Feature Requests

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Love the functionality!

Slightly odd behavior, though...if I add a, say, 5% surcharge, it adds 5% to the rent only, but if I add a 5% discount code, it takes 5% off of the rent *and* the cleaning fee.

Seems that this should be something that is selectable. Or at the least, it should work the other way--I don't want to discount my cleaning fee, because that goes straight to my housekeepers, whereas a surcharge (like a credit card transaction surcharge) should apply to the whole bill.

"Say No to VRBO Service Fee" and "Short Term Rental University"

Thanks, @Rich. What is "the other forum"?

@Valerie - I think it's best to post requests for feature changes in the other forum, makes it easier for the OR team to not overlook it.

I agree with your comments, there is a lot of value in keeping short term rental stuff all in one place.

What are the reminders for? If it's something standard like you send it one day after arrival, you could use a trigger that would send it automatically. You can have multiple triggers using the same template.

I appreciate the feedback, and I am aware that I can add reminders to my Google calendar....in fact, that is how I used to do it before beginning to use reservation software.

The "problem" (not really a problem) is that the current software that I use has the ability to attach reminders right in the booking when you are getting it set up within the system which is very convenient....no need to go to a separate website (like the Google calendar) or tool to do it.

So I've experimented with setting up an email template in OR to be sent to myself to remind me of the task that needs to be done.

I've discovered that you can only use an email template once within a booking. So, I cannot schedule a reminder email to be sent to me more than once per booking.

I'd like to request that this limitation be removed, so that you can use any email template as many times as you wish per booking.

@Valerie R - I too have asked about having scheduled tasks, but it's pretty much a nice-to-have feature that you can easily work around with a calendar app.

I personally use google calendar for all of my reminders to myself, and I find it's super easy to include reminders there anyway. I don't really think there's a huge benefit to having it in OR, except for maybe property managers who want to track the result of the task with a status update. For an individual like myself with 3 properties it works fine to just set a reminder quarterly to do taxes, annually to reset kaba lock codes, and semiannually to perform deep cleans.

Unrelated to tasks, I learned early on that OwnerRez doesn't have an enormously feature-filled email system, but again I've just learned to send emails from my dedicated personal email (eg: myname@lovelyvacationrentals.com) and keep all of that communication in my personal email. Of course automated emails come from OwnerRez, but both those and the ones from my personal email appear to come from the same email address so guests never know. I just have two places to look for emails, OwnerRez and personal when I'm searching for something that was sent.

... and in my template emails I just insert the custom field code shortname between braces like {PXPARKING}, at the appropriate place in the template. You can preview how the template will look for each property.

@Valerie R - I have similar emails, what works for me is to create a custom field and then put unique text in for each property. There are no limits to how much content you can put in a custom field, I have one that are my house rules with dozens of bullets, and of course they are unique per property

Here are two of my custom fields. Both look much nicer than this forum, the actual text is formatted with bullets/bolding/etc

Parking Directions (PXPARKING)
Property A:
- Drive straight into garage and turn left before bike storage area, then continue straight through passage to Fraser Building
- Elevators will be on your left
- park either on this level or turn right to descend to 1st level
Property B:
- Drive straight into garage and turn left before bike storage area and find a nearby spot
- Elevators will be on your left
- If there are no spots, circle around and drive up the ramp behind the bike storage and park on the 2nd level

Wireless (PXWIRELESS)
Property A:
- Building Wireless: FCFPinternet password is fakepw1
- 4573 Unit Wireless: SkiCountry password is fakepw2
Property B:
- Building Wireless: FCFPinternet password is fakepw3
- 3501 Unit Wireless: SkiCountry password is fakepw4

Yep, that's a good idea. We are thinking about some tasks/reminders options.

If it is related to a booking, you could schedule an email to go out to yourself, like "check to make sure all the payment/renter agreement signature is in order 1 week before arrival"

Some property-specific emails that we send that can't be used universally are:

Check-in Instructions
Follow up email w/link to specific page for review
Notify Housekeeper
Remind Housekeeper
Housekeeper report
Put out the trash reminder (for guest)

What templates are you customizing per property? Most of the time it's better to create a single template and then use custom fields to customize the parts that are relevant to a specific property.

For example: https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/pre-arrival-email-templates-triggers-custom-fields

I am trying out OR for the free trial period and I am already missing the ability to schedule a reminder for certain tasks that need to be done at some point in the future related to each booking. My current software allows you to set/schedule "Reminders" using a date picker calendar, and each day you are presented with a notification on the dashboard to view the Reminders set for that day.

