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It would be nice to send out an email reminding the recipients that their quote is about to expire or has expired.
Me too.
It sure would be great for our owners to see what the nightly rates are in the owner’s portal. Just saying. (-;Something like this in the monthly view would be perfect. Nightly rates plus minimum night stay would be great… hey, even the ability/option for them to change the rates would be crazzzzy cool.
@Caleb @Ken, I currently use GiftUp https://www.giftup.com/ for my gift certificates. They do integrate with a number of PMS's. What is the best way to connect them with OR? They've been great to work with. Thanks!
Nate I have a very similar setup as you, OR has never really truly worked the way I thought it would at keeping track of everything in one place, I would love to be able to Invoice from OR and keep track of cleaners as well, I am not big enough to use another paid service for a cleaner, I think it should have been another module in OR instead of an outside integration. Hopefully OR will consider your suggestions, it would make my life so much easier.
Do you know of any other software that people are using successfully for Co-hosting businesses? I hear about people co-hosting 50-60 properties and they don’t seem to have these challenges but I’m not sure what software they are using.
On the cleaners topic, I recommend Turno. It’s free if you integrate it with OR and use your own cleaners.
Nate I have a very similar setup as you, OR has never really truly worked the way I thought it would at keeping track of everything in one place, I would love to be able to Invoice from OR and keep track of cleaners as well, I am not big enough to use another paid service for a cleaner, I think it should have been another module in OR instead of an outside integration. Hopefully OR will consider your suggestions, it would make my life so much easier.
Has there ever been any discussion with choosing to have 3rd party emails in Spanish? This would be a really wonderful feature. I have homes in two areas of California, and both of my cleaning teams primarily speak Spanish. Something to consider if it isn't that difficult to do. Gratefully, Tasha
I’d like to interact with an AI Chatbot trained on OwnerRez’s comprehensive knowledge base. Instead of referring to numerous support documents, I’d prefer concise answers with links or citations. This feature wouldn’t replace support staff and would be optional. It’d provide instantaneous responses and simplify information retrieval, similar to search engine summaries. With such a vast knowledge base, it can become overwhelming and will only grow over time.
We honestly have not had problems with this scenario. Sure we get some bad guests but far and away, these guests travel from distant locations and never return.
Email addresses can be spoofed easily and like many said, OTAs don't even forward private email addresses.
Perhaps it would be better to be able to block by requiring a government photo id to be uploaded in order to remove the booking pending status as a pre-check-in requirement. Then use AI to scan the photo id to look for matches of previously banned guests.
Set up an automation like:
When: Guest Record Is updated;
Action: Set {Booking Status} to "Cancelled" and provide full refund;
If: {AI-photoidscan_OCR_results} contains text string "Jerko Bonebrain" or "654 Bonehead Avenue, Loserville, AR"
Or: {AI-photoidscan_facialrecognition} matches any {guest_photo_id} which is tagged "Banned"
Those 2 items would have to be AI generated results fields, which currently do not exist in OR, that have the ability to scan uploaded government IDs.
It's going to be impossible to stop everyone but for the most part this will filter out a few more. (Government IDs can be faked too.)
This wouldn't stop guests who booked in the past before you began asking guests to send a photo ID but it will stop any future guests who have sent you a government ID.
And if they refuse to send you a government ID, you can assume they have something in their background you might not want to host anyhow.
That might be using a broad brush to paint but that's up to you.
I’d like to see a new section in the left-hand side menu of OwnerRez called “Embedded Websites.” As my primary hub for all PM-related matters, I’d appreciate an expandable menu that allows me to quickly view frequently used websites in my business without switching between browser tabs or different windows. Turno and AI messaging tools connected via API that require a third-party website are examples of such websites. I would like to have the webpages accessible without the need for a login every time, such as only every two weeks or so.
I think OR could use quite a bit of changes to their Staff Access. We like the feature, but think it could include more customizations on limitations or access that the staff member has. I do not particularly love the ability of all staff to access the PM module or Deposits. I also agree that they should allow the staff to only access specific properties. I do not think that this would be a difficult to implement feature as I would imagine they have some of the groundwork laid with the portal access and the ability to restrict the report tab.
Use cases:
1. Parking enforcement - we have limited and all assigned parking spaces... When someone parks in a space not assigned to them it would be great to not have to try to figure out who it is but to just send a text message to all guests at the property asking them to make sure they have parked in their appropriate space... (Think multiple condo in a building situation or small boutique motels)
2. Emergencies - want to be able to send a text message to all guests that there is a tsunami warning posted (had one yesterday) that was subsequently cancelled.
3. Property Maintenance - again think condo or small boutique motel - need to shut the water or power off for 2 or 3 hours for repairs and the like.
4. Notifications - announce to all bookings special events or activities (Christmas Tree Lighting, Caroling in the Park, Orca Whales in the Bay.
I am sure there are many others but those are some that we would like to use group SMS.
