Latest Activity...
we use tags to filter out people we dont want future messaging to go to, but we have no current way to block someone with a "negative" tag from booking.
After receiving a credit card charge back, the credit card company wanted a copy of the conversation between the host and guest.
If there was a way to export the chat into a file, this would make it easier to fulfill this request, rather than trying to screen capture it.
thoughts?
It would be awesome to offer an optional discount during the inquiry ("kicking tires") phase of booking that appears before guests enter their name, email & phone.
Ex: after selecting dates to see rates there is the regular rate & a non-refundable option.
It would be even better if that non-refundable option was able to be configured where it is only available outside of the normal non-refundable period (ie: 31+ days out if there is already a 30 day non-refundable period).
Hi Jessica G - this is currently in testing. It should be out sometime this quarter!
Requesting customization to the staff portal to be able to limit users to specific properties.
OR
The option to allow portal users access to reports for their assigned property.
@Shawn, have you thought about implementing it in OwnerRez for direct bookings?
We would love to implement it. However, Vrbo does not yet support this function via its API, so we can't do so. They plan to add it, but the delivery timeline has slipped from their original plan. We'll implement it as soon as it's available to OwnerRez.
Any update on this feature being created?
Subject: Request for Flexible Minimum Night Requirement Settings
Hello Support Team,
I often find the need to set different minimum night requirements across platforms, such as Airbnb, Vrbo, and my direct booking website. For example, I may want to enforce a 4-night minimum stay on Airbnb for the period of December 20th, 2024, to December 31st, 2024, while setting a 3-night minimum for the same dates on my website or Vrbo.
The reasoning behind this can vary. For instance, I might include the cleaning fee within the nightly rate on Airbnb but keep it separate on Vrbo. In this case, I would need a longer minimum stay on Airbnb to help offset the baked-in fees, while still allowing for a shorter stay on Vrbo since those fees are not baked into the overall price.
Could you please look into the possibility of allowing platform-specific minimum night requirements that can be customized per platform, such as in the spot rates editor?
Thank you for your consideration.
Best regards,
Chris
A gap is defined as the window of time between two bookings. It is not possible to have a different Departure gap vs Arrival gap. In theory, every gap rule can be thought of as a Departure gap. In practice, an Arrival gap may "appear" before a booking to prevent a guest from booking their departure without sufficient Departure gap.
I think the feature needed by the OP is the ability to remove the Departure gap from some select bookings. That would be safer than advertising all nights as available and then attempting to add a gap after the booking has already been accepted.
I'm in a similar situation and would also like to request the ability to only require a gap day AFTER bookings depart so that our cleaning team can get the property ready without having to rush!
I would love to see a way to visually tell a booking has a past due balance. I use the ribbon view and if the guests name or the color of the block could be red to indicate there's an outstanding balance, that would be super helpful. Or something similar to the list view that shows cancelled bookings.
Having to hover over every single booking to see if there's an outstanding balance isn't ideal.
Thank you for the consideration
Ocean Zen,
Thanks for continuing to help other OR customers with your thoughts and advice.
For the record, we care deeply about the QB problem and, ultimately, full reconciliation. Our latest QB Deposit update was not a patch fix, but something we planned for a long time. A lot of thought and work went into it, and it was designed to get reconciliation way further down the road (at least for certain customers), and also deal with all types of deposits - Air, Stripe, and others.
Our view of the QB integration, internally, is not about trotting out a small update every now and then just to show a token amount of progress, though I know it may seem that way. It's been about resources and fixing other things first as prerequisites (eg. creating deposits in OR before creating deposit/fee syncing for QB). We have already and continue to consult with accounting professionals over strategy, but our roadmap is not wholly focused on QB either, so there are resource limitations.
While we plan to add a new style of syncing (overall - a change to how revenue is recorded that doesn't use the Invoice approach), we want to continue patching the holes in the current process as there are over a thousand users that use the current process, and we want it to be accurate and work end to end. We believe that for certain operations, the Invoice > Payment > Deposit sync method works well and should be left in place.
The next steps for us are:
Outside of those things, which are all about the current syncing process, we plan to add these:
We have also been growing our product and engineering teams heavily over the past 12 months. That will help us keep team members focused on the fast-follows for QB that are needed to move QB down the road at a faster pace.
Hi Alin,
Sorry for the slow reply. see responses in line
Hey Ocean Zen,
I've read your post, and I agree with you for the most part. I say "most" because there are some things that I don't understand, most likely because I don't have the accounting knowledge to parse those parts out. If you don't mind, could you please clarify some of these things for me?
...In the current implementation it is considered paid because the customer has paid it and when it is deposited in your bank by AirBnB it will be processed as a deposit by OR.
