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Thanks, Ken, I'll dig into that in the morning. As to a security deposit thanks for the suggestion and I agree security deposits can be valuable. I use them whenever a younger guest talks me into staying at one of my properties. But the question then becomes how much of a deposit do I take $250, $500, $1000. When I have charged a deposit it's been $500 so this instance would have exceeded the limit. I'd also point out in 15 years of doing this with anywhere from 3 to 10 units I've only had malicious/negligent damages 1 other time. That's somewhere between 3k and 5k guests. I charge a small damage insurance fee for up to $500 in non malicious or negligent damages and it pays for things like broken plates and things i'd be embarrassed to confront a guest about, avoids having to do a through inventory after each stay, and avoids tying up a guests funds.
Thank you. It is not API integrated, but rather ical and pulling contact info via Channel Bridge.
the guest is seeing a note about paying a security deposit and then payment information after clicking the link in the "Sign the Rental Agreement" email, which is confusing because they have already paid via VRBO and the security deposit is covered there.
Something is off here - Vrbo guests should not be being asked for a security deposit credit card. If this is a platform booking where Vrbo is collecting payments, you are not allowed to take the guest's card yourself for a security deposit. If you are using the Vrbo API and doing your own payment processing, then Vrbo passes the guest's card information to OwnerRez automatically, so it is available for payments as well as security deposits and there is no need for the guest to provide it again.
Can you write in to the Helpdesk with the specific booking where this occurred, so we can investigate?
Hi! I was wondering if it was possible to change the landing page after a guest clicks the link in the email that requests signing of a rental agreement when the guest has booked via VRBO. Right now, the guest is seeing a note about paying a security deposit and then payment information after clicking the link in the "Sign the Rental Agreement" email, which is confusing because they have already paid via VRBO and the security deposit is covered there. I was hoping to streamline that landing page so that my channel guests do not see information that does not apply to them.
There are several different aspects to answering this question.
Strictly speaking, it is not possible to "send a request for a payment invoice through OwnerRez", in the sense of sending a guest an add-on quote to their booking for them to accept or reject.
However, for any booking where you are the merchant of record, you can freely change the Charges, adding whatever is needed. And since you would already have the guest's credit card on file from their previous payments, you can simply charge the new balance on the Transactions tab. The guest is not directly involved.
You can send them an updated full invoice as described here:
https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/template-receipt-billing-summary
Normally, we would recommend using a security deposit hold to provide for this situation:
https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/security-deposit-holds
In this particular case, it's too late for that, but requiring security deposit holds for future bookings may make things easier should this happen in the future. Note that security deposit holds are not insurance, and do not have any cost unless you actually need to keep the money - then you have to pay normal processing fees on the amount.
How do you send a request for a payment invoice through OwnerRez after a channel booking. In particular, this one was Vrbo, the guest broke many items. Please don't tell me about OwnerRez's insurance options. How do I invoice a guest beyond the channel booking fees? With Vrbo we are the merchant of record. It seems that we should bill from OwnerRez and not from the channel.
I thought i found the answer but it's not working as I would expect. Go to the specific booking Select <Transactions> select <Request> then select <Request Payment> I then select <specific amount> then fill in my comment & choose <compose email>. After doing this it takes me to a payment screen showing $0 balance and there is no history of email to guest. So after entering the transaction (twice now) there is no sign of it.
Thanks very much, the is the expensive mistake caveat ?
Hi Liz,
This is a recent change from Booking.com that we've begun researching but they seem to have made more changes. Could you please write an email to help@ownerrez.com with the subject "Booking Messaging 225032" and we can provide you the URLs to add on that page for testing?
Here is a very general example:
https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/review-request
As to when you should send out the request, that's up to you - you may get different or better results at different timings, depending on your guests.
If you need more specific assistance, please write in to the Helpdesk with details of what you're trying to accomplish, and we'd be glad to give more detailed instructions.
Sending emails, and sending messages via the Vrbo internal messaging system, are two completely different systems that do not connect. They even have different capabilities, such that many common email functions like formatting text can't be sent via the channel messengers.
However, you can configure duplicate sets of templates in OwnerRez, so as to send common messages by both email and channel message.
Emails have many possible reasons to not be delivered, but the most common is that they are misidentified as spam by the guest's email system. OwnerRez has limited and control and visibility over this, but, it's good practice to suggest to guests to check their spam folders.
As far as emails sent from Vrbo, OwnerRez has no control or visibility over those - you'd need to reach out to Vrbo tech support for assistance with your Vrbo account configuration.
