General Help and Questions

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I'm embarrassed that I missed something so simple.  Thanks, that worked!

I just paid NameCheap for a year for a email box for WhisperwindCabin.com

How can I set that up?

Would it work for your setup to adjust the cleaning fee something like what is shown, with the appropriate amounts? Then batch update the existing bookings.

Hi Daniel,

I know this is an old comment, but I wanted to mention here for the benefit of anyone else who comes across this thread: Lynnbrook Group has recently started supporting Hold (auth only) type transactions. We are in the process of adding support so that "hold" type security deposits can be used with Lynnbrook Group to avoid incurring those additional fees. 

The cleaning fee that is set for guests is $20 more than what my cleaner receives.  On the owner report, the owner's portion is being deducted for the full guest amount.  Is there a way to still have the cleaning expense be pulled into the report but at the reduced amount?  I know I could create each cleaning expense instead, but that's going to add more work.

Hi Michael,

If there are no surcharges applying then nothing automatic would apply at this time, however you can manually create and assign expenses.

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/property-management-overview#expenses

~Caleb

Is there a way to have cleaning fees in the owner report for the times the owner blocks and stays at their own property?  

Perfect.  That was it.

Thanks

Hi Michael,

Automatic expensing is only possible through the surcharges configuration themselves at this time, so if there's an issue with how a surcharge related expense is generating you would typically want to look at the settings for that surcharge itself. There is an expense related section towards the bottom with all the relative settings.

Taking an educated guess it sounds like that cleaning expense could be set to pre-deduct, however there are a few other possibilities here so if you're still having trouble figuring this out please reach out to our helpdesk and we can work more closely with you on this one.

Here's what that pre-deduct setting would look

PS. Remember to run a batch update after making changes, to update bookings/surcharges with your changes: https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/property-management-common-issues-questions#changes

~Caleb

I have searched the forum without luck and tried to do a stare and compare against my other properties that are showing the expense on my reports.  I know it's something easy I have missed, but I can't find it.

Suggestions on were to look?

Thanks

Great, thorough answer.  I wish there were a way to pin or save posts. 

Hey Cody,

With the use of the {BUFIXUP} booking field, users can create their own Channel Template that allows OR users to collect guest contact information and renter agreement signatures. Those guests would enter their phone number directly on your Point of Contact form so you can ensure you have the right number for them, using the link provided.

If you don't already have a channel message in place to get that {BUFIXUP} link out to your guests, here's how to go about that:

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/request-airbnb-guest-contact-information

Without setting up a channel message for this, your Airbnb guests will not receive your Point of Contact form, Rental Agreement, or payment page for Security Deposit (if applicable). You'd have to send it to them manually after asking them for their email address. {BUFIXUP} takes out the extra legwork for you and can be triggered to fire when the booking is created.

If you have any questions surrounding this topic, please don't hesitate to write to us at help@ownerrez.com

Hope this helps!

Hey Acacio,

It's not necessary to paste your entire Legal Agreement to the API House Rules for Airbnb. You do, however, want to include specific details and important info that your guests need to be aware of, all of which we assume would also be included in your Rental Agreement. For example, do you charge them extra if they smoke in your home? Do you not allow pets, and charge a penalty fee if someone brings one and violates your House Rules? So on and so forth. The House Rules should also mention that a signed Rental Agreement is a requirement.

We suggest the following information (remove what's not applicable, add to these as you see fit) be included in your API House Rules. This area is the strictest enforcement, the channels will allow you to cancel a reservation before arrival or during a stay for violating these. 

No Smoking, No Parties, No Pets, Minimum renter age is ##
Guest must sign Renter Agreement within [## hours/days], Quiet Time is ENFORCED ## PM through ## AM
Security Deposit required up to $####. Deposit to be processed by Host on guest's credit card.

The Security Deposit amount listed should be the highest value you collect on any of your properties under this API channel.

If you would cancel a channel booking for not completing the Agreement or Security Deposit, you should set a time limit (usually 24-48 hours) in your house rules so that the CS rep can support you if you need to cancel a booking for failure to follow house rules.  

If you do allow pets, be sure to state the pet limit and the fee (as well as if the fee is per pet or one fee for all pets). NOTE: Airbnb charges one pet fee, if the fee is per-pet you may need to collect additional amounts through the Resolution Center.