If GAAP accounting processes were followed those funds should be put in an “undeposited funds” asset account that would represent all the funds that AirBnB is holding on your behalf
Am i wrong in saying this is actually how it currently works? On my (granted, pretty simple setup) the invoice payment uses "undeposited funds" and the date on the payment is day or two (maybe) before the date when the funds hit my banking account. during normal year, not a big deal. if is going to cross to next year (i run my business on cash basis) than i will have a problem, but i do check for that manually.
"... those funds should be put in an "undeposited funds" asset account that would represent all the funds AirBnb is holding on your behalf"...i believe that is how it works right now. for me, "undeposited funds" hold all the funds for all the OTA's are holding on my behalf
Yes, that is how it works if you only have AirBnB, however if you use VRBO or any other platform that requires you to use your own Credit Card processor then it becomes more complicated and you need to have more than one "Undeposited Funds" account (one for each payment processor to make reconciliation manageable). Unfortunately the single Undeposited Funds account is a QB limitation but there are work arounds and OR should pick one and support it. Another layer of complexity is Multi-Currency if you have properties in different countries. Without laying out a framework and development plan for all of these OR continue to make point or patch fixes/improvements that further lock the system into a short sighted solution that then becomes too much to work fix.
It doesn’t help that QB doesn’t support more than on Undeposited Funds type account so one has to create other types of accounts as Undeposited Funds and if so can’t use the Deposit feature of Quickbooks.
This one went over my head...more than one "Undeposited Funds" type account? is that even something that QBO supports? not sure what is the use case here assuming i even understood correctly what you said
See comment above - a single Undeposited Funds is a limitation from Early Quickbooks that they haven't fixed but there are ways to work around it.
I have requested several times that we setup a committee of users that have expertise in accounting and finance so we can create a solid roadmap for the QB integration.
Yup, i do recall that time and i completely agree with you. Not sure what is OR doing about this. I do see improvements to QBO integration, but, with all dues respect, the way those improvements work do seems to point to a lack of accounting expertise as you have pointed out many times.
Yes, it is hard to understand when there are several users that have accounting expertise and are willing to help that they don't create a user group to address -- user groups to help with roadmap is a common practice at many software companies
The new deposits feature has been rolled out which is great to see effort but unfortunately it seems to have lack of forethought and planning from an Accounting perspective - not sure who is providing the guidance to product development but I believe that the implementation could be better. Especially for advanced users that have multiple currencies and multiple payment methods. Maybe OR core customer is the Mom and Pop so it doesn’t matter
Agree on the first part. I'm one of those "Mom and Pop" and the new deposits feature is not working for me. I'm not even sure what exactly is the use case OR thought about when they implemented this. The rest of your points here, not sure i'm parsing. i understand the words, i'm just not sure what are you referring to. (the multiple currencies and multiple payment methods part)
For me, the biggest pain point is that i need to manually match the invoice payments to banking transaction so i can add the missing expenses and run validations (check the invoice and payment dates to make sure they do not cross into next year or the other way around, adding CC charges, or AirBNB charge..so on). i was hoping the new deposit feature will help me here, but the OR gods decided (why???) to not allow me to use COGS for expenses in deposits. seriously...
Yes, the whole point of automation is to help with the reconciliation process... I struggle with all the above having both multi-currency and Credit Card processor account that keeps a % holdback for 60 days which makes reconciliation a nightmare
Alin
We continue to struggle with homeowners blocking significant dates not realizing the financial impacts. It would be extremely helpful to display the true cost of the block when an owner is making a decision to take specific dates similar to a quote.
In order to improve our owner communication, adding a "news/announcement" section where we could create announcements that all owners would see when they login to the owner portal. While we send out emails, having this section would be extremely helpful in keeping our homeowners informed that don't always open the emails.
The ability to upload files for Owners would be also helpful - such as monthly maintenance reports created in other systems like Breezeway or EZ Care.
I would love to have the calendar feature like Airbnb were we can see all our listings and prices for each on one page. Instead of having to go into each of them and adjust the pricing.
Since you already have the api built for the hubitat locks, it would be absolutely awesome, if you could also make it so thermostats turn on and off before and after checkin. To make it even easier, you could just eablee the api to set a mode to checkin and checkout with the variable of x hours before checkin and x hours after checkout. Then we can set the mode to do what we want on gut hubitat hub regarding temps and anything else. All we need is a way for hubitat to switch modes based on the calendar of the reservations. This helps us save a ton of wasted energy and gets the property ready with the perfeft temp before guest arrives.
This would be amazing please!
I have 10 hubs and I'd be happy to test all do this for you. I've been working with zwave and programming for many years.
VRBO is not what I want. I don't use them. They focus mainly on STR homes. Expedia is much better. Way more bookings on Expedia than VRBO.
