While soaking up the sun and enjoying those last sweet days of summer, the OwnerRez team pushed out four solid releases in August, including two new lock integrations, QuickBooks Deposits, updated notifications, and more design changes.
New Features
QuickBooks Deposits
OwnerRez's new QuickBooks integration streamlines and automates your vacation rental business by helping you efficiently manage your finances and track revenue and expenses, ultimately saving you time by ensuring accurate financial management.
When someone books your property, they pay you money. Managing this money and accounting for it can be complicated. Payments come from different places and may have various associated fees. This can make it challenging to reconcile the deposits in your bank account. Even though OwnerRez automatically creates invoices and payments in QuickBooks, you still need to match up the final bank transactions. QuickBooks will show you the bank transactions from your account, but you still need to determine which deposits correspond to the invoices and payments.
With our August 28th release, OwnerRez has introduced "deposit syncing," a new opt-in feature that allows OwnerRez to generate "Bank Deposits" within your QuickBooks integration, matching the final deposit amount, and providing an itemized breakdown of payments and fees contributing to that total. These bank transactions imported by QuickBooks from your bank account enable you to accurately reconcile your bank transactions in QuickBooks without requiring manual adjustments, ensuring a precise match down to the penny. OwnerRez can now sync deposits from Airbnb, Stripe, Lynnbrook Group, Manual, and Other Types.
You don't have to change anything if you already have a solid reconciliation process. Deposit syncing is optional and won't affect your bookings or payments. However, if your QuickBooks connections and mappings are in good standing and already working, you may also be ready to start configuring deposits. To start, navigate to your QuickBooks connection in OwnerRez (Settings > QuickBooks > and click on the QuickBooks account you want to configure). Look for the Deposit Settings tab in the middle of the screen.
For detailed instructions and to learn more, read our QuickBooks Deposits support article.
Ready to integrate with your own QuickBooks Online account? Read our QuickBooks Overview support article, but be sure to explore all of OwnerRez's other accounting integration options as well!
Hubitat and igloohome Door Lock Integrations
OwnerRez is thrilled to announce that we now provide robust, seamless integrations with three door lock systems. Our team has directly developed these connections with the door lock manufacturers, eliminating the need for any middleware. With these integrations, managing access to your properties has never been easier!
Following our successful October 2023 Schlage Door Lock release, OwnerRez is proud to present two new direct lock integrations, the long-awaited Hubitat and igloohome locks integration! What's unique about Hubitat and igloohome? Both integrations may help vacation rental hosts with properties in remote locations with spotty internet connections.
Hubitat
OwnerRez now directly integrates with Hubitat to configure your compatible door locks paired with Hubitat devices.
The Hubitat integration is unique because it is not a lock brand but a home automation hub for users with Zigbee or Z-Wave devices (a low-energy wireless communication protocol). It is ideal for those who don't like the idea of all their devices reaching out to the internet as it keeps the management all local. It is a more advanced option and is only recommended to users comfortable with such technology.
With Hubitat, you can now choose from many lock makers, as our integration supports any door lock that works with the Hubitat controller.
Learn more by reading our Hubitat integration support article.
igloohome
OwnerRez also now has a direct integration to configure compatible door locks paired with igloohome devices. Igloohome works anywhere in the world but is especially popular in Asia and Europe. If you live outside of the US and Canada, and have been looking for a local option, check out igloo!
The igloohome integration is designed to work either offline using their "algoPIN" (short for algorithmic PIN) or online with a wi-fi bridge device without the algoPIN method. Because they can work offline, igloohome locks are ideal for remote locations with non-existent or poor internet access.
See our igloohome support article to learn more.
Priced at $4 per lock per month, both the OwnerRez Hubitat and igloohome integrations support a variety of different door locks.
Interested in learning more? Check out our Smart Lock Overview vacation rental guide and all OwnerRez Door Lock integrations!
Updated Notifications
OwnerRez understands that many vacation rental professionals are frequently on the move and require notifications in various formats.
Since our June release, which introduced Alerts as Push Notifications, OwnerRez has continued to enhance your in-app Notifications section, providing improved communication about your vacation rental business.
First, with this August 7th release, we added new OwnerRez Blog Post notifications to your in-app Notifications section. By default, all OwnerRez users will receive new Blog Post email notifications for Internal News, Partnerships, Product Updates, and Surveys.
You will continue to receive important in-app announcements. Still, we want to ensure you know about all the latest OwnerRez features, enhancements, and partnerships, regularly covered in our Product Updates, Partnerships, Webinars, and Internal News blog posts. Also, if configured to receive Notifications, these new Blog Post email notifications also apply to Team Access Staff members.
