General Help and Questions

Sort by

• Newest Reply
• Newest Topic

Looks like you got this fixed and your Booking.com connection is working.

If you deleted the mapped rate plan in the Booking.com Extranet: Try updating the rate plan by going to Settings > Channel Integrations > BDC > click on Change Property Mappings > select Change Sync Mode. On the following page, you can click the drop-down under the Rate column for each property, select the rate plan that appears, and then save the changes and see if the error goes away: 

Great question — this is actually expected behavior, not a mistake by OwnerRez or Vrbo. Let me explain what's happening.

What That ~12% Charge Is

When a guest inquires or books on Vrbo, Vrbo charges the guest a separate booking/service fee (which typically runs around 12%). This is a guest-facing fee charged directly by Vrbo — it is not coming out of your rates or your pocket.

Here's the key distinction for Subscription listings like yours:

• Your annual listing fee is charged by Vrbo to your credit card on its anniversary date — this is not visible in OwnerRez.
• The booking fee (~12%) is charged to your guest by Vrbo directly. OwnerRez will display this amount in the Charges tab of each booking, but it is not included in the main Charges area because it's money you never see or touch. Vrbo places this charge on the guest's credit card independently.
• Hosts not on the subscription plan instead pay a 5% pay per booking fee on the pretax charges.

You are not responsible for or involved in this transaction. It's purely between Vrbo and your guest.

Vrbo Common Issues & Questions > Financial Transactions > How do Vrbo's channel fees get paid?

Why It Shows Up in OwnerRez

OwnerRez does receive the booking fee amount from Vrbo via the channel integration and displays it at the bottom of the Charges tab of a booking for your reference — but again, this is purely informational. It does not affect your payout.

Vrbo Common Issues & Questions > Financial Transactions > How do Vrbo's channel fees get paid?

Bottom Line

✅ This is normal and expected behavior — no mistake on OwnerRez's part or Vrbo's part, and no change in terms. ✅ Your rates are not being reduced — the guest simply pays an additional Vrbo service fee on top of what you charge. ✅ Your subscription model means you pay no per-booking commission — only your annual listing fee.

If you have further questions about how fees are structured, feel free to reach out to Vrbo directly or reply here and we're happy to help!

Hi!  I have been managing my channel rates for appropriate adjustments, and I have two properties on an annual VRBO subscription.  I had a guest make an inquiry, and that inquiry shows an approximate 12% charge coming out of my rates to pay VRBO, not an added guest fee.  Is this an Ownerrez mistake, a VRBO mistake, or a change in terms that went under the radar?  Any help would be much appreciated!

Hi Yulema,

When it comes to the channel templates, there isn't a way to link to a specific agreement, as you can with email templates. If you use the BUFIXUP or BULEASE field code in a channel template, it will use whichever agreement has the highest priority. If no priority is set, then it will pick one at random. It looks like you already have a priority set for one of them, so that should be the agreement sent in channel templates. 

Once the guest fills out the POC form and you have an email address, you can send them an email template that has links to the other two agreements.

Hi Yulema,

 You should be able to accomplish this via custom field definitions. These are shown on the POC form, where we ask for their information, such as their email address. You could create a custom field code asking for their ID, name and age of all renters, information about pets, etc. Once they fill these out, you should see the ID in the Files tab of their booking, and the other information in the Custom Fields tab. This should work on channel bookings as well as long as you're sending the guest the renter agreement. We have this support article that goes over how you can set those up: https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/capture-additional-fields-on-checkout-quote-acceptance

Hi team,

I have a property on Koh Samui (Baan Tropicana, Hotel ID 2143000) with 7 room types connected to Booking.com via OwnerRez channel integration.

What happened: Booking.com had multiple rate plans that were creating pricing issues (duplicate "Flexible" plans and a "Monthly rate" showing 25% discount that I didn't intend). I deleted the extra rate plans directly in the Booking.com Extranet, keeping only the original "Flexible" rate plan (ID 52701623). This fixed the pricing for the Studio, but the other 6 room types disappeared from Booking.com because they lost their rate plan associations.

I then tried "Sync Everything" from the Actions menu in OwnerRez, and now all 7 properties show ERROR status.

