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Actually it does have an Airbnb requirement, if you are IB on vrbo, you must be IB or Airbnb. If you want to have Airbnb on RTB, you have to change others to RTB as well. 

I'm coming from Lodgify where (as of this morning) I was instant book on Booking.com (only option they offer) and request to book on VRBO and AB&B.  If it were an ABB mandate, you'd expect it to be enforced with all their PMS partners.  Right now, I can't have one of my properties on Booking because of this.  I can't allow that one to be IB on ABB or VRBO because the demographic using those sites would book it for a party 9 times out of 10.  Booking, while providing me very few bookings, has all been a much different and more professional clientele.

As far as I know from researching close to a dozen PMSs over the last 9 months, OR is the only one with this requirement.

how do you get autoresponder to show up in VRBO inbox from inquiry?  good hack... 

This is one of those "nice to have", but not "need to have" things IMO. Been integrated for years, and see no need for this. If it is there - fine, not there - fine. If traveler contacts pre-booking, autoresponder responds into vrbo inbox. If they still have more questions, I just do "reply" from my email inbox (which also ends up in Vrbo portal  email). Post booking all comms are via OR. Vrbo does not need to be in-between. 

Zapier is a platform to integrate systems that otherwise would not talk to each other directly.  For example, you could have an integration (which they call a "Zap") to log facebook messages into your CRM.  For a while I had it pulling bookings from my old PMS and importing them into the accounting software I was testing.  You could integrate OR with MailChimp to put all of your guests emails into a mailing list, for example.

There are others pre-built that share your instagram posts to facebook or auto post things from an RSS feed to your facebook page.

A lesser known competitor is "IFTTT" which stands for "IF This Than That" which is basically how Zapier works.

To compare it to OR, Zapier/IFTTT function on "Triggers" that kick off a specific task once triggered, much like when you setup a message to go out two days before a guest arrives.

Hope that helps explain what it is.

why ? It is a bit redundant since we have pricelabs and beyondpricing already available that integrates. Some owners do not even list on Airbnb. 

Actually it does have an Airbnb requirement, if you are IB on vrbo, you must be IB or Airbnb. If you want to have Airbnb on RTB, you have to change others to RTB as well. 

I was asking for HW integration. What is zapier?  I visited the website and could not understand what it does. I have configured OR top send me email/text to change tstats

1. ACH as method of payment not applicable to channel bookings rule. or even 1st payment (deposit)  by CC, balance by ACH if it is in advance booking.  

2.  every owner can set rule how many nights in advance they want to accept ACH (like I only accept check 37 or more nights out from arrival). In that case they can allow sufficient time for the renter to correct the bank situation and either resubmit or pay by other method. 

3. Understandable, but most guests do not know that they can do a c/b via ACH. Many do know they can do it via CC (and way too easily - no proof required). 

Lynx can be connected using iCals but they do not have an API integration.

Once you link the iCals, you will start seeing reservations inside Lynx as they sync. However, it can take up to an hour for the first full sync to complete. iCal links will bring over the check-in/check out dates of the reservations.

If and when Lynx does become an official partner with an API integration, this will allow reservations to sync over instantaneously. This also allows for other information to transfer over like the guest information. It's completely up to Lynx how this will work though, and it appears they do not plan to build this full integration at the current time.

I recommend reaching out directly to Lynx for any further questions. Plus that way they know someone else is wanting the API integration.
 

Here is the support article from their site with setup instructions for OwnerRez users: https://support.getlynx.co/hc/en-us/articles/360058099612

Thanks for the feedback on your ACH needs.  We've looked at ACH/eCheck before, but it's complicated with many of the flows that we support.

Some thoughts:

• What do you do about channel bookings such as from Vrbo where you are the merchant of record and the guest's card passes through to OwnerRez?  ACH wouldn't be possible in that case.  Just ignore the ACH option and require CC?
• What happens when an "insufficient funds" issue happens with ACH?  With credit cards, the funds are guaranteed instantly.  Even if the guest cancels their credit card, the bank will still honor the approval of what was approved.  ACH can be initially approved and then bounce a few days later.  How did Vacation Rental Desk handle this?  The payment would have to have some kind of "pending" status until you knew the approval was locked in for good.
• Chargebacks are actually still possible with ACH.  Many people don't realize this, but all USA banks that are part of NACHA have to return funds that are disputed if the dispute happens against the ACH within 60 days.  I could be off on the exact number of days, but it's something like that.

If's still possible to support of course, but we've punted on it before because of these issues and bigger priorities.

Your feedback is welcome!

For direct bookings (including Vrbo bookings, which as an integrated partner are effectively the same as direct), I just confirm with the guest that "the extra night will be $X, shall I go ahead and extend?" and once they say yes, then I just extend it and charge their card at that time. I don't make them manually go in and submit payment themselves, since I already have their card on file.

I agree that the process/UX could be a little smoother all around, though.

I have Ecobee in several properties and Nest in a couple others. This would be fantastic. Nest is a pretty closed system, but Ecobee seems amenable to open access of various types. If OR isn't able to devote resources to this, maybe there's a third-party integration that could sort of help facilitate automation such as this?

