total), other charges, and finally taxes. EVERY display of charges should follow the pattern, and there should be no need to move things around! Clicky, clicky, click, drag, click, drag, click, click, drag, drag, click. And the DRAG buttons only work every other time on a Mac! After using them once, without an intervening click on the screen, the drag buttons don't work! Horrible, bad design! (Sorry, I'm passionate about this stuff!)
And then... after all that, click Save. And THEN click to go back to the 'summary' screen! No! The financials should be visible on the main booking screen, they are fundamentally important, and should be editable right there! Like everything else on the page! Get rid of the buttons! Get rid of the clicks! Get rid of the dragging!
One may think me ungrateful, but your customers really shouldn't be expected to be excited that this page design has finally caught up to what it should have been like/capable-of twenty years ago. So much farther to go!
Change your mindset from your users are 'monitoring' what's happening in some remote listing site's booking data somewhere, to 'Our users are doing and administering their bookings right here! Let's make it simple and easy and as time-saving as possible.' Hiding everything and providing access to edit/change it behind multiple screens with multiple clicks is NOT providing a good experience!
While your users always appreciate your efforts to improve things, if those efforts are misdirected because you're focused on the wrong things and antiquated design, changes which don't solve obvious problems become a source of frustration, rather than something to celebrate.
Did you ASK what changes your customers wanted to the Summary page before you expended the programming efforts to change it? Or just assume you knew?
"We're going to be updating the Booking Summary page! What changes would you like to see? Check out the preliminary design here <link provided>. Let us know what you think..." I didn't see that email, and I CARE about this stuff because I have to fight my way through (read that as waste my time with) this stuff every day!
If you feel you would not or don't get enough feedback to bother asking, bear in mind that there are features in the feature request forum that YOU indicated you were working on delivering SEVEN YEARS ago, and they're still not out. This results in many of your customers losing faith that their feedback is being paid attention to, and when that happens, they won't provide you with any.
Consolidate! Make information editable at first view. Get rid of the buttons and additional pages wherever possible. Eliminate every unnecessary click. Let those fundamentals guide you.
How did you fix this issues?
The challenge here is the nightly rate... Fridays and Saturdays will typically have a higher nightly rate than a Tue or Wednesday and OwnerRez is just a single rent total so you really dont have a way to say discount = to the lowest of the nightly rates... IE if Wed is 100, Thur is 115, Friday is 170 and Saturday is 170 - there is no way first of all to know what the nightly rates are because the booking will have a rent line of $555. (I suppose you could look at the spot rate for each of the days)
There is the new option on a January release to include
to emails which could theoretically show it to you and then you could manually add whatever discount you wanted to give. There is no automagical way of doing this that I am aware of and have wanted to for quite sometime. I would actually like to see each individual night with a rolled up subtotal. It would make calculating the Average Daily Rate so much more accurate... In my example above ADR currently is 555/4 = 138.75 but in reality if I was doing a weekend to weekend or day to day comparison of Average Daily Rates this year over last or this month over last I would be losing 31.25 of ADR for Friday and Saturday or gaining 38.75 for Wed or 23.75 for Thursday for this specific booking. Is it the end of the world... NO. Would it be nice to have - for us YES.
Bottom line... you gotta pick your battles... we solved the one night off by analyzing prior period bookings and then coming up with a percentage and we restrict them by date... Bookings between date and date get 18% off if > 3 nights... a lot of leg work to do a promotion. You also want to make sure you are not double dipping.. If you use a pricing/rate management tool to manage your rates remember that you could be giving an additional discount on top of what has already been determined to be the optimal rate for the dates...
Hey Steve,
I see you posted a Feature Request here, so I wanted to share that for visibility to anyone who runs across this thread.
https://www.ownerrez.com/forums/requests/enhanced-ai-knowledge-ingestion-csv-document-parsing
Thanks for writing that up!
Hi there,
I have two properties on AirB and just set-up OR to take direct bookings on my website (www.stillwoodvt.com). I have a few, possibly moronic, questions. Thanks in advance for any help or advice.
1. Checking Out
The payment & add-on/surcharges page doesn't have any way for someone to cancel or go back, or navigate back to a page on my website (unless they know to click the back button the browser). This has already caused a hiccup for two guests. I'm assuming there's no way for me to change this page because it's pure OR, but if anyone has found a way around it, please let me know.
