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When selecting dates on the "widget calendar" the numbers of the dates are not in "bold" showing they are available. Also, within the "widget calendar" it will allow you to click and select dates even if they are unavailable. If you notice on Airbnb the dates will show as grey and will not allow you to select them if you are not allowed to arrive/depart on that day.
Airbnb Example below. You notice the arrow does not turn into a hand allowing you to select the date because it's not available to check-out that day. Also, the dates of the 15th, 22nd, and 29th are in bold indicating that you can select them.
OR widget:
The numbers are not in bold indicating to the potential guest they are available. Also the hand appears which allows the guest to select any date even when it's not available.
I feel like it would make the user experience for the guest better. As it is now in the widget, they could be spending a lot of time selecting random dates until they select a date that allows them to depart.
I vote for this as well! For my larger properties, it is a huge benefit to have this automated. I used to have the template/trigger running for adjacent night gaps in OR but it was very manual follow up. When interested, I would have to follow up with a quoted price, wait/monitor for the confirmation, then manually go in (3rd time) to process. With HostBuddy, everything is delivered upfront and if they say yes, a task is created. I have 1 manual process (to process the add-on), instead of 3. Even if there are no plans to add upsells, it would be great to add these fields as options for the messaging template. That would solve the problem as well.
Here is the upsell message and custom fields:
Hi [[guest_name]]!
We have [[num_days_available]] night that opened up right before your reservation. If you're interested, I'd like to offer this night to you at a [[discount_percentage]]% discount. That would make the night before your arrival [[total_after_discount]] (plus tax) instead of [[total_before_discount]] (plus tax) for a savings of [[total_discount_amount]]. Even if you can't make it that night, adding a night also allows you to check in as early as you like on your original check in day- even if it's 6AM! Let me know if you'd like to add this night to your stay.
[This topic has been merged with another topic (Broadcast feature for all current or future bookings). All unique votes have also been merged.]
[Another topic was closed as a duplicate of this topic (Tag Automations: Trigger a message when adding a tag)]
Awesome. That work is in development as I'm writing this. It of course needs to go through our full dev and QA cycle before it's ready for release, but we shouldn't be too far out on it as of today.
I'll merge this request over to that one and we'll keep everyone posted on that thread.
Yes maam! My vote's been logged there!
Hey Alece,
We are working on a "Broadcast" feature that I think may satisfy your request here. Give this Feature Request a look and let me know, please!
https://www.ownerrez.com/forums/requests/broadcast-email-for-all-future-bookings#80739
The custom fields seem to be a great feature but I can't find a good use for them while not harming the customer journey during booking process. I see double use for them in our case: we are obliged (legally) to collect more customer date for each guest staying at the property as well as would like to have more info (eg preferred languages) to custom communication. Unfortunately I can't send a request to a guest to provide more info as an online fillable forms because OwnerRez cannot prevent custom fields from showing also during quote acceptance if you want them to show during separate 'agreement signing'. (and agreement signing is the only way to try to collect them now as OwnerRez does not offer any way to create standalone fillable forms outside of the agreement signing process)
Yes I absolutely need this as well, but also so my owners can see it when they log in to the calendar without clicking into each booking.
I could do with this but so I can send to an Owner each day.
Hey Jennifer!
You can set up a custom field to be displayed on the POC form that asks guests what their trip is for, or something along those lines. Once they fill it out, you should see what they inserted under the Custom Field tab of their booking. More on how to create this here: https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/capture-additional-fields-on-checkout-quote-acceptance
You could create tags for different events, like birthday, anniversary, etc, and then add the corresponding tag to their booking. Then, when you're looking at your list of bookings, you can see those tags. We have these support articles that go over how to create tags and add them to a booking:
Please reach out to help@ownerrez.com if you have any questions!
Hey Brock!