If you have a specific example of something not working as expected, please send in full details to the Helpdesk and we'd be glad to take a look.
I have guests that checked out a few months ago from my direct booking and I thought a review trigger template was set up when I did the set through Ownerrez.
Where do I find the steps to set up a trigger for direct booking reviews. Do I set it up to trigger on check out day, or 2 days after?
Thank you.
Hello all.
when we get a vrbo booking request through ownerrez we receive an email from ownerrez stating that we have a booking request. (Normal)
When I send a reply to the the booking request in ownerrez via “email this guest”, the message does not post in vrbo communication area so I have no way of knowing if the reply was sent to guest or not. It does show in the “email history” tab in ownerrez. I seem to remember that in the past it did show up on vrbo.
I have also contacted several of these guests directly via text and they inform me that they have in fact not received my reply.
Something else that I have noticed is that we no longer get an email from vrbo. It seems to me that we used to get a notice from vrbo and ownerrez via email.
Am doing something wrong in the way I reply or do I have an integration problem?
Thanks in advance for any assistance.
Steve
As noted above, there is already a feature request for this:
If your expense settings were correct on the surcharge, I'd open a support ticket with OR to figure out what went wrong!
OMG you're a lifesaver I was pulling my hair out LOL Thank you!!
Doesn't seem to shed any light on why one of the bookings didn't have it, but maybe that was a glitch? If so that'll just be one more thing for my VA to check up on every month...
Hey Julie! Check the cleaning fee Surcharge for that property and scroll down to the Expense section. That's where you can designate how much of it should go to you as the PM. This is customizable on each individual Surcharge that is applied to bookings.
Settings > Surcharges > This particular cleaning fee > Scroll down to Expense section
Y'all, I am at my wits end here...
I was preparing an owner statement today and noticed one of the bookings was missing a cleaning fee expense. I went to the booking detail and found that the cleaning fee did not show up there as an expense. All the rest of the bookings for the month showed the cleaning fee, which is automatically generated on a per booking basis.
I'm trying to backtrace the settings for when the expense is set to occur to make sure it's not messed up somewhere there. And y'all, I CANNOT FIND IT.
Where on earth do I set up expense settings globally? The ONLY thing I can find is manually entering expenses in the PM tab. Yet at some point in history I was able to set up specific charges with vendor details and apply them to specific properties. I feel like I'm losing my mind.
Was unable to find basically anything in the forums or the help files regarding "expenses" or "vendors" or similar. Please help. I'm now terrified I've lost thousands of dollars because the cleaning fees were not correctly billed to my owner.
Hi Antony,
OwnerRez does not actually have Trust Accounting built in at this time. However, using 3rd party tools like Quickbooks Online or Clearing, should help you maintain the ledgers necessary to facilitate a trust accounting model.
I found this definition of Trust Account that explains things pretty well:
Trust accounting in property management refers to the process of managing and recording financial transactions related to rental properties on behalf of property owners or landlords. It involves the proper handling and documentation of funds received from tenants/guests, such as rent payments, security deposits, and other fees.
Trust accounting basically means having separate accounts for each property in one single banking account. Think of a trust account like a room full of safety deposit boxes. While your banking account holds all of the accounts, or ‘safety deposit boxes’, it allows you to go through and maintain them all individually. No need to worry about funds commingling with that of other property owners or even with your own operating capital and expenses.
As mentioned above, by using our integration to Quickbooks Online or Clearing, you can help ensure you have the proper reporting and documentation to keep the funds separate. Our partner Clearing has this article that discusses in more depth how to actually setup bank accounts for the purpose of Property Management Trust accounting: https://www.getclearing.co/blog-posts/open-a-trust-account-to-manage-properties
In OwnerRez each listing can have a different payment processor so that funds can be sent to different bank accounts as required.
Speaking of payment processors. In addition to the two partner software I mentioned above, another layer of protection maybe to use a different payment processor. As an example, Lynnbrook Group has a model where they keep the funds for each booking until the Guest Arrives. This is simply called Payment Upon Arrival instead of Payment at time of Booking. This way you never have access to the funds that should be in trust, and instead they would be paid to you when the guest arrives and thus the service has been provided. By using Lynnbrook's Pay upon arrival, there are no real funds that need to be kept in trust.
In the end no one here at OwnerRez is an accountant. So I would highly recommend speaking with an Accountant who is familiar with Property management best practices, especially if Trust accounting is a requirement by your local laws.