I would definitely prefer to use the Expedia API.
Expedia is a much bigger market due to how they bundle bookings. It's a better platform and likely they will swallow VRBO and push users to use Expedia partner central instead of the VRBO platform sooner or later.
Get ahead of the curve and develop for the parent company, not the child.
We do not directly integrate to Expedia at this time because they are part of our Vrbo integration. Expedia is Vrbo's parent company and they are continually improving their API connection.
At this time, all Vrbo API integrated listings that meet certain qualifications are eligible for listing on Expedia. Bookings will still report as being from Vrbo when they come in though.
If you look at your Vrbo API screen you will likely see two listing numbers for each property, the lower one is Expedia:
This would be a game changer for me. I get so many last minute bookings. This would definitely increase my revenue!!
VPNs can mask IP Addresses. IP address blocking isn't really useful in todays world.
Email addresses can easily be spoofed or you can just get a free one for single use like a hotel booking.
You could block a specific credit card, but it won't stop them from using another credit card and probably won't work on Virtual Credit card numbers offered by most credit card companies.
If you have this problem with specific guests, you can't really stop them if you allow instant book.
Even if you don't allow instant book, they can just ask a friend to book for them.
You'll have to have your guest check in with staff and monitor people going in and out of rooms to stop this. Not very useful.
One potential solution would be to use internet connected cameras with facial recognition. Then you can tell the system to text you if the person you don't want on the property is present and found on the cameras. This way you can kick them off the property and log a police report with documented evidence for a trespassing complaint.
WYZE cameras are cheap and they have decent facial recognition. You can get real time alerts when a specific person is seen on your property. They call this FRIENDLY FACES right now but you can use it to identify people you don't want around as well as long as you've gotten a good picture of the person's face first. (Social media accounts provide plenty of pictures of people that you can train your AI facial recognition with).
Add "TODAY" to the dropdown selector for a trigger using ARRIVAL DATE when asking a trigger to fire IMMEDIATELY.
When booking is made the same date as arrival, and booking is paid in full, trigger needs to allow the system to send an email IMMEDIATELY since people may be standing outside in the cold / rain / snow and can't get in without their door code.
Allowing this feature let's a property owner put up a sign with a QR code that a guest scans, completes their booking, pays for it, and then immediately gets their door entry code email so they can go inside. This is SUPER helpful for self service / self booking kiosks at a property or for after hours when there is no staff on site to take a booking.
Hello! I'm overhauling my direct book website at the moment and inserting Trust Signals for both guests and property owners will be the focus.
I agree with the other users who have posted in here that the OR payment pages and all pages to do with booking need to be customisable in order to be able to stay on the platform. Also, yes, a question mark on the payment page is not appropriate as well as asking the guest to write down their booking number.
If you can provide an ETA of when this might be addressed it would be really helpful.
Thank you, Terri
Limberlost Vacation Rental Management
LimberlostVacationRentals.ca
Looking for a way to stop owners from blocking off time in their calendars without providing a reason and we then have to chase them
A further feature about be to back it possible for owners (Portal Access) to ¨Request¨ to block off dates that we then have to approve.
Hi,
Were you aware that it's possible to duplicate an existing listing, along with Listing Data (description, amenities, photos, custom fields)? Here's how to go about that:
https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/add-new-property#duplicate
This may not be exactly what you're looking for, but definitely wanted to let you know this feature is currently available. 😊
Please add TIME BASED EVENT to automations like Automata from Tokeet.
This allows me to say things like "Send an email 4 hours prior to check in time when the booking is paid".
Time automations make it so easy to perform actions once a specific event has occurred.
I would love that they would be tied to Tags too, for instance "On the date of arrival, at 11am, When the booking tag PETCLEANING exists, send the guest the PET PARK ACCESS INSTRUCTIONS email if the payment status is PAID IN FULL."
For those of us who use OTAs that are not supported by OWNERREZ yet (like Expedia) I would like the option to set up a mass IMPORT BUTTON. Some of us have A LOT of properties and having to manually import each property when you know there's been bookings that you don't want to wait 60 minutes to update through the regular Import cycle can take a lot of time. It's nice to have one button where you can simply select numerous import icals and then pull the content with a single click.
https://www.expediapartnercentral.com/connectivity?
I get tons of USA bookings from them. I need this connection.
Here's the documentation
https://developers.expediagroup.com/supply/lodging/docs/
Charlie, you bring up an interesting point. I had to go make a few mock bookings to make sure I was thinking clearly.
I see TAGS associate with bookings, not guest records. While I have been using them this way, I think a tag associating with a contact would be a great idea. Currently, custom fields may be the only option.
Check our this forum topic: Repeat Guests - Custom message triggers - Feature Requests - Forums - OwnerRez