While suddenly receiving these new OwnerRez email notifications may seem overwhelming initially, we encourage everyone to keep those email notifications turned on for at least a month or so to get accustomed to the number and type of OwnerRez Blog Post Notifications coming your way via email.
All new OwnerRez users will be automatically enrolled to receive email notifications upon signup for Internal News, Partnerships, Product Updates, and Surveys by default. Additionally, they can add General OwnerRez news (Industry News, New Posts about other OwnerRez Users, and more) if they'd like.
Additionally, with this August 7th release, OwnerRez has updated your Notification options! We added two new QuickBooks notifications informing our QuickBooks users about any disconnections and sync failures.
While working in the Notifications are, we did some other cleanup:
- Channel Alerts were renamed to Channel Notifications.
- Channel Information Notifications have been combined to include notifications regarding refunds, cancellation requests, calendar and transaction reminders, autopayments, and more.
- Channel Problem Notifications were combined to include channel notifications for users about content and publishing failures, permission to deactivate, deactivation failures, bad credit card notifications, cancellation, and receipt failures.
Want to customize your Notifications? Navigate to your Profile dropdown menu > Notifications, and you can configure all your OwnerRez Notifications as either email, push notifications, or a combination of both. The choice is up to you and depends on what works best for your workflow!
New Design Progress
My Alerts Renamed to Notifications
As OwnerRez continues to enhance the in-app design, we shifted our focus to the Top Navigation Menu.
As a follow-up to the April 2024 New Sidebar Design, My Alerts has been renamed to Notifications. Additionally, the word "My" was removed from your Profile and most dropdown menu items since multiple "Mys" in the Profile menu were redundant.
Top Menu Tooltips
Another in-app design enhancement was concentrated on the in-app Top Navigation menu. For consistency, we applied the same tooltip format to tooltips that appear elsewhere in the app.
What is this tooltip format? When you hover over the top navigation menu icons, the tooltips appear below the icon with a black background and white font.
As a reminder, these tooltips are not present on mobile devices.
Read our always-updated New Design 2024 support article to stay abreast of design changes.
Enhancements & Tweaks
"Booking Balance Is Past Due" Notification
Ensuring that guests pay their booking balance promptly is a top priority for all vacation rental owners and managers. However, some guests may miss or ignore OwnerRez's system payment reminder messages. OwnerRez has added a new "Booking Balance Is Past Due" Notification to alert you of a past-due guest balance.
Here's what this new notification looks like:
This new "Booking Balance Is Past Due" Notification serves only as a reminder to you, not your guest, of a past-due guest balance. Clicking on the green Open this booking button takes you directly to the Booking Transactions page, where you must still manually follow up with your guest to resolve the past-due balance. Keep in mind that there are already other system messages in place reminding guests of payments that are due.
While we definitely do not recommend turning off the "Booking Balance Is Past Due" notification, you can still do that by navigating to your Profile dropdown menu > Notifications to see and configure all of your notification options.
Check out our Notifications Overview support article to learn more.
Property Occupancy Restrictions Rules
Establishing clear occupancy rules and restrictions for your vacation rental property is essential to managing expectations, maintaining property conditions, and ensuring the safety and comfort of everyone involved. Communicating your property occupancy rules clearly in your property listing and agreements effectively fosters a positive guest experience and can prevent any misunderstandings during your guest's stay.
In preparation for an upcoming redesign of the in-app Amenities section, OwnerRez moved some guest Suitability Amenities (Minimum Age to Rent, Children, Infants, etc.) to the Property Rules area and renamed it Occupancy Restrictions in our August 28th release. Why move the guest suitability from Property Amenities to Property Rules? We moved Pets into Property Rules last year and believe placing your guest Occupancy Restrictions into your Property Rules is a more appropriate place than Amenities anyway.
With this release, any property amenity guest suitability selections you have configured have been moved to your property rules, specifically the occupancy restrictions. You can verify your property's Occupancy Restrictions by navigating to your specific Property > Rules > Change > Occupancy Restrictions.
Vrbo Missing Beds Listing Quality Analyzer (LQA) Error
Accurate property descriptions can help attract the right guests, set expectations, and reduce complaints, leading to better reviews and bookings. OwnerRez's Listing Quality Analyzer (LQA) tool checks your properties (i.e., listings) for common mistakes or incomplete settings.
