OwnerRez is all about facilitating travel by assisting owners and property managers in operating their vacation rentals, but did you know that today is Pretend To Be A Time Traveler Day? 🕰️🧳
We don't anticipate working with vacation time travel operators any time soon, but who knows where the future will lead us? We foresee that we will continue to be the long-term vacation rental management platform for your vacation rental business...no matter what. Because OwnerRez is constantly evolving, updating, and improving.
So buckle up and get ready to pretend to travel through time with us as we unveil the ten updates from our December 8th release!
New Features
Two-Factor Authentication
Over the past decade, after many high-profile and widespread major data breaches occurred on the internet (via phishing, etc.), many people have come to understand more about password security and the fact that a password alone can't keep their online profiles safe. That has led to the rise in the popularity of two-factor authentication (2FA), an additional layer of security that helps keep online accounts secure. Two-factor authentication ensures that people trying to access an online account are who they say they are.
We're very excited to announce that OwnerRez now offers a robust two-factor authentication setting that all users can add to their accounts. Both master logins and team access (staff member) logins can use two-factor authentication at any time.
We now require that all new user accounts (i.e., users that joined after today - December 8, 2022) use 2FA.
Read the full details in our Two-Factor Authentication support article.
Guest Type Messaging Templates
Another feature to announce is our Custom Message Templates now include a Guest type option. Custom message templates are messages (whether emails, SMS, or channel) you send to interact with your guests at various points in the rental journey.
What makes Guest templates unique is that they can be used directly in the conversation view before any booking or booking-related trigger but are also available during and after (well, up to 30 days post-departure). The critical thing to remember is that Guest Type Templates won't be able to include any property or booking Field Codes to add to your Guest Templates. Guest Custom Message Templates allow for more universal email communications between you and your guest, but a guest custom message template can still be used from your specific bookings; it just won't be able to reference the booking.
To create Guest Type Templates, navigate to Settings > Messaging > Templates.
You can do the same for SMS or Airbnb templates.
In the text editor, display potential Guest merge fields by clicking on the Insert Field Code as shown below.
The Field Code modal will open allowing you to select your desired field code. Note that three tabs at the top of the Insert a Field modal enable users to select between Account, Contact (Guest), and Utility (Date) field codes. Users can select and insert the desired field code by clicking on the left button, as shown below.
Learn more by reading our Email Templates support article.
Enhancements & Tweaks
Copy Quote/Booking Enhancements
Maybe you are working with a repeat guest or want to mimic another Quote or Booking. Well, you've been able to 'Copy To' a New Booking or New Quote for a while, as shown below -- but the devil is in the details.
When copying a quote or a booking to a new quote, you can now choose whether to create it with default charges (i.e., pull the charges from current settings/rates) or copy the charges as-is from the quote/booking.
Learn more at our Inquiries, Quotes, and Bookings Overview support article.
Bug Fixes
Airbnb Channel Bridge Errors. Airbnb was passing passthrough taxes as taxes remitted by Airbnb and determining wrong totals in some instances. We updated Channel Bridge import with a new "update charges" option for "Only bookings where charge total has changed" when "recalculating charges and/or overwrite transactions and fees."
Airbnb Host Fee was Split into Two Fields. While not documented in their API version document (so we were unaware of it), Airbnb's new reservation API splits the host fee into two fields: base price and VAT. We released an update to handle the new fields and corrected the affected reservations.
Converge Payment Method and Lynnbrook Group Language Tweaks. We improved the Converge Payment Method edit page by changing the form's field labels to what Converge refers to them. Additionally, we clarified the language in the Get Started with Lynnbrook Group section for uniformity.
Expense Category Wasn't Reseting When Bookings are Updating. We tracked down a bug where the Batch Update wasn't resetting the expense category for existing expenses to match the surcharge expense category after booking changes. That's now fixed.
Fixed Double Header on Import iCal Once Screen. The header, "Import blocked-off time from iCal," was duplicated at the top of the Calendar Import/Export page. This has been corrected and relabeled as "Import from iCal once."
Portal Favicon Redirects. Some browsers returned a 404 error (i.e., page not found) due to attempting to locate the OwnerRez portal custom favicon icon. We resolved this bug by redirecting the favicon.ico on portal sites to the real favicon icon.
Quickbooks Sync Realm Error. In rare cases, OwnerRez users that use the Quickbooks Integration premium feature may encounter the following error, "Please correct the errors below. Unauthorized Request: User is not a member of the specified Realm" when attempting to sync OwnerRez and Quickbooks. Now, if users receive this error, they will be directed to disconnect and reconnect their Quickbooks connection.
