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Thank you, Ken. I have that rule already so I know I can cancel if they don't sign.
The issue is that it used to be a zero-cost cancellation for both me and the guest if the guest would not sign the rental agreement (full refund up to 60 days prior). That's because Vrbo does not retain a processing fee if you fully refund the guest (I am not talking about the service fee).
But now that I process the card (currently with Stripe), someone has to pay the 3% Stripe fee if the guest doesn't sign the contract. I'm using the 97% refund cancellation policy so the guest pays the 3% if they cancel.
The problem is a guest that won't sign could argue that they don't have to pay the 3% fee because they never signed the contract agreeing to the 3% cancellation fee. Or that I cancelled their booking when they didn't sign so I should pay the 3% fee. Either way, it seems to make more sense to me to not process the credit card until after the contract is signed.
Yes, in fact, it is essential to state in your House Rules that guests are required to sign and follow the Rental Agreement.
So either I am out the 3% or the guest is out 3% if they decide they don't want to actually sign the contract. Sounds like I have to use one of three House Rules to admonish them to read the contract because the cancellation policy of losing 3% becomes effective as soon as they book even though they haven't actually signed a contract. Do you have any other options for this?
This is not recommended and not supported - the card should be charged as soon as the booking is made. You don't want bookings blocking your calendar that have not paid you anything.
Nik,
I am using Ryan Gallagher with Vacation rental bookkeeping. Getting set up was super easy as he knows his way around OR. You can reach him at ryan@vacationrentalbookkeeping.com. he is excellent.
Got your Helpdesk message and replied.
I would like to wait to charge the credit card for Vrbo bookings (API integrated, Instant Book) until after the contract is signed. And I would like that all to be automatic – the signing of the contract triggers the charging of the credit card. All of it has to be done within 48 hours or the booking gets cancelled. How do I set this up?
I've already set the “Property” Rule for credit cards to “Card will not be charged when the booking is made” and know that applies to direct bookings but can't tell if it works for Vrbo bookings.
I am currently getting my direct booking site set up through the hosted site feature in OwnerRez.
I am currently setting rates through Pricelabs.
Is there a way to override rates by channel? Specifically I want to adjust my booking site's rate a little higher to capture some of the management fee that the customer doesn't have to pay through Airbnb and VRBO.
I can add a "Management" surcharge to accomplish this but I'd rather just roll it into the rent fee.
Is this possible?
Thanks,
Matt
Some may be no longer used. Thanks
Ken, thank you!
I don't know why but I switched it around to "everything but" Airbnb and the Taxes detail started showing up on my website.
Thank you sir.
@Ken could you send me this information as well?
This may be because your direct bookings are not being properly identified as being from your website.
In any case, this is not the recommended way to set taxes - rather than setting specific channels where they are applied, you should instead set specific channels where they are known not to be applied (if any). The most common use case for this is Airbnb, when they both collect and remit a particular tax and you don't have to deal with it.
I am testing the hosted website feature and I'm not seeing the tax charges in the "Charge Details" section.
In the Taxes setting, I have city and state tax set for Vrbo and My Website (the taxes work through Vrbo).
On Pricing Preferences - How Guest See Charges I've swapped between "detailed breakdown" and "combine" for Taxes and that doesn't appear to make a difference.
Any ideas?
Thanks in advance,
Matt
I notice Igloo now do a bridge for their locks which seems to be a wifi to Bluetooth repeater unit.
Does anyone have one? Have you encountered any issues with the OR remote lock integration since you installed the bridge? I assume they can both run together happily.
Hello,
Any Updates on the integration with Quickbooks including the negative Airbnb service fee on automated invoice? ? I would love Use Ownerrez for that for all my platforms payouts and my website. Invoicing could be done in one place.
Currently I use Bnbtally ( and I love it but having it in one place wold help as well) and they way they solve the problem with Airbnb Service fee they created a part class Airbnb Service Fee in the Cost Of Service in the chart of accounts. the amount that comes out in that part class is negative and it does balances the invoice and the payout. The only thing you have that the Airbnb Fees / Vrbo fees would be under the Cost of doing business not expense account.
If Ownerez could test that on their side that would be great and it would help a lot of people.
Airbnb Accounting & Bookkeeping: A Comprehensive Guide (bnbtally.com)
Best Regards,
Anna Noll
Hello,
Is there an updated list of events OR tracks in Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel? If OR creates all of the custom events related to our use case as hosts, we don't have to create new tags to track bookings and inquiries on our direct booking website, correct? We currently use a WP.com site powered by OR widgets, so we can't effectively create events for the widget buttons or OR booking landing pages.
Thanks,
Yvette
I have at least a handful of bookings that came in same day, some for only one night, and that have already checked in affected by this and I wasn't made aware of the problem until now. As far as I'm concerned Airbnb needs to pay us our cleaning fees. I'll run a report today to see how many bookings are missing cleaning fees
I have guest booked this morning for same day check in and they are already on their way. They are very upset about the additional cleaning fee that wasnt presented at the point of booking. Who will be responsible for my loss of income?
Hi Ken,
I have never set min price on Pricelabs. Nevetheless, I still followed instructions and delete all rules on my rate calendar. The problem still persisted. Tech support told me that it could be due to the min night set in my seasons. So I went ahead and deleted all my seasons. Still the min night on all of my listings kept revert back to the 3 night minimum set in Property Rules. Tech support couldnt figure out why.
I just finished a conference call with our Airbnb contacts, and here is what they have recommended:
Hi Chris,
Thanks for the information. We have 2 such a bookings which are missing cleaning fees. How do we create support ticket? or can I mention the booking number here? I have not created support ticket before so any information would be appreciated.
Thanks,
GC Rentals.
Yes, OwnerRez is already pushing the cleaning fee updates to Airbnb, so you shouldn't need to do anything. To check, look at your listing as a guest. If you do still see your listing missing a cleaning fee, send in a support ticket and we'll double check to make sure it is good to go.
We're also in contact with Airbnb to see what they're going to do for bookings that were made during the bug and will update this post when we get the details.
Hi Chris,
How can you re-push the cleaning fee? Are you doing this through OR or Airbnb?
Thanks and all help is greatly appreciated!
Yep, Airbnb has resolved the issue and they're accepting cleaning fees again. They didn't add back the missing cleaning fees, but fixed the bug so that cleaning fees can be added again. We've re-pushed cleaning fees for any listing updated last night to be safe.
This issue seems to be resolved. We see cleaning fees going through.
What is the telephone number to Airbnb API department. Thank you.
Second that! Cleaning fee or I guess any fees for that matter are not being synced with airbnb. We had few bookings came in without paying cleaning fee. Seems like exclusive to airbnb
I've confirmed the issue with cleaning fees that should be populated on Airbnb but are missing -- other fees are being populated correctly, but the Airbnb pricing settings API is ignoring cleaning fees.
We've submitted a ticket with Airbnb API support. Will post an update when we hear back from them.
Hello, all my properties in Airbnb are now missing a cleaning fee and I have not touched the surcharge section. I can't seem to get the cleaning fee back either. Is this happening to anyone else?
I have a triggered message to go out after checkout saying, "next time book direct" and at the end it has {MYURL}. I understand that it's supposed to be my website, but it's showing up blank. How do I correct this? All the other areas where info automatically fills in works. Just not this one. How do I correct this?