I hope you'll consider adding Reminders to your future enhancement list.

It would be nice if when creating custom email templates we are able to apply the template to all properties or specific properties....then when sending one of the email templates from a booking ONLY those emails that are associated with either ALL or that property are presented to choose from. Would save time having to sift through the whole list to find the email template we are looking for.

We've got some plans for third party alerts, but in the meantime if you want to set up a custom template you can use a regular template and put in the cleaners email instead of the guest email as the TO. And then set up a trigger to send that out when booking is created.

Where are you looking for this exactly? Is this on the hosted website, and if so which page?

Chris,
Any idea when this feature may be available?
When you go into the area that is described above, it changes the rate for those dates perpetually. With the VRBO calendar you can change it so let's say I just have a few weeks that are not booked that are coming up, I can decrease the rate to hope to get a booking and forget about it. With the solution above, someone can book those dates the next year at a discount and that is not the intended purpose.

What happens if I change the rate in VRBO, what takes precedence? Your rates or VRBO?
If I fully migrate to your solution API solution, do I lose the ability to set these last minute rates without having to go back and delete them or worry about people booking it the next year at the discount rate? I have people that have booked as far as 2 years out.

Bob

Could you please include the Third Party Email in the Email Templates to make it customizable?

Instead of showing a rate range like 150-500 per night, I would like to be able to have it say 'from 150 per night.'
During the off season, my rate might go as low as 99 per night and then as high as 200 for special events.

Right now Status is computed on the fly, so it's not a column that's sortable because of that -- it only gets calculated for what's currently sorted on other columns. I'll note this idea down for research.

Picky request: On the page for Trigger Forecast, when sort by "Booking" is selected, would be nice if the list would be ordered by "Status" so we can see the triggers in order (with those that 'can't run' at the end). This is what happens when you spoil us - we want more. Thanks!

Do you use the notes for other things right now? You can share the booking notes with cleaners, either via portal access accounts or by including them on the stay reports. There's not a general "cleaning notes" field but if you don't have sensitive info in the booking notes you can share them.

Another option would be to create a booking custom field for cleaning notes. And then you can include custom fields on the stay reports.

I agree. Adding a text field in addition to the date field would be really helpful and presumably a simple addition(?).
For me, assigning a cleaning date is not enough outside of peak season. During the summer all my cleanings are saturdays from 10am-2pm....so my cleaners just need to know to clean that week. Outside of that, my check ins and check outs vary greatly, as do my cleaners' availability. They may not be able to clean on a Monday morning, but I would like to be able to give them a cleaning "window" or at least some added info letting them know when they are OK to clean. I usually end up copying my cleaning report and then adding comments after each date like (must clean Sunday after 12 before 4pm check in. Or OK to clean Monday or Tuesday if needed. Having a simple "cleaning notes" field would be an excellent near term solution until OR hopefully rolls out a "cleaning module" of sorts.

I think there is a report for that?

Is it possible to make the date field a date or text field for those of us who want to assign a cleaner?

I think the information needed for this already exists in OR

Would be really helpful to have a ribbon like report with color shading to indicate the amount of time ahead of an arrival that a guest booked their stay. Maybe different shades to indicate the stay was booked <7 days, <30 days, <60 days, <90 days, <120days, <150days, etc

Would be great if this were paired with a report that showed the last N rate changes as well, which should allow a percentage discount/increase calculation.

I'd use this in a future year to figure out which weekends/holidays get booked way early and which book last.

I'd say this is a "nice to have" feature, not "essential" because it's hard to know whether having all that data will be paralyzing. But since July when I set my rates I keep getting bookings for next winter ski season and every time I wonder whether I set my rates too low... So next season I'll want to look carefully at the first dates to book and make sure I'm not underpricing. And same thing with late to book dates, maybe I priced too high.

Hi Meg, thanks for the suggestion. That's not available yet, but we've designed up an idea around that that we plan to develop in the future.

Thanks for the suggestion!

Hi Cheryl, thanks for reaching out on this. Still a very high priority, but it was delayed several times for some major partnerships we had to get off the ground. The last of those just finished (Airbnb) and we're finishing up with some beta users . Sorry for the delay on the PM work.

Just wondering how the progress is coming for the new the new PM owner statements allowing us to customize the statement to include which categories we would like to use, and be able to pro-rate the categories (income/commission/tax) when a booking overlaps two or more months? Hoping to see this before the first of the year.