Manually triggered, Filters to include property(s), Tag(s), Date(s)... Perhaps from the booking lists... you could select the bookings checkbox and have an option at the top be to BULK SMS.
I do agree... most people wont take the time. Unfortunately the channels do not give us email addresses in many cases until after booked or if at all so you will still need a process to manage them. We fortunately do not have too much problem and where we do we clearly let the guests know that they are not welcome back to any of our properties... we have only had a handful that have tried and we just cancel them when we get our automated message that a guest flagged as bad has booked.
We have Tornado season in Oklahoma! and this would be so helpful to communicate with all my tenants
It's just amazing that I can't block a guest by email address. Yes, I am well aware that a determined guest can spin up a temporary email address. But most can't or won't. With effort any limitation can be circumvented. "It won't be perfect" is a ridiculous reason to not go forward with solving this problem for most cases.
Hello,
I would like to request that Ownerez add a feature to send an SMS message to all booked tenants at once.
QB syncing: when tags match add QB tags to invoices that are generated.
When generating an invoice in QB using a different rent service type depending on the channel used to book.
Hi Nathan - check out my website StayInColumbus.com. I have a page in the owner's section that highlights some differences between co-hosting and PM business models.
We help owners list to their properties on Airbnb, VRBO, GVR, and our own direct booking site. Heard mixed things about Booking and haven't seriously considered it yet.
Using Stripe to collect payments from guests. We have the owners create their own Stripe accounts so they can process their own payments and receive direct payouts from VRBO, etc.
We use Quickbooks and do our invoicing manually there. It's definitely my least favorite thing to do each month!
Any updates?
This has definitely been mentioned before, but I wanted to put out another request as OR is deep into trigger automation updates these days. We desperately need to have an automation available for details within the booking. When someone buys a basket or a couples massage (set up as "surcharges") during their booking process, we want to 1) tag the booking with the surcharge automatically which would 2) allow us to send an email out for any booking with that particular tag.
Could you let me know if this type of automation in tagging is in the works? Thanks!
Hi Nat,
+1 on this feature request.
You seem like a wealth of knowledge. Would you mind share some best practices and tips for someone starting out with co-hosting/direct remittance vs traditional PM? I’m specifically curious about:
Which booking platforms do you use to list your owners' properties. Airbnb, VRBO, Google VR, direct bookings? I believe that Booking.com doesn’t allow multiple API connections unfortunately.
When you send invoices to property owners, do you use OwnerRez to collect payments through its payment processor, or do you rely on third-party accounting software like QuickBooks? For guest bookings, I currently use Lynnbrook payment processing within OwnerRez.
thank you
Hi there,
I was wondering if the cancellation policy refund could offer an option to return the amount of the booking's first night to guests? I'm trying to build a cancellation policy that allows free cancellation up until 24-hours prior to the reservation, then, within the last 24-hours until the booking check-in arrives, offer only a refund of the first night to guests.
Thank you very much!
Me too! Maybe on the booking form there can be an add on for that?
We have over 80 properties and we use your property search widget on our home page. We would like the guest to be able to sort our properties by price from high to low or low to high.
Our Custom Cancellation Policies integrate with Vrbo, so are limited to what they support - and they don't. We have asked them for this as well as some other additional customization options, and will implement them as soon as they allow, but, I wouldn't anticipate that happening in the near future.
Could we get a update on the seasonal cancellation policies? Thanks
So the PM module is designed for PMs to use an operating account and an escrow account. The literal escrow bank account should be comprised of the following:
Prepaid bookings by guests on channels that distribute early or where the host collects via their own processor.
Prepaid taxes by guests for all channels where the host is remitting taxes.
I would love a report that would provide the total of what should be in your escrow account at any given moment. It is not so easy as to put this number together from the available reports. For example, AirBnB just started tax collection for those of us who used to collect taxes through it, effective 11/1. OwnerRez knows this from existing settings, so could automate a report on how much we should have in escrow for taxes based on settings. Manually, I have to run the tax report by October 1-31, inclusive of AirBnB, then afterward excluding it.. same idea for bookings where the channel is collecting payment vs we are. It's automatable, but I don't see any particular single report that could get at the escrow number as it stands.
Since most users of the PM module are using an escrow account structure, this would be a valuable report addition. Thank guys!
~ Jill from Raspberry Rentals
Please approve!
When we give quote for customer from other country , it would be good to show the total price in the property currency and a converted price in the customer currency for context. This will help a lot for hosts that have guests from other countries.
Lodgify has this feature.
There are apis like this - how can this be used to show the price in the customer's currency?
https://api.exchangerate-api.com/v4/latest/USD
I hope to get his feature.
Thank you!
Sean,
Will we get this before end of year?
I would like to be able to insert pictures in the notes section. I use this the notes section to leave instructions for cleaners for particular reservations. It would be useful to be able to have pictures for them to see. It would also be useful to be able to add pictures if there were guest damages. It would be right there with that reservation.
