Hey, hey--did you know that the short-lived TV series, The Monkees, premiered on this day 56 years ago in 1966?
But before you meet us at the station at 4:30 to catch the Last Train to Clarksville 🚂, be sure to read through our September 12th release with 4 updates and September 6th release with 13 updates detailing the Import and Export Bookings Template Enhancement and Google Analytics Upgrade!
Enhancements & Tweaks
Add PlatformEmailAddress to the Import/Export Bookings Excel
Some Airbnb bookings (as well as other listing channels) don't include real guest email addresses which require users to search for and collect the Airbnb Platform Email Address. The Export Bookings function did not include real guest email addresses either. OwnerRez has now added the Platform Email Address as a column to the Export and Import Bookings Excel functions.
Learn more about this topic by reading our Proxy Email Addresses support article.
Google Analytics Upgrade
OwnerRez has upgraded our Google Analytics integration from Universal Analytics (UA) to the Google Analytics 4 (GA4) data model, which collects event-based data from websites and apps. Universal Analytics will be phased out by Google and no longer supported as of July 1, 2023, so OwnerRez wanted to be prepared ahead of the curve.
In the meantime, we will continue to support both Universal Analytics (UA) and Google Analytics 4 (GA4) data models and have added support for running GA4 and UA side by side. While recommended, Google Analytics is only rendered if the OwnerRez user has configured it themselves.
This upgrade is pretty tech-heavy but we know that there are lots of people interested in the nuts and bolts behind the curtain. So here's a list of what was included in this upgrade.
- Only render Google Analytics (GA) if analytics is configured for the user
- Convert to gtag.js for both GA4 and UA
- Add support for running GA4 and UA side by side (UA will be phased out by Google in July 2023)
- Add support for enabling debug mode to support GA4 DebugView report
- Set GA cookie flags to SameSite=none to improve sharing through widgets to reservations
- Widgets automatically request GA client id from containing page
- Add widget Loaded event
- Add QuoteDisplayed and QuoteErrored events for the booking widget
- Rename the ViewQuoteDetails event on the booking widget to QuoteDetailExpanded to clarify what action it indicates
Want to start implementing analytics for your Hosted Website? Read our Tracking guest interactions through Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel support article.
Bug Fixes
Always Display the Allow "Request To Book (RTB) For Shorter Notice" (Even in RTB mode) Instead of on Instant Book (IB) Mode Only. OwnerRez previously only displayed the "Request To Book (RTB) For Shorter Notice" on properties that had the Instant Book mode configured. We now include the "Request To Book (RTB) For Shorter Notice" even when a property is set to Request To Book (RTB), allowing users to decide to approve or decline these shorter notice booking requests.
Channel Bridge Bookings Deposits Transactions. Users were receiving Channel Bridge errors because the payments associated with bookings had payments that were not OwnerRez processed. This update allows the channel bridge to skip payment updates for bookings that have already been deposited as shown below.
Don't Generate Door Codes on Imports. If an OwnerRez user is generating door codes (whether manually or through other smart lock systems), sometimes those door codes could cause an error in booking and channel bridge imports. Now booking and channel bridge imports will skip door codes as shown below.
In addition, we clarified the labels on the Door Lock batch update menu.
Improve Yapstone Unknown Error Messages. It's confusing for an OwnerRez Yapstone user to receive a message that just says "Internal Error". For future internal error codes that we receive from Yapstone, our system will look at the code in the response. If an error code exists, that code will append to the error message with a colon that will hopefully produce a more useful message, ex. Eternal Error: E1015.
Airbnb Turnover Days Added. Turnover days have been added to the Airbnb channel policies tab.
Airbnb Listing Deactivated After Request to Publish. OwnerRez handled an edge case where an Airbnb listing was deactivated after we requested a publish but before we received the published webhook. The system now checks on the published webhook for the listing status to ensure it's still active before setting it active.
Clarify Current Damage Protection Settings. Current Damage Protection settings have been clarified to indicate which bookings, channels and properties are covered as shown below.
To view your current Damage Protection settings, navigate to Settings > Financial > Damage Protection. For additional information, see our Damage Protection Overview support article.
Discount Criteria "Before January" Causes Error in Airbnb Sync. Discount Airbnb pricing was causing an error upon sync when the arrival month before January was part of the discount criteria. OwnerRez replaced the wrap-around to use December as a maximum.
Expenses Weren't Removed During Batch Update. Under the specific circumstance when an owner booking was created with a surcharge as an expense and the settings on the surcharge were then changed to "owner gets the entire amount", the expense would still exist after a batch update was run. We have fixed this issue where expenses weren't removed during batch updates even if the surcharge setting changed.
Guest Sleeping Capacity is Capped at Maximum Occupancy. We found a case of a property that displayed the guest sleeping capacity minimum was greater than the maximum occupancy. We've capped the guest sleeping capacity at the property's maximum occcupancy. While not necessary, OwnerRez users can always edit the property information tab and set a sleep override minimum value.
Handle Edge Case Where Airbnb Listing is Deactivated After OwnerRez Publish Request But Before OR Receives the Published Webhook. OwnerRez experienced an edge case race condition where a "listing activated" webhook was in progress but the listing got deactivated before we were able to process the activated webhook. This was corrected to add an additional status check when processing the "listing activated" webhook to make sure that it is truly still active before marking it active in OwnerRez.
Owner Statement PDF Errors. When PMs generated an owner statement, the email-attached PDF statement opened to a PDF of an expired portal login page. This issue has been fixed so that the owner statement PDF is rendered correctly regardless if the owner user has an expired portal login idle time.
Portal Access After Ownership Changes. OwnerRez checks owner applicability when calculating permissions and won't allow title, notes or block permissions for owners that only have past access, but not current access, to the portal.
Roll back Airbnb Surcharges Into Rules. We included surcharges in rules for Airbnb but that ended up becoming a bit confusing, especially because Airbnb doesn't support that without professional hosting tools. We decided to change back the following below.
- Switch back to putting surcharges in nightly rate always. Leave discounts as separate for strikethroughs.
- Turn off the Listing Qualtity Analyzer (LQA) warning on the number of nights less than for Length Of Stay (LOS) or surcharges that are rolled into standard fee or nightly rate.
Send Profile Changed Emails in Portal Context When Granting User is Making the Changes. Normally portal profile booking change email alerts are portal branded. However, if a user wasn't logged into the portal when booking changes were made, any subsequent booking change email alerts would display OwnerRez branding rather than user-defined portal branding. OwnerRez has since instituted a Portal Team feature allowing users to fully control their profile and portal branding.
Switch BTRENT Back to Rent. The booking field BTRENT=Total Rent or the total amount of the booking rent charges and surcharges included as rent. It matters how guests see charges and users can make changes in the Pricing Preferencing area. OwnerRez now displays BTRENT in Rent and ShowInRent surcharges/discounts regardless of the collapse setting.
Tighten up Airbnb Pet Fee and Pricing Process. We added a feature recently to allow the user to specify whether to use the minimum or maximum nightly rate for an Airbnb base rate. However, if the user is using the minimum rate and then applies a pet rule, which subsequently gets blocked upon sync. Switching to the maximum rate does not fix the sync since Airbnb rejects the pet rule and fails the whole update even though the new base rate is part of that update. The following changes have been implemented.
- Update the base rate first with minimum of pet fee amount to avoid the pet fee amount error.
- Update Listing Quality Analyzer (LQA) checks to display errors for percent pet fees and per night pet fees.
- Calculate the number of pets always as 1 because that's what was charged.