Current errors:

• 6 room types show: "Error from Booking.com: Rate '52701623' is not active for room 'XXXXXXX'"
• Gardenview Apartment shows a different error: "Required field missing: must not be empty" under Photos & Rooms (photos and rooms are both populated in OwnerRez)
• Studio was working before the full sync but is now also in error state

What I need: All 7 room types need to have active rate plans on Booking.com again so they appear for sale. OwnerRez shows all 7 as Active with the correct Room-Rate mappings (each mapped to 52701623), but Booking.com only has that rate plan associated with the Studio room.

I haven't touched anything further and am waiting for guidance before making more changes.

Property IDs for reference:

• Gardenview Apartment: 214300006
• Studio: 214300007
• Villa 1: 214300001
• Villa 2: 214300003
• Villa 3: 214300002
• Villa 4: 214300005
• Villa 5: 214300004

Thanks for any help — all Booking.com listings are currently offline.

Looking for the best report to run that shows me which guests have a past due payment.

I know how to run the balance due report that shows which property has past due balances, but that report doesn't give me the option to see which reservation actually owes the money so I can follow up with the guest. 

Thanks!

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 Jennifer,

It's hard to assist without seeing your exact Zap setup. As Emond outlined, there would need to be a second OwnerRez step in the Zap to fetch the guest details. This should look something like this:

Then you'll get the phone numbers array back from step 2 and you can use it for subsequent steps:

I'm afraid I can't help with other Zap connections beyond OwnerRez. I suggest reaching out Zapier support directly if there are issues outside the OwnerRez connection.

It's actually GHL GoHighLevel also called LeadConnector but same thing essentially

I can get it to work for guest contact info But I can't get it to pull the booking info like booked date and arrival date 
to bring into my contact manager. I tried attaching a guest id and matching the guest id but keep getting an error And the phone/email is attached to the contact record in ownerrez. 
"The app returned "Pass at least one of number, email query parameter"."
"The LeadConnector API requires either an email or phone number as a query parameter to find the contact, even if you're using a custom field for matching. This is an API limitation."


how do I get the email/phone # into the booking? so that I can match to GHL LeadConnector?

That doesnt work unfortunately.  The custom field is applied for all channels

Hi Jennifer,

If I understand correctly you are trying to connect an existing contact in Quo to a booking in OwnerRez.

When OwnerRez sends a signal (webhook, booking created/updated) the Zap will receive the (OwnerRez) guest_id.

Then pass this guest_id to OwnerRez' Guest Lookup block, so all the data that Ownerrez has/exposes about the guest comes to Zap.

Finally you can use the "Create or Update Contact" block from Quo and pass the details that were received from OwnerRez.

This will only work if the guest used the same email / phone number for the booking as how they are known in Quo. 

Is there a specific step that is causing a problem?

I do have the bridge setup, and am able to automatically generate codes from OwnerRez about 80% of the time.  A few tips I learned to help make this fairly reliable:

• don't generate the code until a couple of days prior to arrival - configurable in OwnerRez (minimizes problems with updates - see below)  
• schedule a "code check" task for the day before arrival to manually check that the code is installed in the lock (because it doesn't always work, and I don't want a guest to be locked out)
• updates will fail - if a reservation changes and OwnerRez attempts to update an existing code to change the dates for example, it will fail, causing the code to disappear completely. After such an event, I have been unable to get a code pushed from OR into Igloo at all, and everything has to be done manually after that.
• If a guest requests a date change (or I upsell them on an early check-in), my workflow is to:
  • manually delete the guests existing code from the Igloohome app (if it's already been setup - so this only applies if the change happens in the window between when I've configured OR to generate the code, and the booking change)
  • make the updates to OwnerRez booking
  • that triggers a code generation, which Igloo home sees as entirely new and mostly works
  • manually confirm that the new code is installed correctly

I've found that one a code fails to generate from an OR booking once, it will never work for that booking again, so from that point onward, I have to make sure the code for that booking is setup manually.  If bookings flow smoothly without changes, it mostly works without intervention, but I do have to manually check and confirm so that nothing goes wrong.

Hope these tips help.