Vrbo requires all properties to have at least one bedroom, even for studios. However, the Listing Quality Analyzer (LQA) didn't return an error for missing beds. So, we've added a Vrbo missing beds error to the LQA to alert you that your property listing content (Property > Listing Content > Rooms) needs attention.
Learn more about OwnerRez's Direct Channel Management integrations.
Support Center Video Filters
OwnerRez Support Center Videos provide excellent assistance for all users, but navigating the Support Center Video webpage sometimes proved challenging.
With our August 21st release, we've added new filters to the Support Center Video webpage to help you find the right topic.
New filters include the Show All and Sort by Recently Updated dropdown filters, which can help you focus on your topic. Show All and Sort by Recently Updated are the default filters, but now you can drill down by selecting other filter options.
Bug Fixes
August 7th release with 12 bug fixes
Add .no Domain to Airbnb Channel Bridge. An OwnerRez user could not use the Airbnb Channel Bridge (CB) due to accessing the .no Norwegian domain name. Since this is currently supported in our CB configuration, we have added support for the .no domain.
Delete Lock Mappings Upon Disabling a Property. When users disabled a property, the associated lock mappings were not automatically deleted, forcing users to manually remove the door lock mapping. We corrected this bug to ensure that associated lock mappings are automatically deleted when users disable a property.
Exclude Reviews With No Rating From Vrbo Review Index Feed. OwnerRez guest reviews in which the guest selected "I'd rather not leave a star rating" were erroneously sent to Vrbo, resulting in Vrbo Integration errors for OwnerRez users. OR fixed this issue, and guest reviews in which the guest selects "I'd rather not leave a star rating" will no longer be sent to Vrbo.
Fix Airbnb Multiple Sync Issue Due to Emojis Stripped in Photo Captions. Airbnb does not allow emojis in image captions, and OwnerRez property image captions that include stripped-out emojis encountered multiple syncing issues when sent to Airbnb. We resolved the glitch by tracking changes to photo captions, including emojis, to prevent constant re-uploading to Airbnb.
Fix Google Vacation Rentals Issues for Newly Added Listing Status. Some newly listed Google Vacation Rentals (GVR) properties experienced listing status errors during status checks. OR corrected this issue by adding additional GVR metadata to correct these listing status errors during status checks.
Fix Issue Where Guests are Unable to Purchase Cancel For Any Reason (CFAR) Insurance. Despite being eligible to purchase, some guests could not purchase Cancel For Any Reason (CFAR) Insurance offered to them by OwnerRez hosts. We fixed this bug to ensure that eligible guests can purchase Cancel For Any Reason (CFAR) Insurance offered to them by OwnerRez hosts.
Fix Payment Detail Report to Group by Context Date Selection. Payment Detail Reports configured with a time-based selection (e.g., Month, Quarter, etc.) encountered rows incorrectly grouped by the payment date. OR corrected this issue, and Payment Detail Reports configured with a time-based selection (e.g., Month, Quarter, etc.) will be correctly grouped and displayed as expected.
Fix Triggers With the Erroneous Status of "Will not run." Even though some triggers correctly sent a template, the trigger status help tip incorrectly displayed "Will not run," resulting in user confusion. We fixed this glitch, and trigger status help tips will display the correct status.
Notify User When Unable to Process Booking CSE (Channel Sync Event) Due to PM Lock. Sometimes, we cannot process a booking Channel Sync Event (CSE) because a user manually added a PM Lock to that booking. Rather than OR unlocking the booking after receiving permission from the affected user, we will now notify affected users regarding their Booking CSE failures with further instructions.
Prevent Airbnb Message From Being Saved in an Invalid State. Airbnb messages saved in an invalid or partially sent state caused those messages to be retried indefinitely, resulting in duplicate messages. OR fixed this bug and saved Airbnb messages that are invalid or in a partially sent state will no longer be sent.
Release of Channel Bridge v13.8 With Continued Tweaks. Some OwnerRez users were still experiencing issues with Channel Bridge (CB) date/time filters, property filters, and CB version, leading to CB failures. We resolved these issues by releasing Channel Bridge v13.8 to better handle date/time filters and property filters and also include internal Chrome version log data.
Timeout Vrbo Create Booking After 10 Seconds. Even if we eventually return a successful booking to Vrbo after a 10-second timeout, it is considered a booking failure by Vrbo. OR corrected this glitch, and booking creations lasting 10 seconds or more will automatically be considered a Vrbo booking failure and logged internally as such in OwnerRez.
