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Hi there

I am testing this site. I am wondering where can I go and adjust the rental agreement my guests have to sign. I do not have a pool so I would like to take that point out and would like to add the non-smoking policy.

D. E

@Damon: Couple hours ago, we saw our email sender return a bunch of 401s. We use Postmark if you're curious. I'm not really sure what the deal was. When we jumped into their system, everything seemed to be operating like normal.

I'm getting a lot of email failed to send messages today. Resending seems to resolve the issue.

Damon

Thanks. I think this is what we'll do.

Damon

Hi Damon,

At the moment, there's no way to refund to a credit like you're referring to. All refunds are recorded as cash payments back to the guest. If you're wanting to hold the money, you could just keep the booking record around and then later on do a Change Dates to move it to the new time which keeps the guest info and payments all in place. Not a great option, but it might work for your situation?

-Michelle

Thanks, this helps a lot.

We have decided to offer our guests the ability to re-book within 12 months. From a financial accounting perspective, our accountant recommends we record a "refund" for the booking that is cancelled and re-booked at a future date. Owner Reservations, however, requires a refund to be deposited back on the guests card I believe.

Is there a way to refund a guest but retain the refund as a credit toward a future stay?

Damon

Hi Marinas Edge,

First, as a prelude... The default agreement is offered just to get users started as an idea what they may want to require for their properties. The idea is that you'd start with that and then change and edit the agreement from there for your situation. We don't mandate any renter agreements or email templates to users as far as booking or guest policy. That's up to you and your own preferences. You probably already know this, but it bears repeating in case some users were not aware that it can be changed and that we encourage that.

That being said, when the default agreement was originally created by us, the idea was to write it in a way that would be both generic in applying to many different types of properties and also specific to some of the types of problems that tend to occur.

The refund clause in the default agreement states:

Which gives the property owner the right to deny refunds for Acts of God. Storms certainly fall under that category. Some users have removed this clause; others have strengthened it to make it more specific and clear.

You mentioned 90 days out. The default agreement has a termination clause that says only 80 percent is refunded if the cancellation 30 days before arrival. Within 30 days, no refunds. Again, many users have changed this clause to reflect their own policy.

Hope this answers your question? Let me know,

-Michelle

If there is a national disaster, flood, wildfire, storm, etc, according to the OwnerReservations template renters agreement are we obligated to refund rents that were prepaid 90 days in advance.

My preference would be that the same defaults that are used at booking creation are the same ones used for manually created bookings.

Thanks for asking!

Hi Damon,

The reason that third party alerts are not sent automatically when a booking is created is because a payment has not yet been collected and many times the user will want to delete or cancel the booking if the payment doesn't work. During the automatic quote acceptance process, the payment is taken before the booking is created. If the payment fails, the booking is rolled back automatically. The manual process is a little more clunky in that you have to manually create a booking, then manually take a payment, then manually finish the rest (send alerts, etc).

Likewise, the renter agreement is not possible to send because the guest hasn't signed it yet. The system could send a request email to the guest to sign it, but obviously they would need to do that first before the archived version could go out.

This is a process we'd like to overall in a number of ways. The payment should be closely coupled with the booking creation so that you can, if desired, process the payment while creating the booking all together. The third party alerts could then go out. Or we could offer some checkbox options at the bottom to send third party alerts at creation.

Do you have any other suggestions for this area?

Thanks, -Michelle

Is there a way to set defaults on manually created booking identical to the defaults when a guest creates the booking (e.g. third party alerts, legal, etc.)? I don't like having to remember to do these things, and love that the system does them automatically.

Curious why they aren't on by default system wide?

Damon

Thank you!

I just pushed up a hotfix with the new email message. Next time you should receive a reauth failed email. You'll still have to go in and manually release and renew the security deposit (as that indicates that there was an error on the bank's end) -- instructions for all that are included in the email.

Thanks. It's not super critical.

@Marinas Edge: At the moment, no. We talked about this briefly yesterday. It would take a couple of internal changes, none of which are super hard, but we'd need to do those things before it would be possible. Thanks for suggesting - it's a needed feature.