Maybe you don't have a team of employees working for you like we do, but personally i don't want it to be any easier to make changes to charges. I do agree with the placement of new like charges and subtotals though. That would be nice. 

I don't think your far off, but you suggest all these to the features request forum. 

I agree, it was much nicer when we had a message guest button and email history button right on the booking overview. 

I use Zapier to pull guest contact info into Quo (my digital guest phone line). I have to use multiple steps to get all the information I need, which sounds like it could apply to your use-case as well. I have to do a Booking Lookup as well as a Contact Lookup. Maybe give something like that a try? 

Not sure if I did anything different but I was able to successfully set up the bridge at my rental and it seems to be working. I did have one time where the bridge wasn't connected but my rental is in an area with unstable wifi. So pretty sure it wasn't an Igloo problem. We'll see once the rainy season starts and power goes on/off...

Might be good to make sure your bridge has the newest firmware if it's not working consistently. I have the door code generated just like my Schlage lock.

On the Igloo app there is a separate tab for OwnerRez codes which I love!

Overall since I retried setting everything up, it's working well.

I'm trying to pull booking info like the Booked Date and Arrival Date into my CRM but having trouble as it has to match on email or phone which are in the contact. I've got other zaps pulling contact info into my crm but can't get booking info. 
I tried pulling the guest id into my crm and matchig on that but seems it will only match based on the phone or email which is in the contact not the booking. 

Has anyone been successful doing a lookup the guest email in zapier?

Hey Wendy!

If you'd like to add links to your homepage, you can do so by going to Settings >  Hosted Websites > click into the site > click on the Home Page under Menu and Pages. On the following page, you should see an Intro and Conclusion section. You can click into either section, and you should be able to insert any links you'd like, and then save the changes.

Thank you! It's disappointing we cannot use the condition with the channel messages. Mainly because the support could then see it directly if we have an issue with the guest. 

Hi Liz,

For the trigger that would send the agreement A, you would need to add a condition that says number of pets is equal to 0. This should only be sent if the booking doesn't have any pets included: 

For the trigger that would send the dog agreement, you would want to add the condition number of pets is greater than or equal to 1. This should only be sent if there are one or more pets included in the booking: 

You can link specific agreements to email templates so that it only sends one or the other. We have this support article that goes over how you can link a specific agreement: https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/renter-legal-agreements#specific-templates

One thing to note is that this would only work in email templates. So when it comes to Airbnb bookings, since they don't send us their email address, you'd still have to send them the original agreement, and then if they have a pet, send them the dog agreement manually.

Thank you for the clarification on what the new notations at the top of the page mean; however, even if we assume check-ins/check-outs are at the normal times, there is no way to tell from the main Overview page whether a cleaning is a "turn," which is how we schedule the order of cleans when we have more than one check-out on the same day. Instead, you have to click into the Change/Move page to access this information, which is not readily available to the cleaning crews. The visual calendar that used to be at the bottom of the Overview page was very helpful with this, as well as allowing a guest to check-in early or check-out late. 

I've had multiple AirBnB rental guests over the last couple of weeks tell me that the link to e-sign the rental agreement is not working.  Is anyone else having this issue?  

I agree with you 1,000%!! Yet what you are pointing out is only a fraction of the messes.

And I have to ask, too - what's with everything having to be green? There are other colors in the world. Colors help, and a skilled, talented UX designer will be able to introduce their usefulness along with all the other types of fixes of the messes created. 

I really appreciate what Chris and Paul have started with OwnerRez and their effort to make the best property and channel management software, but more and more OwnerRez's UX (user experience) is growing increasingly sloppy, disorganized, and difficult to navigate. Really and truly. Every day it gets harder to get from point a to point b. I don't have time to go into it all in detail, I am just expressing my frustration. And it doesn't seem like they are actually listening to us users.

Just one example is - I get an inquiry from a guest via Vrbo, I respond, and then some time after they book. So I get an email notification that I got a message from them, so I click on the link to respond. I try to select a template for that, and the template I want doesn't come up because the interface limits my response to Vrbo. So I click on Activity Timeline, and that still doesn't allow me to respond because the conversation is limited to their initial inquiry, not including the booking they just made. So that leaves me to try to find their booking via their Related Activity. But only their inquiry shows there, too, not their booking. So that leaves me with having to either click on Contacts and find their booking via that interface or click on the calendar and navigate month to month in the future in order to find their booking that way. Tons and tons of steps!

