The number one benefit of information technology is that it empowers people to do what they want to do. It lets people be creative. It lets people be productive. It lets people learn things they didn't think they could learn before, and so in a sense it is all about potential.
OwnerRez empowers our users to efficiently manage their vacation rental properties and has its fair share of superfans. We don't expect you to start screaming "I love this company!" while reading this product update about our July 12th release with 25 updates, but we're totally ok if you do...💞
Enhancements & Tweaks
Affiliate Program Payout Record Improvements
OwnerRez has a dedicated following; many of our users have spread the word and recruited friends to join up. Because of that, we created the Affiliate Program a number or years ago to reward our users as they recruit others.
We have added a couple of improvements to clarify when payouts have been processed but are still really "pending" due to processing/delivery timeframes via PayPal. We changed the column header from "Sent" to "Processed." We also added a Pending label.
And when users hover over the label in the Processed column, an informational tooltip appears - "May take up to two weeks to be deposited"
Want in? Learn more by reading the OwnerRez Affiliate Program support article.
Algorithmic Door Lock Resync and Grace Period Support Added
OwnerRez can assist with generating codes (based on the lock integration you use) for your many different types of door locks, including numeric sequence locks and Wi-Fi locks. Each time a booking is created, OwnerRez can set the door lock code without you lifting a finger.
While algorithmic lock codes can't be regenerated (e.g., eRentalLock), they can now be resynced if there's an existing code by simply clicking on the Resync link!
Then a pop-up modal will appear explaining the door lock codes will be resynced but the door code won't change.
And gone are the days when double-clicking on the regenerate link resulted in duplicate codes. We have removed the ability to double-click or click Resync more than once.
Also, Kaba/Oracode integrated door lock users will also appreciate that OwnerRez now allows for the setting of more flexible additional 1 or 2-day "grace period days" in the event of early check-ins, late check-outs, or additional nights added.
Learn more by reading our Smart Lock Overview vacation rental guide and the Door Locks Overview support article.
Guest Public Review Form Character Limit Increased to 10,000
OwnerRez users work extremely hard to get reviews. If you're like most users, you ask your guests to post reviews after every booking but only a small fraction do. It can take years to build a good list of reviews, and the more you have them the stronger your reputation (and easier your marketing) gets.
Some guests like to write more than the previous 3,000 character limit, so we have increased the guest public review form character limit to 10,000! Yep, there are some reviews in the system that are close to that length!
Learn more by reading the Reviews Overview support article.
New Email System Alert Sent When a New Credit Card is Added to a Pending Booking
Credit card security involves protecting sensitive cardholder information from unauthorized access. Card failures refer to instances where credit cards are declined or encounter technical issues during transactions.
If a guest's credit card is declined, that can cause confusion even if the guest provides a different credit card. If the booking remained pending or the property is in request-to-book mode, it was possible that an OwnerRez user would miss these events causing the booking to time out and be canceled.
OwnerRez has added a new email system alert to be sent to users informing them when any of the following events has occurred.
- If the guest's credit card fails while the booking is pending, a "Request New Card from Guest" email is sent to the guest.
- An email system alert is sent when a new credit card is submitted by a guest AND the booking is pending or has a $0 balance.
- An email system alert is sent informing the user that the booking "has a new card on file."
Learn more by reading the Payment Processing Overview support article.
Bug Fixes
Add an Option on Cancellation Form to "Send refund receipt to guest." When OR users canceled a booking and selected "Open in editor before sending" on the notification choices, the editor opened with the cancel email loaded. However, if they selected "send immediately" it sent both the cancel notice and a refund receipt (if applicable), which caused confusion, especially since the refund receipt was not always applicable. This bug has been fixed by adding a separate checkbox on the cancellation titled "Send refund receipt to guest" and the checkbox is disabled if there is no refund with a tooltip that states "No refund is being issued at this time." Users can continue to opt to handle the refund manually.
Change Secdep Hold to Refundable When Moving Properties if New Property Requires Refundable Type. If a booking at a property that has security deposit holds configured, and that booking is subsequently moved to a property with a refundable damage deposit (RDD), an error could occur if the payment processor doesn't support security deposit holds (e.g., Lynnbrook). This bug has been fixed to now change the booking's security deposit type to match the destination property's secdep type.
Clarify Integrated Websites Premium Feature on Public Pricing Page. We have added clarifications on the Integrated Sites + WP Plugin Premium Feature tile and "What are 'Premium Features'?" sections on the OwnerRez Pricing page.