2. Rental Agreement
I am thinking that I don't need a rental agreement in addition to the house rules, guest instructions, etc. etc. (I am subscribed to the Damages policy). I realize it's adding a little risk to me, but I also worry that it might be off-putting to guests who are used to AirB. Please let me know if you think this is an absolute must.
3. SMS Messaging
Is anyone using the SMS messaging feature (additional fee) and if so, do you like it? Will it integrate with my mobile so I can receive messages on my phone? I am really missing the messaging feature/all communications in-app, that AirB has and finding the OR guest communications a little clunky. I don't understand why the INBOX in the OR app isn't for OR messaging but am likely missing something obvious.
4. Quote Feature
I've also disabled the quote feature as plan to just automatically take bookings - any big issue doing this that I'm missing?
5. Widgets
Am I missing something? It appears that guests cannot click and make a reservation on ANY of the calendar/availability widgets. The only widget that allows that is the booking widget. Ideally, I'd like to also be able to display a calendar that is clickable.
Sorry this is so long and thanks again for any help!
Cheers,
Lulu
Hi Jen!
If you don't want the registration number displayed on your hosted website, you can remove it from the property description. That section on your hosted website should then disappear since there's no information. We don't push this to the big channels, like Airbnb and Vrbo. If you'd like to remove it, you can go to Properties > click on your property name > go to Description > click the pencil icon to edit it. From there, you can remove the content you've inserted into the Registration Number section and save the changes.
Hi Sean,
I'm afraid there is no ETA I can provide, but we understand the demand and very much look forward to the development ahead. It's a large undertaking and we want to make sure we deliver a quality feature, not a rushed job that doesn't fit the needs of our users.
following
We had a webinar last year discussing many options and various configurations of Payment Processors connecting to OwnerRez, which can be seen here:
https://www.ownerrez.com/webinar-focus-session-payment-methods?autoplay
This page contains a list of our available Processors and Gateways, categorized as Recommended, Integrated, and Supported:
https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/payment-processing-gateways-list
In my county we pay monthly on the previous month's stay taxes. Are you submitting your monthly taxes with the 15.5% (or whatever percentage you use) host fee in the rent? I have my rent and surcharges adjusted to a 22% increase for Airbnb bookings. When I run a tax report or tax detail report, the taxable charges include the rent before the airbnb service fee (expense) is taken out. Should I manually subtract each airbnb fee from the rent on every reservation rent line and then report that? As of now it looks like I'd be paying taxes on a $174 Airbnb service fee that neither I nor the owner received. Chatgpt said,
"That 22% markup is taxable because it’s baked into guest-paid rent.
So if you raised your rate to offset Airbnb fees, taxes are still due on the full charged amount.
Example:
| Base Direct Rate | $1,000 |
| Airbnb Markup | +$220 |
| Airbnb Host Fee | -$174 |
Tax is still filed on $1,220 (plus cleaning etc.), not the net."
Which is exactly what I'm saying... I should be subtracting that from rent before reporting taxes, or am I as lost as I feel?
Hi Maarten, so sorry you're encountering issues. If you are unable to use the Contact Us here on the website, you can always send an email directly to help@ownerrez.com to reach us directly.
Still hoping for this to be resolved...
Hello,
Does anyone use payment processors other than stripe and lynnbrook? If so, what do you use and why?
Thanks,
Brigid
Is any one else having issues with payments, support ticketing and photo gallery?
It started with photo gallery, I've been going back and forth with Support but it has not been resolved yet.
As of yesterday, an important high season booking could not pay by credit card. Neither can I when I do a test transaction.
And when I tried to open a support ticket for this, I got an error as well....
I was wondering if there are any updates on the progress for the Direct Booking Threads, as it has been almost 1 year since you communicated "later this year".
"We are discussing what it looks like to have direct booking threads come into the new Inbox (and we already have plans to bring email into the Inbox later this year). Both of those would help communicate with your direct booking guests."
This feature is badly needed. We should be able to auto trigger a CC fee if the guest chooses that form of payment.
Hi Neil, Yes I am still here, and can help! Will send an email!