Says that OR is integrated, but I don't see how on OR to set that up.

On a prior provider, I was able to have direct bookings through Booking.com and still keep Air B&B to an "ask first" setting.  Why is this not possible with OR?  AB&B does not have any requirement for this (and really shouldn't be able to force this upon us).

Thanks,
Ryan

I use Lynx to manage my thermostats.  Set min & max temp as well as prevent users from running the fan constantly (prevents excessive wear and tear).  Also have an out building set to turn off daily at a certain time.  All tstats have freezing and overheating prevention configured as well.

Had it setup to adjust the temperature prior to a guest's arrival, but that didn't work as well as I'd like.

Yes, actually, there's a way to do this now.

We've added Tags as criteria on Triggers.  So, if you create a "Problem Guest" tag, you can set that in the criteria to not send that email to bookings with that tag.

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/tags

Hello! Was just looking at this and wondered if anything had been developed or added. Was also thinking a report of the “guest has problem” list would be useful. 😊

When a guest wants to extend their stay, you either have to change the current reservation or create a new booking. 

I would love to see a feature where we can send a quote out to extend a guest's trip and not block the night unless/until payment is made. At that point, the existing reservation would be changed and all departure messages moved out to the new departure date, keycode extended, etc. 

As it is, if you change the current reservation, you end up changing the departure date before payment happens. I don't like to block extra nights until payment is made. I have had some guests ask to extend, but then change plans again at the last minute and not actually extend.  

Creating a new booking for the extention is also problematic, because I need to skip certain messages on both the current and the new booking to avoid duplicating messages. A new booking also requires a new keycode on my lock, which is different from the current keycode.  

It seems like there could be a happy medium where you could create a quote to extend the original booking (at least when it is a direct booking and not through VRBO / AirBnb / etc.)

Thanks

When a guest wants to extend their stay, you either have to change the current reservation or create a new booking. 

I would love to see a feature where we can send a quote out to extend a guest's trip and not block the night unless/until payment is made. At that point, the existing reservation would be changed and all departure messages moved out to the new departure date, keycode extended, etc. 

As it is, if you change the current reservation, you end up changing the departure date before payment happens. I don't like to block extra nights until payment is made. I have had some guests ask to extend, but then change plans again at the last minute and not actually extend.  

Creating a new booking for the extention is also problematic, because I need to skip certain messages on both the current and the new booking to avoid duplicating messages. A new booking also requires a new keycode on my lock, which is different from the current keycode.  

It seems like there could be a happy medium where you could create a quote to extend the original booking (at least when it is a direct booking and not through VRBO / AirBnb / etc.)

Thanks

An icon next to the guest’s name on the ribbon or month views when a renter agreement has been signed would be very helpful to catch unsigned agreements. Having to consistently remember to run a separate filtered report makes it a lot easier to get missed. 

I too would love to find a way to make this connection sooner rather than later......

Is there any kind of work around?

Anytime I hear about a Google product not “ready to scale”, I gotta wonder. I mean, for real??

I absolutely love OwnerRez and can’t find another platform that comes close to offering the level of support and features that you offer BUT…

I’m  wondering if maybe there’s a platform we can use for just this purpose while staying on OR.

Being directly integrated into Google Search is of paramount importance when trying to build direct bookings…

I’m honestly not sure how I added myself to this thread, but I’m glad I did since we have found that many of our direct bookings have come from Google searches. I have a very dumb question, somebody above stated “Google Vacation Rentals”. What does that mean? Is there a Google search function just for rentals with API integration? He also mentioned “Right now other channel managers are serving as such”. Like Lodgify? I love OR but would love it more if we were able to speak directly with Google searches. 

PS off topic, but does anybody know how to make your Google pin into the purple bed icon. My 3 rentals show up on Google with pins, but just generic grey icons. And yes I have added descriptive ‘services’ to my profile.

here’s one:

Door County Cabin Collective (Porte Haven)
(414) 614-3322
https://goo.gl/maps/zg4FvFR2dMVeQrR9A

Agreed- this would be fantastic

Not trading one for the other. This would be an additional venue for guests to find our OwnerRez STR’s. Another arrow in the quiver 😄

Trade dependence on OTA for dependence on Goog. 

Honeywell 

How does the Honeywell integrate with OwnerRez?

We have Nest thermostat, and have configured Zapier to send us an email reminder to turn up the thermostat the morning of a multi-day calendar event (i.e. a Guest Booking, synced to a Google Calendar), and a reminder to turn down the thermostat when there are no events on the calendar. This is not ideal or fully automated, but it works to automate reminders to manually adjust the temp.

Checking., Often emails go unopened (end up in spam?). Auto SMS will be great

Honeywell 

Trade dependence on OTA for dependence on Goog. 

We've actually met with them, but at present, they're oriented towards very large operations (hundreds or thousands of properties under one management), which isn't the bulk of OwnerRez clients.  This will likely change in the future, and when it does, we'll integrate.