Is there a way to adjust the iCal calendar synch timezone to the timezone where the property is located? I'd use this for my maid to know from her calendar when people are checking in and checking out.

Wonderful. Thank you!! :)

Ella, I have been told by dev that we're looking to hotfix this into place for you shortly. Could be by this weekend at the earliest. I will update this thread when something happens.

Another good question :) I'll ask dev@ and get back to you.

-Michelle

Hi Michelle,
I understand, I also feel that it's very important to receive such email notification and should be implemented ASAP. When can we expect this to be implemented?
Ella

Hi Ella,

A very good question. The issue is that sometimes when the system goes reauthorize the security deposit, the card is closed, expired or over limit from the cardholder's other activities. When that happens, the old security deposit is voided but no new security deposit is possible. This is a natural unavoidable problem with how card processing works. We can't guarantee that reauthorizations will always work for this reason. I know that's frustrating. We've looked into different alternatives in the past but always come up short. We are considering adding an email notification that will tell you when this "failed to reauthorize" occurs so at least you know you're dealing with a guest that you have no security deposit on. Not a great situation to be in, but at least you'll know a little bit ahead of time.

-Michelle

FYI the error message while trying to release the security deposit was:
An error occured while trying to release - The release request failed. Reason: The bank did not approve this request. Details: Transaction can only be voided if status is authorized or submitted_for_settlement. This error is being returned from your payment gateway. It is probably occurring because the original security deposit has expired or was released elsewhere.

Hello,
Recently I had a booking (ORB355910 ) were even though the security deposit was successfully authorized, the automatic re-authorization after a few days failed. However, I was never notified of this and when I tried to release the security deposit after departure I received a message that the bank did not authorize this release and maybe it was released somewhere else.
Luckily there was no damage, so I eventually manually marked this as released manually. The system until then did try to collect the security deposit on daily basis, each one was denied, until I marked it as released. Shouldn't I receive an email notification when such autorisation fails?
This would have been trouble if there was actual damage and security deposits to collect.
Ella

That'll work fine, thanks. Was on that section of the booking a lot, not sure how I couldn't figure it out from that...

We don't have a way for customers to add a new card separate from another operation. That's on the to do list.

What you can do now, if you want to let them switch cards, is to send them the payment or security deposit link from the booking. They'll be able to put in the new card info there and execute the charge.

The drawback of this method is that it will charge the card immediately rather than waiting for a schedule, but at least it gives you a method to handle it for now. We originally did it this way as a security measure to ensure that the card was charged at least once before queuing it up for a schedule, but now know that we need to add more flexibility here.

Once the guest makes that last payment on the new card, you can also go into the security deposit and switch over the card to the new one.

Is it possible for a customer to enter a different credit card for the 2nd payment and security deposit?

Looks like I can manually add the new card myself, but I don't see any way for them to do it online.

thanks,
-JJ

Thank you for replying. I'm looking forward to possible updates on this. :-) Ella

Unrecognized is only when I respond back via homeaway. However, those made it through to ownerRez already. I am talking about the ones that come in, but nothing is showing in ownerRez. I have to Create an Quote, manually.

We collect all emails we get from VRBO/HomeAway and you should see them either as inquiries or as an "unrecognized inquiry" email if we can't automatically parse them. Have you been seeing that unrecognized inquiry email or nothing at all? Can you double check your HA account and make sure that your @inquiryspot.com email (from https://app.ownerrez.com/inquiries/instructions) is properly configured there?

We don't currently support multiple to emails, but we've bumped it up on the priority list.

There are a couple of ways to do this. You can create duplicate email templates as you suggested. Or, if you have control over your email provider, you could create a forwarding alias that sends email to multiple addresses. Something like housekeeping@myvacationrental.com, which would then forward to the appropriate email addresses. Different email providers have different ways of doing this. If you have Google Apps, you can create a group: https://support.google.com/a/answer/33343?hl=en. If you have gmail, you could use an alias like yourgmail+housekeepers@gmail.com, and then archive and forward that using a filter: http://www.komku.org/2013/10/how-to-use-filters-to-forward-certain-emails.html