Switching to your system

What is the best way to switch existing customers onto your system?

I have 8 upcoming reservations, 4 of which have paid in full, but have not paid the Security Deposit yet. The other 4 have paid the deposit only. According to my rental agreement and when they booked, they didn't have the money taking out of their accounts, automatically. I would send them a bill and and email. What would happen now, if I switch? Or, for now, do these in the usual way, Paypal? How would I record it on your system, without the credit card? Cash?

Claudia

Hi Claudia,

1) Enter all your reservation into the system as manual bookings. You can do this from the Booking menu by clicking the "Create Booking" button and select the "Create from scratch" option. Make sure to not send out emails by un-checking the options at the bottom.

2) For each reservation, go to the Charges tab and make sure it reflects the actual charges you billed the guest for originally.

3) For each reservation, go to the Payments tab and enter a manual payment for each one you've already collected. You can select "Credit Card Processed Elsewhere" as the type of payment if it was a credit card. Otherwise, check and cash are two other payment types.

4) For the reservations where the guest still owes you money, you can schedule a second payment under the Payments tab. To do so, call them and get their credit card info by phone to enter into the scheduled payment fields. Or you can have them pay by PayPal as you did originally and enter it as another manual payment.

We are working on Scheduled Payment Reminders that work like Scheduled Payments, only the guest receives an email about paying their second payment and then is presented with a list of options.

-Michelle

I have entered this one booking three times, but I can't get into the payment section. It tells me...

No scheduled payments can be added because this booking is paid in full.

Since the amounts keep coming up, automatically, as ZERO.

What do I do next?

Claudia

You may have skipped step 2:

Once you enter the charges for the booking, there will a balance and you can collect or schedule payments.

If you've already entered/confirmed the charges, give me the booking # so I can look into it on this end.

Booking number 252034

The total charges for that booking are $0.

There are three line items, which you can see here:

https://app.ownerrez.com/bookings/252034/charges

But they all equal $0.

Enter the charges (rent, etc) that you originally charged the guest for this booking and that will produce a Total Charge for the booking.

How do I do that? It will not let me fill in the amounts? Do I have to ADD CHARGES and do everything separately?

I tried Changing and hitting "Reset to Property Rates" but it won't reset to property rates.

Claudia

Your rate periods, for this property, must not be configured properly to cover the dates of this booking. That's why it's only adding the tax and surcharge line items and no rent. I'll take a look at your rate periods and see where the problem is.

(If you want to edit the charges manually, then yes, you would hit the Change button and edit the grid - adding and removing line items - by using the various edit buttons)

Yes, it was as I expected. You don't have any charge types in your "Spring 2012" rate period that covers this scenario.

If you open your "Spring 2012" rate period for this property, notice that you only have one charge type:

Week, set as 7 nights, for $925

This booking (# 252034) is only for 4 nights. You'll need to add a "night" charge type or something else that is shorter. Otherwise, the system won't be able to auto-generate your rates for anything less than 7 nights.

Once you've done that, do the "Reset to Property Rates" again on the booking charges, and you'll see the rent appear.

-Michelle

OK. For the future, 90% of the bookings for Hilton Head Island are 7 nights. VERY FEW are for less than that. How can I manually do it, for those very few?

Claudia

Open the charges for the booking, click the "Change Charges" button, and edit to your heart's content.

The charges grid is very versatile. In the Rate field, you can use positive or negative numbers, decimal values or percentages.

The green "+" icon to the left of each row adds a line item above the row. The red "-" icon to the right of each row deletes the row. The "Add Charge" button adds rows at the end.

More on that here:

https://www.ownerrez.com/blog/editing-charges-is-now-easier-and-faster

Amendment to charges takes a long time to update. Seems to take over a minute. When I do the collect payment, it takes about two minutes to update.

Is the system slow, because of the updates you are doing today?

Claudia

Hi Claudia,

The release was put out last night and is fully done now. Shouldn't be any slowness. I just looked at some pages and it seems to be running as fast as ever for me. Definitely not anything like *minutes* to save something. Could it be your internet connection?

-Michelle

I suppose. I haven't received the email I just sent myself, after entering the amounts and the payments. States... This email was last sent on Apr 24, 2012 at 2:15 PM.
and I haven't received it yet, 4 minutes later.

CP

Michelle, re: speed. I just did 5 or 6 new bookings and added/deleted charges for them by hand. Everything was blazing fast. ~Sam

OK. I don't know. Maybe it is something on my side. I still have not received the above email. I will try to send it again, under the EMAIL tab.

Claudia

Claudia, please check your spam folder if an email hasn't landed in awhile. Our system sends many thousands of emails per day. Sometimes the ESPs slow us down. Thx, ~Sam

Hi Sam, that is the first place I look, since many have landed there since I started.

Claudia

Arrived, on second request.