With Booking.com, at the moment you have to set up the cleaning fee in Booking.com itself - it doesn't get pushed in from OwnerRez the way the other APIs do:
https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/bookingcom-api-rates-settings
As far as the min-nights, I do see that your API is connected, and those do get pushed, but, note that only the min-night setting of the arrival day is enforced. None of the channels enforce min-night settings on days in the middle of the stay.
Hi Ken We just got our first booking on Booking.com apparently the min night stay for Christmas season and cleaning fee is not showing up on Booking.com. I have been on the phone with them so for today 3 hours and 17 min with no one able to help. They finally suggested I contact OR to see if you can figure out what's going on? Thanks
Sounds like this is all set? If not, please write in to the Helpdesk with specifics so we can assist.
That depends on the exact nature of the import and what data was obtained. I'd recommend writing in to the Helpdesk with specific examples so we can investigate and report back. You can also look at the Messages tab of the Booking, which will normally report which messages will, won't, or can't be sent.
Thank you Ken - I did see one fired with a new rez that came in.
Can you address my question about imported reservations? Will I have to continue to manually send those messages or is this part of the glitches you mention?
I would suggest attending one of our regular webinars:
https://www.ownerrez.com/webinars
While they cover more topics than just the API, our APIs are always included, you can take live questions, and generally the "main subject" of the webinar can be adjusted based on demand from those attending.
If that doesn't do it for you, you can write in to the Helpdesk and request an account review and guidance, up to and including a scheduled live session if that's what's needed.
I want to suggest that if anyone commenting on, or reading this, go to forums>feature requests and up vote and comment on the feature requests related to reporting. (Ken, you should have recommended this as soon as ppl were making a call to action request.)
There is one regarding custom reports that is currently tagged as "planned" and would be a great opportunity to integrate our suggested change.
I will try to link this thread in the comments of each feature request referring to custom reporting.
Read the room Ken....
Are there ever any training seminars for doing the api integrations? It just makes me nervous 😬
Disabling properties is always optional - if you expect to need to regularly review their statistics on an ongoing basis, or for some period of time into the future, you can simply leave them enabled as long as you like and have full functionality for as long as needed.
Each Hosted Website, as well as each Widget, has the ability to specifically control which properties are included on it. This record remains even if a property is disabled. So, if you plan to disable a property but anticipate that you may need to re-enable it at some point in the future, you can configure your Hosted Website and/or Widgets to exclude that property (or, alternatively, to only include specific designated properties). Of course, disabled properties do not appear in any Hosted Website or Widgets, but, if they have been excluded or are otherwise not included there, even if you re-enable them they still won't appear.
Sure they will, in fact one of the key features of the Vrbo API is that we integrate into the Vrbo internal messaging system, so you can use OwnerRez triggers to send automatic messages to your guests that way.
As with all things, of course, there can be glitches, and we've seen some recently which are being investigated. But generally, yes, OwnerRez triggers and templates work fine with Vrbo.
I appreciate honesty but find Ken's response unhelpful.
As a property manager with frequent property changes, reports for historical data are crucial.
The suggested workaround is simplistic. It requires a manual record check of which properties were active for a given year since there is no report for this data either, property reactivation, calendar blocking to prevent future bookings, report generation, and deactivation. Estimated time for just 5 properties within a particular year would take about 7 hours away from a day of work- a significant time investment.
This process of re-enabling, blocking calendars, and disabling properties just to see historical reports is cumbersome, ridiculous, inefficient, and unreasonable.
Data shouldn't be hidden. The data belongs to the user and should be readily available, not "held hostage."
100% agree. I just got off an hour-long phone call with one of my clients who was looking to buy another property in town. I had to go into my old properties and re-enable two of them so I could run comparable reports for him for other properties I managed in the two developments he was looking at. Doable, but very cumbersome, and also annoying that for the duration of my hour-long phone call, those properties showed as listed on my hosted website.
And I had to run reports on both properties for several different years to try to figure out which years I had managed them (turns out one was in 2021, the other was in 2022).
Definitely did not make me look very professional to my client and did not present a good look to anyone browsing my website at the time. OR can and should do better here.
Chris, I had about 20 properties that I had to reenable. I decided to deactive my hosted website while the properties were being reenabled so they wouldn't get booked. This turned out to be easier than blocking the calendar for each one. It was still unprofessional and I got about 3 phone calls during that time about the site being down :(