If you have different House Rules for different properties, you may want to add those rules directly in each Property > Channel Rules page. Rules written within a Property can override House Rules from the API Integration page. To add rules at the property level:

1. Select the property you wish to work on.
2. Select Channel Rules
3. Click the change button at the top of the page and then select the bubble for "Override Channel API Rules."
4. Make sure to include everything you want in the House Rules for each Property.

There are two Airbnb support articles relating to guests signing contracts. I suggest making yourself familiar with these as well. If you ever receive pushback from a guest about meeting your requirements, you can let them know that you're a software connected host and these requirements are allowed.

https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/465
https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/2824

Who is the other Elavon reseller you are referring to?

Hello, 

I'm new to short-term rentals and Airbnb/Vrbo. I followed the setup OwnerRez recommends, including a rental agreement contract for the booking guest to sign. However, looking into the Airbnb rules, they say that the contract terms must be stated in the house rules. It seems too much to include the whole contract in the house rules (they look cluttered). Do folks do that? Do you copy and paste the contract into the Airbnb rules? Or are there other workarounds? 

Cheers, and thanks for the help, 

Acacio

Hi there!

I don't know that we have any control over when Airbnb publishes those reviews. We sync them to the channel, and then they do with them what they will at that point. If you'd like us to dig into this deeper for you, could you write us at the helpdesk at help@ownerrez.com? Sending us specific examples by way of URLs and screenshots would be most helpful.

Hi all, 
Over the last year or so I have been collecting contact information from previous guests and reaching out after their stay to see if they want to join my e-newsletter to stay up to date on happenings at the cabin and when I run special deals. I collect this info by texting them after their stay. I have noticed over the last couple weeks that the phone numbers I get from airbnb aren't going through. Did they anonymize the numbers? I am wondering if there are other best practices to gather contact info for a newsletter. 

Cheers! 

We just implemented an automatic review for guests that meet certain criteria, and it's working great! However, the reviews are published at midnight, which is not great for the guest experience.  I imagine my past guest is getting a notification at midnight that I left them a 5 star review, and likely getting irritated.  How can I change the time of day that my automatic review is published?

That typically means that you are referencing a "Product or Service Item" that is a category (i.e., a parent item) and not a specific item below that.

For instance, in this screenshot, here's a list of Product or Service Items where "Hospitality" (red arrow) is the category:

If you try to select Hospitality, you will get the category error.

Check your Product or Service Items list in QB, then look at the settings in OwnerRez.  If you still don't see it, try using the Refresh References button to update OwnerRez and that may refresh the list.

Hi Patricia,

We greatly appreciate your constructive criticism here. Thank you for taking the time to outline the issues you have experienced. We would love to explain more about the points mentioned.

Tax Calculations: 

We receive tax information via the API from integrations that use live quoting (which includes OwnerRez) as a fixed amount, not a percentage. As such, it’s up to our system to calculate the tax percentage based on the fixed amount received and apply it to the booking price breakdown. This can result in discrepancies both in the tax percentage as well as the fees because of the way our tax logic is set up in GH - we apply tax to all fees in our system, whereas many PMS/Channel managers do not automatically apply tax to fees as this is usually determined by hosts individually based on local/state tax laws. We are essentially calculating the tax percentage backward and then also applying it to fees, which may cause some discrepancies. So, even though the tax percentage might appear off and fees may also have discrepancies, it is because of the way that our system has attempted to distribute the fixed tax amount, the actual total booking amount should always be correct on the live quote.

Fees: 

We import mandatory fees for all integrations, except any fees labeled as “Service fee” or “Security/Damage Deposit”. As such, if it’s a cleaning fee for example, it’ll be imported as such and if a host has another mandatory fee that we don’t account for, it’ll be imported into our system/price breakdown as “Host Admin Fee”. For example, if you have a mandatory wifi and/or guest liability insurance fee, those two fees will be imported and summed together in the price breakdown under “Host Admin Fee” in our system. It is very important to ensure that your fees are correctly set up on your OwnerRez listings, as that is what we will import over to Glamping Hub via the API. For this particular case, we were unable to recreate the issue with the specific booking that was missing "Cleaning Fees". We can see that the cleaning fee has been correctly imported to GH and is being applied to bookings from the live GH site. This appears to have been a one-off error. Apologies for the inconvenience here and we will continue to monitor it.

Lump Sum Payments:

Unfortunately, this is a limitation of the integration. We send the total price through the API to your OwnerRez dashboard. However, if you wish to see the price breakdown for a booking, you will need to log in to your Glamping Hub host dashboard to view it. This is something we hope to optimize in the future. 