You should be able to show the cancellation policy on the property pages of your hosted website by changing the Rates Display and setting it to Availability Rates Calendar. By setting it to this option, the availability calendar on the property pages should be updated to display the rate for each night, and the cancellation policy should be displayed directly underneath the calendar. More on hosted website rate displays here: https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/hosted-websites-rates-display#rates-multi
You can make this change by going to Settings > Hosted Websites > click on the site name > click Change Settings. On the following page, scroll down to the Display section and set Rates Display to Availability Rates Calendar, and then save the changes. Once you do, if you go to a property page on your hosted website, you should see the cancellation policy below the availability calendar.
Please reach out to help@ownerrez.com if you have any questions!
Yeah... therein lies my challenge. For a message like "this is what to do now that we're under a tornado watch," that unfortunately won't suffice...
You are correct. It could be up to an hour.
I just don't know how to have more control over the timing with the "scheduled" version (as "immediate" is unavailable for this). I assume it simply tries every hour, which could mean a long wait before an urgent message is sent. Or am I misunderstanding how that timing works?
The triggering of a template using a tag is the easy part! Yes, you can do that now. And the recent update to allow triggers to work on pre-existing bookings is what makes it work! Here is an example of a trigger. Make sure it has the 'retry' set.
This trigger will send the chosen template out for any booking that you have assigned this tag.
Hey Michael -- Apologies if I wasn't clear. I'm not trying to automate the addition of the tag to the reservations, but the sending of a message upon adding a tag. (Although a batch update to bulk-add a tag to all current-staying guests would certainly further expedite our ability to get time-sensitive weather updates to our guests — so long as adding said tag is able to trigger a message being sent!)
Hi Alece, this type of tag automation could be made to work now, since tag automations can now be applied if there are certain types of changes made to a booking - even existing bookings. To fully realize what you are suggesting would require a batch update tool for tag automations. This is being considered, and the ability to update based on changed bookings is a step in that direction for now.
The follow up question might be 'Can a batch update to my bookings trigger a tag automation?' Yes. There are four possible batch update tools depending on the features that you have enabled. PM, Door locks, Quickbooks, and Damage Protection. Theoretically, using one of them to update certain records would also trigger a tag automation on the associated bookings.
Hi Shannon,
I completely understand why this feels unfair at first glance. It seems like you’re being taxed on money you don’t actually keep, but in reality, you aren’t losing anything in this transaction when the cleaning fee is marked as taxable.
And I do want to start by saying I am not a Tax Expert by any means, so certainly double-check with a tax accountant in your state.
However, as far as I know, Under New York State tax law, any amount a guest is required to pay in order to stay, including a cleaning fee, is considered part of the “charge for occupancy.” That means it must be included in the total taxable amount for the booking, just like rent.
You’re not paying the tax out of your own pocket when you have the surcharge marked as Taxable, you’re collecting it from the guest and then remitting it to the state. For example, if your cleaning fee is $100 and the New York sales tax rate is 4%, the guest would pay $104. You would pass $100 to your cleaner and remit $4 to the state. You’re not out any money; you’re just acting as the collector of that tax.
The important thing to remember is that your cleaner’s tax obligations are separate. They’ll pay income tax on what they earn from you, but that has nothing to do with the sales tax that applies to the guest’s purchase of the short-term stay.
And it makes sense when you think about it. If the state were to say that cleaning fees weren’t part of the taxable total, many rental owners could lower the nightly rate and raise the cleaning fee instead, effectively avoiding a portion of the sales tax. That’s why New York includes the entire amount the guest is required to pay: rent, cleaning, or otherwise, as part of the taxable base.
You can still show the cleaning fee separately for transparency, but for compliance, it should remain taxable when it’s a required part of the stay.
Here is a link to the New York State Tax code as it partains to Short Term Rentals: https://www.tax.ny.gov/pubs_and_bulls/publications/sales/short-term-rental.htm
All that being said, I am not the Tax police. lol I just mention this as I would hate for you to get audited and face some sort of fine for not collecting the tax on the cleaning fee. You can set the cleaning fee any way you want. And no new feature is needed to do so. Let me show you quickly how you can set the taxability of a cleaning fee:
Understanding the Taxability of Cleaning Fees in New York - Watch Video
Hi Brandon:
If you have your channel notifications active, you should be getting a notification when there is a channel issue. If you have an example of that not happening, go ahead and write in to Help@OwnerRez.com
Be sure to provide the detals so we can investigate for you!