August 14th release with 10 bug fixes
Add LQA Error for Overlapping Effective Min/Max Night Requirements. Properties configured with a season with a minimum night rule that is more than the property maximum night rules or a maximum night rule less than the property minimum night rule encounter spot rate errors; however, the Listing Quality Analyzer (LQA) didn't display that error. We resolved this issue by adding an LQA error if a property is configured with a season with a minimum night rule that is more than the property maximum nightly rule or a maximum night rule less than the property minimum night rule.
Allow Custom HTML Elements on Hosted Websites. The hosted website HTML editor did not support certain custom HTML elements. OR expanded our validation so that custom HTML elements are no longer restricted.
Don't Send Multiple Failure Emails for "Generated by Device" Locks. Some users received door lock "generated by device" failure system emails every hour. OR has corrected this bug to only send these failure system emails once per booking.
Fix for Missing Push Notifications. Some users encountered push notification failures despite having their push notifications configured correctly. We fixed this glitch to ensure that users will receive push notifications correctly.
Fix for Rare Case Where Published Airbnb Listing is Stuck in "Pending" Status. On rare occasions, a published Airbnb listing got stuck in a "Pending" status in rare situations. OR corrected this bug to ensure published Airbnb listings are not stuck in a "Pending" status.
Fix Pre-deducted Expenses From Displaying on Owner Statement Previews. Pre-deducted expenses were incorrectly displayed in the owner statement preview but not correctly displayed on owner statements. We resolved this issue to ensure pre-deducted expenses are correctly displayed on the preview and owner statements.
Fix Property Search/Availability Widget to Apply Search Parameters Correctly. Even though the number of bathrooms was included in the original search, multi-property availability widget search results defaulted to the bedroom count number. OR fixed this glitch, and the availability widget search results will be correct.
Fixes for Security Deposit Reauthorize Logic. We experienced a code regression that resulted in some security deposits being incorrectly reauthorized. OR fixed this glitch to ensure that security deposits will be reauthorized correctly.
No Longer Apply Tag Automations to Blocks. Some Tag Automations were incorrectly applied to new blocked-off times. We fixed this issue to ensure that Tag Automations are not applied to new blocked-off times.
Show "My Alerts" in Profile Menu to All Team Staff Users. Some Team Access Staff members could not access the My Alerts area to configure forum and blog post alerts. We resolved this issue by allowing Team Access Staff members to configure forum and blog post alerts in the My Alerts area.
August 21st release with 8 bug fixes
Disable Vrbo Rooms Importer Due to Current Vrbo Issue. A Vrbo change in the data that OR receives from Vrbo when running the Vrbo Listing Importer resulted in parsing errors and prevented us from adding property room details. While we work to resolve this issue, the Vrbo Rooms Importer has been disabled, the Rooms option has been disabled for the Vrbo Listing Importer, and users are advised to configure property rooms manually in OwnerRez after importing any listing.
Fix Issue Where Use of Property Rules "Apply To" for Check-in Time Defaults Would Send Booking Changed Notifications. Property rule changes made by users to bookings that were applied to check-in time defaults, incorrectly sent Booking Changed Notifications to guests. OR fixed this bug to ensure that property rule changes made by users to bookings that are applied to check-in time defaults will no longer send Booking Changed Notifications to guests.
Fix Issue With Airbnb Messages When There are Multiple Connected Accounts. Airbnb accounts connected to multiple OwnerRez accounts can pose problems for channel messaging, especially when multiple guests or cohosts are added to a messaging thread. We have resolved this issue to better handle Airbnb accounts connected to multiple OwnerRez accounts.
Fix Issues With Disabled Airbnb Accounts Interfering With Message Delivery. OR continued to attempt to send messages to some disabled Airbnb accounts that had multiple connected Airbnb accounts (e.g., host and cohost accounts). We corrected this glitch so that we no longer attempt to send messages to disabled Airbnb accounts.
Fix Issue With Read-only Staff Accounts Being Unable to Accept Additional Invitations. Team Access Staff Members who had Read-only access only were not able to accept additional Team Access invitations. We fixed this bug to now allow Team Access Staff Members with Read-only access to accept additional Team Access invitations.
Fix Read-Only Environment Indication/Design. The new OwnerRez design changes negatively impacted the Read-Only Environment design. OR resolved this issue by removing the candy-stripe design while retaining the red top banner with the included text "You are currently in the read-only environment and cannot make changes. Learn more." on the Read-Only Environment.