Manual Work:

As long as your listings are set up correctly in OwnerRez, and you have set up your host profile and added your payout information on Glamping Hub so that your listings can be set to Instant Book, managing your listings on GH should be an automated process. As you mentioned, the price breakdown is not transferred from Glamping Hub to OwnerRez, but it is accessible through your Glamping Hub dashboard. So, excluding accessing the price breakdown on OwnerRez, everything should function seamlessly between Glamping Hub and OwnerRez.

As you also mentioned, if you ever notice that there is something amiss with your listings on Glamping Hub, please reach out to our support team as soon as possible. We are here to help and are happy to do all we can for our hosts to ensure the smooth management of your listings on Glamping Hub. Feel free to reach out to GH support at any time. If you call and we miss you, feel free to leave a voicemail - we always aim to get back to our hosts within 24 hours. You can reach GH support by:

• clicking the "Contact Us" button from your GH host dashboard
• email: support@glampinghub.com
• scheduling an appointment for a call at: https://calendly.com/support-3716/30min
• phone: +1 (720) 212-0854

We hope that this has cleared up any uncertainty around the points mentioned, and if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us!

- The GH Team

I think you are responding to her basically asking the same question I have. The guest would like to make 4 payments for their reservation. Even if we require credit cards, is this possible to set up multiple installments like that?

Hey Renee,

OwnerRez is only configurable for two automatic payments at this time, but you can set up multiple payments manually. Here's how to go about that:

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/multiple-payments

Hi Jennifer,

Yes, you can click into any owner statement and click on the "Download" Button. A dropdown will appear which will provide several file format options.

~Caleb

Hi,

Some of my clients want to collect ID for direct bookings, vrbo, and GVR ie when they take payment, but not for AIrbnb.

We have added a custoemr field in the renter agreement to ask to upload ID, but I do not believe there is a way to set it so only valid for specific channels - is that correct?

Is there a way around this?

Thanks!

I think you are responding to her basically asking the same question I have. The guest would like to make 4 payments for their reservation. Even if we require credit cards, is this possible to set up multiple installments like that?

Is there a way I can download PDF's of owner statements? I know I can email multiple ones but can we have the ability to download those pdf's? 

This is helpful as properties have sold and I'm offloading owners but you know they are going to ask for them come tax time. And I'd like to disable this property save some monthly fees

We are also interested in a payment/aging report showing the outstanding amounts due and due dates for our upcoming check payments.

We recently switched over to a 2 payment model since OwnerRez does not support 3 payments.

Our properties are setup for 20% due on signing and the remaining 80% due 90 days prior to the arrival.

We use checks and so the "Scheduled Payments" on the Payment Summary or Payment Detail Reports does not work.

Hey, Amy!

While we do not currently offer this, you should check if it's been suggested already! Use the link below to search our Feature Request forum. If it's not there you can write this up as a suggestion so other clients can vote up your ideas for new and improved features in OwnerRez:
https://www.ownerrez.com/forums/requests

I'm trying to integrate my Ownerez account with Quickbooks. 

I'm getting an error " Failed- Invalid Reference Id: An item in this transaction is set up as a category instead of product and service."

I set up a new product/service for this integration: short-term vacation rental, coverage credit card, county tax 3%, state GE tax, and state TAT tax. These products do not have any categories; they are under the Service type. 

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong.  Any help is greatly appreciated. 

Ania 

Hey there,

I’m wondering if this issue has been resolved. I’m experiencing the same problem—I’d like to customize the language on the page but haven’t found a way to do it.

Thank you!

Best,
Nikolay

Hi Tarkan,

The email you're referring to was sent on Monday the 9th at 6:05 AM Eastern.

Chris our Head Engineer emailed you on Monday the 9th at 7:31 PM eastern, with more details after that. Did you not receive that?

I will email you again with those details.

~Caleb

Hi Bri,

We actually reached out to Operto simultaneously, but was hoping to see some screenshots from OR. Here is a copy and paste from Natalie at Operto about what gets sent back to OR:

For Tasks
--  Attached to PropertyID
--  Amount = Labor + Materials + Linen Fee
-- Date = Date workorder is pushed back
-- Description = Staff Note & Labor, Materials, Linen Fees broken out. & a Link Back to the Owner Report
For Issues
-- Attached to PropertyID
-- Amount = 0
-- Date = Date work order is pushed back
-- Description = Notes & Staff Notes & a Link Back to the Owner Report