And the new layout that they're all proud of totally sucks! Way worse than what they replaced it with. No easy way to get to where you can communicate with the guest. To email them you have to click on a tiny envelope icon on the far right. To message them otherwise you have to click on the three tiny dots way in the upper right and then select Activity Timeline from the menu that appears there. The horizontal menu puts "charges" and "transactions" in the right spot but the least important items right after that and then the most important items, such as Email and Messaging, far away or hidden in tiny places as I described. And the labeling is non-intuitive.

The best interface is what they relegated to "Activity Timeline," and the banner over it constantly reminds me that it's going to be gone soon - replaced with what, I have no clue. The Inbox sucks, as I described, but that's only part of it. If that is a unified inbox, I hate to experience what isn't unified, because the inbox is about as far from unified as I've experienced with any software.

I could go on, but I really can't right now. It just seems like it's all being winged - throwing up whatever they think will stick and very little of it is sticking. Really and truly, a skilled UX designer is desperately needed! If they have one, then they need to be let go of them and hire someone who really knows what they're doing to take their place. I could do a better job, and I have no background or practice in such work. All I know is that the basics of all this is being pulled all out of shape and making it harder and harder to use. Focus on the putting those basics together, get users to give you feedback as you go along before even going into beta, and play with the bells and whistles once those basics are in place.

4) Way too much unnecessary clicking when navigating. - not sure what you mean - seems subjective

Just have to chime in on this one, as it is a major frustration for me in OwnerRez. It is not subjective at all.

By any measure, it takes way too much clicking around to do anything in OwnerRez.

Just look at Changing Charges on a reservation or quote.

First you have to click 'Charges' to go to a 'Charges' screen. Why? It's primarily important information to every booking. It should appear in detail on the main Booking screen, and be editable there. But no. So click 'Charges'.

On the Charges screen, can you change or edit Charges? No. You have to click on 'Change' to be able to make changes, which means going to an almost identical screen except that this one is editable. Why? What does this serve? Why not just go directly to an editable screen in the first place? Or not have to click to go to a separate screen anyway?

To add a charge you click on a button, which brings up a menu, which allows you to select a type of line item. But when you select that type of line item, rent for example, does it appear under rental charges? No. It appears at the bottom of the screen, and has to be clicked on, and then dragged into position in the list. Why? If it's a rent item, it should go in the rental charges section automatically. But no, you have to click and drag it into place.

And even if that item has been defined as taxable, it WON'T be taxed unless it is dragged into position on the screen above the taxes! Why? What purpose does this serve except to waste time and cause user frustration?

Every item that one needs to add or change... click, click, click, and drag, click and drag... it's ridiculous.

And then you have to click again, OUT of OwnerRez to a calculator app to add up all the rental charges because the Charges screen doesn't show a sub-total of rental charges, or a sub-total of surcharges, or a sub-total of taxes, but you NEED that information to compare to the information being sent to you from a non-connected booking site. Click click click, back and forth. Even in and out of OwnerRez because it is lacking such a simple feature as displaying sub-totals.

And then you click 'Save', so you don't lose your information on a screen which doesn't save automatically, but should. And then you have to click BACK to the MAIN booking screen because all of the most important information isn't on that screen. It's buried under a bunch of extra buttons to click on!

If you haven't used other great, well-designed software, you may not have any understanding of how things could be SO much better.

Thank you! This worked.

Not sure I understand fully.

I elected ELAVON via COSTCO.  Best rates plus dividends with Costco.

Was Converge the extension of ELAVON?  I do not remember.

Why would I need ELAVON and STRIPE or LYNNBROOK?

Does LYNNBROOKE offer an invoice platform for owners?

Thank you,

Jan

Not sure I understand fully.

I elected ELAVON via COSTCO.  Best rates plus dividends with Costco.

Was Converge the extension of ELAVON?  I do not remember.

Why would I need ELAVON and STRIPE or LYNNBROOK?

Does LYNNBROOKE offer an invoice platform for owners?

Thank you,

Jan