Improve Messages Failure Handling and Display on Communication History. Due to a code regression, some messages that encountered failures resulted in unhelpful message handling and displays in guest communication histories or views. We fixed this bug to ensure that messages that encounter failures are handled and displayed correctly in the guest communication histories or views.
Provide More Intuitive Error Messages if an Update Fails Due to Multiple Concurrent Updates. This rare set of circumstances resulted in update failures due to multiple concurrent updates. However, OR's user error message did not provide adequate information or instructions. OR resolved this glitch by providing more information and instructions in the user error message, advising users to retry the action again after a minute or so.
August 28th release with 15 bug fixes
Display User-friendly Message for Deleted Booking/Quote. Sometimes, users encountered error messages for deleted bookings or quotes that were not helpful. We fixed this bug to display a more user-friendly error message.
Display User-friendly Message for Transient Errors. Occasionally, users encountered unhelpful, temporary error messages that lacked sufficient information on what to do. OR updated the error language to inform users to retry the action again after a minute or so.
Fix Airbnb Upcoming Transactions Sync Issue. We've noticed that some Airbnb transaction syncs can take some time to populate into Airbnb bookings. We optimized the Airbnb transaction sync process to initiate more frequent new transaction syncs if the initial booking transaction sync is null.
Fix Booking API sinc_utc Parameter Usage Issue. A user using the OwnerRez Booking API v2.0 encountered time discrepancies during testing. OR resolved this issue to ensure that the _utc suffixed query string arguments are correctly parsed, regardless of their format.
Fix Credit Card Authorization Display Issue. There were some reports that some bookings had successful credit cards on file. Still, the booking displayed "Card received, but authorization failed" on the booking overview page and "No credit cards on file – automatic collection isn't possible" on the booking rules page where successful payments were scheduled. We fixed this bug to ensure that successfully authorized credit cards on file are properly displayed on the booking overview and rules pages.
Fix Damage Protection Issue With Last-minute Channel Booking. This edge case occurred due to a last-minute channel booking processing delay, which resulted in a failure to correctly process a damage protection policy for that last-minute channel booking. OR corrected this glitch to ensure damage protection policies are correctly processed for last-minute channel bookings.
Fix Hosted Site Reviews Page "Based on # Reviews" Count Issue. When one property was selected from a multi-property hosted website, the review number counts displayed in the "Based on # Reviews" were incorrect. We resolved this issue, and the hosted website review number counts displayed in the "Based on # Reviews" will be correct.
Fix Owner Statement Owner Revenue View Total With Damage Protection & Taxes. When damage protection policy amounts were configured as an owner expense, the Owner Revenue Total amounts on owner statements were incorrect. OR fixed this bug to correctly deduct damage protection policy expenses when configured as an owner expense on Owner Revenue Total amounts on owner statements.
Fix Special Characters in Property Names Causing Push Notification Alerts to Fail to Send. Users who configured property names that included special characters encountered push notification failures. We resolved this issue by ignoring any special characters in property names to ensure that push notifications are correctly sent.
Improve "Booking Balance Is Past Due" Notification Verbiage to Clarify Action to Take. Following the August 21st release of the new "Booking Balance Is Past Due" Notification, OwnerRez improved the notification verbiage to clarify user instructions.
OwnerRez WordPress Plugin v1.2. The OwnerRez WordPress Plugin v1.2 has been released. Updates include updating URLs to the OwnerRez short domain, removing extraneous dependencies, and adding a "Clear Cache" button to the Settings page.
Re-enable Vrbo Rooms Importer After Fix for Vrbo Issue. The Vrbo Rooms Importer was disabled on August 21st due to a change in the data that Vrbo sends us. We have now fixed the Vrbo Listing Importer and re-enabled it, and users can once again use it.
Resync Airbnb Availability More Frequently. A user recently received incorrect Airbnb inquiries for a blocked-off time, and we discovered some additional Airbnb sync checks that we could use to avoid this situation in the future. OR fixed this glitch to ensure that we resync Airbnb availability more frequently.
Strip Emojis From Google Vacation Rentals Listing Page Feeds. Google Vacation Rentals (GVR) does not allow emojis in property description fields, and we were receiving listing page feed errors from GVR for property listings that included emojis. We resolved this issue by stripping emojis from GVR property description fields passed to GVR.
Verify Payments for Booking.com When in Manual Payment Mode to Avoid Missing Card on File. Some Booking.com (BDC) listings configured in manual payment mode encountered missing credit card information on file, resulting in missed guest payments. OR corrected this glitch to verify payments by BDC for BDC listings configured in manual payment mode.