Alison
Hi there is there anyone who is experienced in adding properties to additional vacation sites? Last year I had Allison Carsley help. She was great to work with, not sure if she is still doing that work.
Great timing, Robert. We've been making some usability improvements to the new Confirm & Pay form - mostly minor polish items. The hover-icon situation with custom fields was on that list and just got fixed today.
I've passed this feedback to our Product team for review.
Thanks for your input, the use of Custom Fields and their descriptors can be very important in how business is able to be conducted.
I'm not offering feedback for your consideration!
I need a solution or a work around to this right away. I’m not making a feature request. It’s been a week with no support or help!
PLEASE!
Robert
Hi,
The Owner Statement Summary report is still a work in progress, but we are actively working on updates to better support P&L reporting.
For now, try using the PM Owner Statement Bookings and PM Owner Statement Expenses reports to find that data. You may need to check "show booking expenses" on the latter to see everything you need.
Or use custom Statement Views on your Owner Statements. Since PMv2 structures data differently, "Net for commission" and "Owner Revenue" are no longer standard columns and now require custom formulas within a Statement View. Using custom formulas may allow you to use your Owner Statements to format your year's worth of data the way you need and export it.
Pro Tip: One of the things I find most useful is that in PMv2 Owner Statements, the data is fixed but it can be viewed in different ways. You can create a custom Statement View (e.g., an "Accounting View") with columns based on formulas that are limited only by your imagination and need. If you export your Owner Statements using that view, the Excel download will reflect those custom columns, allowing you potentially to replicate the exact report format you had previously.
Just found this while updating my house rules and have to say it is a brilliant post. Thank you.
Hey Jordan!
There wouldn't be a way to have this done automatically, where it prevents guests from staying at the child listing on a Friday or Saturday. A possible workaround would be to create blocks in OwnerRez for Fridays and Saturdays at the child listing, and this would prevent guests from being able to select a Friday or Saturday when booking a stay at the child listing. However, you'd need to create a separate block for each weekend. More on creating blocks here: https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/blocking-off-time
When creating the blocks, you should see a Mutual blocking option and a box for 'Don't block other properties'. Be sure to check this when creating the blocks to ensure it doesn't block the parent listing as well:
Hey Ariel!
We wanted to let you know that our team is aware of this issue and is currently working on it, but there's no ETA at this time. We should post in our Weekly Release Notes once the issue has been resolved.
I am trying to update and/or remove the Registration Expiration Date section on my web site home page. How do I do this? I have looked everywhere and I even tried using code override suggestions from ChatGPT. Thanks!
Hello!
Can you please submit a ticket by emailing help@ownerrez.com and let us know which properties this is happening to so we can take a look?
Thanks for letting me know it isn’t on my end!
I've passed this feedback to our Product team for review.
Thanks for your input, the use of Custom Fields and their descriptors can be very important in how business is able to be conducted.
We have reached out to Vrbo to report multiple concerns, they are receiving reports from multiple other API partners as well and have opened a ticket to investigate a potential outage.
I'm having a few integration issues with OR, being in Australia. I know you're US-focussed, but the same things should work for all (we pay the same). As an aside it would also be great if you looked at other integrations outside of the US. There are quite a few platforms I can't use as the integrations are only with the major ones. I know we're small fry, but. Anyway, this issue:
This one is regarding ical. I feel it must be a solvable problem given the ical from Air BNB manages to show the dates correctly. I presume whether you are in the US, Australia, or Timbuktu, the Air BNB ical works accurately.
I've been advised the following:
Why This Happens
This is a known issue with Google Calendar's handling of iCal timezone conversions, particularly for users in timezones significantly ahead of UTC (like Australia). The iCal standard represents bookings correctly, but Google Calendar's interpretation can cause display issues.
Google Calendar > It seemed like it was working, but it's no longer updating!
Here is the example of what I see: In blue is the ical from Air BNB showing the booked nights, i.e. checking out on 5th May. OR shows as checking out on 6th. As I use this calendar for cleaners and more, and hope to exclusively use OR (because not everything comes from ABB), it is very confusing and basically unusable. Suggestions of using alternate calendars are not useful - everyone uses Google.
It would seem that if ABB has solutioned this, then it is clearly possible. Hoping you can look into this. Thank you.
