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The reservation funds and all fees associated (cleaning, taxes) with a booking are supposed to be paid directly to the owner. I have Stripe set up for all of my clients. Airbnb is suddenly paying me directly. Why is that and how can I fix it going forward?
BDC works pretty great for us, we get a lot of guests. That being said, BDC (the platform not OR) is still a bit weird. We are not "verified" or whatever BDC requires for them to collect payment, so my approach is to schedule payment in OR once the CC is sent.
I can't find a pattern for when the CC is send by BDC to OR. I have BDC guest that are coming months from now and their CC is in OR. For other it seems that their CC is sent to OR couple of days before check-in. This approach has worked without fail from a couple of years, but now i have a weird problem: i have two guests this month (April 2024) for which there's no CC on file. One of them is actually a guest right now so i sent them an email and message with the payment link
So my question is: is there any way for me to force some sort of synch between BDC and OR hoping that the CC is sent across? I prefer to have a bit more control over the payment instead of hoping the guest actually reads their email and use the payment link. If there is no way, fine...i figure i should ask
Alin
Good Afternoon,
I have been trying to open my two listings on Booking.com, but have been faced with multiple issues.
Minimum Lenght of Stay: My MLOS is being sent via PriceLabs, but is not arriving properly to Booking.com. On the otherhand the MLOS that is arriving is Min Stay from Arrival, when what I am sending from Pricelabds is Minimum length of stay.
Rate Plans: I have created two rate plans a flexilbe and NR rate plan, I have mapped the flexible rate plan with OwnerRez, but trying to link both rate plans I am unable to.
That's right, helpdesk@ is not in service for support requests anymore. help@ is the one you want. :-)
Sent! Although I think it was to help@ i cant seem to get helpdesk@ pulled up in a hurry anymore.
I'm afraid I'd need you to write in to the Helpdesk with an example of what looks wrong so I can take a look, and it may be a few days as I'm going to be travelling tomorrow.
Hello, so we took your advice, but now everything looks really strange. Would you mind taking a look?
We did have some problems with the email server yesterday, so that may have delayed some emails.
FYI I just got the autoresponse. I sent the query in at 7:40am yesterday, and got the autoresponse at 13:10pm today. That's a very long time for an autoresponse! More details if you're interested.
Will do, thanks.
Perfect! Thank you so much Ken! We really appreciate you walking up through this.
Channel Bridge booking import has no actual effect on any money whatsoever. All it's doing is bringing in data from Vrbo - it doesn't change any data that is there. These are bookings in the past anyway - they've already been agreed to, and in most cases paid.
The goal of importing Channel Bridge booking data is so that the information in OwnerRez is correct and complete.
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-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.