Thanks for taking the time to share this request, Ryan!
Here is a video response I made showing how you can categorize these surcharges using our current categories and how to create surcharges that will allow you to automatically charge for multiple gate passes.
Understanding Surcharge Categories and Feature Requests at OwnerRez - Watch Video
Regarding the surcharge categories for things like Gate Passes and Credit Card Processing, those categories are driven largely by what the major channel APIs (like Airbnb and Vrbo) support. Because of that, it’s unlikely we’ll be adding new predefined categories in the near term. The good news is that you can still label your surcharge however you’d like, while assigning it to one of the existing types (for example, using Community Fee for gate passes or Reservation Fee for credit card processing). You can name them anything you want. That approach will still show correctly in reports and allow consistent categorization across bookings.
As for the quantity or multiplier idea for optional surcharges, that’s a great suggestion. However, the current multiplier logic depends on data points provided by channels (such as guest count or pets), so it isn’t easily expandable to new fields, like “number of cars.” To support this properly, we’d need to introduce a separate quantity field specifically for optional surcharges, which would take some development work.
As with all feature requests, we have a lot on the roadmap and prioritize based on user demand, so votes on this post will help us gauge broader interest.
Thanks again for sharing your use case. It’s a helpful example that gives our team context for how these features could be improved.
Hi
when channels are inactive can I be alerted from owner rez!
best regards
Brandon
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So thankful to see this addressed in the October product updates!
I would like to still request the ability to assign a public name for the locks as it currently inserts our own internal lock identifier name into the message templates to guests. (Or, alternatively, the option to remove the name and only insert the actual code.)
The new release states that all surcharges will be taxed and that rent taxability should be based on pricing preferences instead. However, there is no way to modify surcharges in the pricing preferences to not include taxes. This isn't fair as not all surcharges should be taxed.
For example, the cleaning fee we charge is not money I am making. I charge exactly what my cleaner charges and simply pass the money along to her. It is then her responsibility to pay a tax on the income she made. As it is now, I am actually losing money on the cleaning fee because the taxes in my state reduce that cleaning fee by 13%. I cannot simply increase my cleaning fee by 13% b/c then my customers will just be paying MORE taxes on THAT (and percentages don't work that way as we all learned from the recent Airbnb increase-- I would have to increase the cleaning fee by 15% to actually get the right amount).
I don't claim the cleaning fee as revenue on my taxes therefore should not pay a tax for it.
Yes this would be ideal! Then I could email guests who have provided their car registration for parking the specific parking instructions.
I use the calendar widget embedded on my website for my property. When any website visitor views this calendar, they can see when there is a turnover, and when there are days when the house is not booked. Essentially when the property is empty. This can be a security risk, and also lead to confusion when a prospective guest tries to book. My request is to automatically show any unavailable day (based on minimum nights rules and on same day turnover) as unavailable.
Here is the view of my calender for this month (note that my minimum nights is 3; ignore the calendar sync issue for the first 5 days of November).
The desired view for website visitors would be more like Airbnb's view where unavailable days are simply shown as unavailable, as shown in the following view. Note the difference in display of the 13th, 14th, and 24th of the month.
As a rapid workaround to message all our guests when there's incoming severe weather (think... tornado warning), I'd love to just tag all the current bookings with a Tornado tag if that could automate our template message that explains safety protocols. This could be implemented through a Tag Automation or even a Trigger booking event that occurs immediately when a tag is added.
This is a very basic Property Management function that we need to be able to have. Any update on this? If not we have to manually track any monies we are holding from an owner for repairs that might come up and makes the accounting with owners very messy.
I'd like to request that our company's logo show up in booking hover-over popups. Integrated channels get a logo, so it should be a piece of cake to have our logo used as well. Or maybe have an icon be part of the features we can set up for Custom Sources?