Detect Excess Stacking of Automatic Discounts in LQA and Rate Checker. Many OwnerRez users create multiple discounts but sometimes those multiple discounts can result in a negative nightly rate. This bug has been fixed by adding multiple validation and verification processes to ensure that users don't configure multiple discounts that would result in a negative rate (i.e., 50% seasonal discount, 55% "last minute booking"), and users will see those errors are now displayed on both the Listing Quality Analyzer ("Can't discount by more than 99%...) and Rate Checker ("Rate discounted more than 99% about "missing" rates").
Display an Alert to Sole Proprietor Brand Users Who Have Not Completed the SMS Brand Phone Number Verification After 24 Hours. In order to clean up the SMS Brand application process, Sole Proprietor Brand users who have not yet completed their SMS Brand phone number verification after 24 hours will have an in-app global alert displayed to the user prompting them to complete their SMS Brand phone number verification.
Fix Export Owner to Excel Missing Email Address. The export to Excel tool on the PM Owners grid was not exporting owner email addresses after the previous release. This bug has been fixed and the PM Owner Excel export will properly populate owners' email addresses and correctly matches the Owner Excel import/export templates again.
Fix Hero Unit Caption Sizing on Hosted Websites. Following a release this spring, Hero Unit caption font sizes on Hosted Websites were inadvertently decreased. This bug has been fixed and Hero Unit caption font sizes on Hosted Websites will now display correctly as intended.
Fix Hosted Site Blog Categories Displaying "Object" Instead of Category Name. Users that had Hosted Website blog posts that had categories experienced the text "[OwnerRez.Objects.HostedSiteBlogCategory]" displayed on the blog image rather than the expected blog category name. This bug has been fixed and blog categories will now be displayed correctly.
Fix Issue With Looking Up Cancellation Policy Description for FloridaRentals. FloridaRentals API-connected users were experiencing cancellation policy description lookup errors rather than returning the correct cancellation policy description. This bug has been fixed.
Fix Issues With Unrecognized Time Zones. Some new OwnerRez account users experienced errors upon joining due to unrecognized time zones. This bug has been fixed to support these time zones.
Fix Scheduled Emails Being Sent at UTC Time Instead of Property Time. One user had emails sent at the scheduled UTC time (far earlier than expected and scheduled) due to significant differences in UTC time and the property time zones. This bug has been fixed and scheduled emails/templates will be correctly scheduled and sent according to the property time zone.
Fix Team Invite Acceptance Page Has Text Overlapping Logo. Team invite acceptance pages with branded portal logo also had the text, "Welcome to Property Name!" overlapping the logo. This should only show if no logo is configured. This bug has been fixed and the Team invitation welcome text will no longer show such text if the branded portal logo is set.
Fix Vrbo Listing Import Fails With "Could not find listing data marker" Error. Users that attempted to import their Vrbo listings into OwnerRez recently experienced a "Could not find listing data marker" error. Vrbo has been changing things on their side, so we've adjusted the import tool to be successful again when importing Vrbo listings into OwnerRez.
Gracefully Handle Deleting the Only Property Mapping on a Manual Lock. Users with a manual door lock configured and then attempted to delete the only property mapped to that lock experienced errors. This bug has been fixed to handle it more gracefully.
Hide Account Security Alerts from Email History. OwnerRez realized that some team staff users were able to view password reset and 2-factor emails in the email communication history, which is a security issue for the account user. This bug has been fixed and team staff users no longer have the ability to view OR account security alert emails in the email communication history.
Improve Owner Payout to save Reference Number from Bank Transfer. When OwnerRez PM users created owner payout bank transfers, the check or reference number field was not saved. This bug has been fixed and the check or reference number fields entered on owner payout bank transfers are now saved correctly.
Increase Automatic 5-Star Review Templates Maximum Length to 1,000 Characters. We determined that the 250 characters was too small a limit for automatic 5-star review templates and have increased the character limit to 1,000.
Prevent Attempts to Use Stripe "tokenized" Cards With Non-Stripe Processor. Users that attempted to use "tokenized" credit cards that do not have raw card numbers with payment processors other than Stripe were receiving errors but the error message wasn't always displayed correctly. This bug has been fixed and attempts to use "tokenized" credit cards with payment processors that don't support "tokenized" credit cards will now properly display correct and helpful errors.
Tweak SMS Message Alerts to Provide More Details. A few OwnerRez users have more than one SMS phone number and the SMS System Alerts details were not very clear about which phone number it was from or to. OwnerRez has added more details to SMS System Alerts if multiple phone numbers are included. If the user has multiple phones, we've added a "From Number" and/or "To Number" (depending on applicability) item to the alert.
Validate Field Codes Used in 'To' are Correct Type for Email Templates. When OwnerRez users added a non-email field code in the To field of booking email templates, the system did not correctly detect the error or display an error. This bug has been fixed to now correctly detect non-email field codes added in the To field of booking email templates and properly display an error message prompting users to correct the chosen field code.