Importing Outside Bookings

If you are setting up your new OwnerRez account, and your existing bookings are with a major listing site like Airbnb and VRBO, we provide tools to import the booking data into OwnerRez - guest name and contact info, booking dates, charges, payments, and so on.  These are Channel Bridge, the iCal Calendar Imports, and the APIs.

However, you may have bookings from some other source.  Perhaps you did your own bookings using a phone and a pen.  Or, maybe you are changing from some other channel management system, and you have a list of their bookings in an Excel spreadsheet.

You can always manually enter them into OwnerRez one at a time, but that's a lot of work if you have a lot of them.  OwnerRez offers the ability to import bookings and associated data using Excel templates, which can be easier to use for bulk imports.  These are found under Tools > Import/Export.

There are several specific Excel templates that work together to fully import bookings. Import Bookings and Import Charges are the most important, but also Import Payments and Import Refunds may be useful. You can click on each individually, then click the Download link to download the respective Excel templates.

Import Bookings

The Import Bookings template is fairly straightforward and includes the information you'd expect a Booking to need - guest name, dates of booking, property, etc. There are several example rows of test data at the top of the spreadsheet to show you what to do - make sure to delete those rows before you try to import the spreadsheet.  Do not delete the header row, though - OwnerRez needs it to properly identify each column.

You will need to enter the ORP property number from OwnerRez so it can know what property the booking is for - these are visible in the Properties table displayed by that menu.

If you already have these bookings entered into OwnerRez partially - for instance, maybe from an iCal calendar import - you will want to enter the ORB booking number of each booking in that column.  If these are entirely new bookings, you can leave that column blank - when you import, OwnerRez will create them as new bookings and assign them a new number.

If you already have your own booking numbers, there's a column where you can enter those.  OwnerRez will preserve this information in the booking, for future reference.  This is extremely important to include if you plan on using the Import Charges template to import detailed charges, as these are the index numbers OwnerRez will use to know what charges go with which booking.

If your booking charges are very simple, you can just include then in the appropriate columns in the Import Bookings template.  However, your charges may be more complex, such as multiple taxes, different surcharges, etc.  In this case, leave the charge columns empty, and use the Import Charges template for them instead.

It is perfectly normal for a booking not to use many or most of the columns in this spreadsheet.  If you are importing the charges and payments separately, a booking might only have a half-dozen columns used.

Import Blocks

You can also bulk-import Blocks - just make sure not to enter any charges or guests on that line.  (Only fill in Columns B, C, E, & F)

Import Cancelled Bookings

For Cancelled bookings, enter a date in the "canceled date" column, otherwise leave that blank.

Import Charges

In Excel, the Import Charges template is a 7 column document with some example data already added in to show you where to input your own data. You will want to delete these rows once you understand where to add your information.

Each individual charge goes on its own line - thus, each booking will have multiple lines reflecting the multiple separate charges.

For management fees from other OTAs or PMs, and third-party booking fees from listing channels, are those both deducted from your payout? If so, put the total in the HostFee column. If fees are deducted from the guest, not you, then they go in the GuestFee column.

Once you have completed filling your data into the sheet, save the document in your computer.  Make a note of where you saved it.

Import Payments

Hopefully your old guests actually paid their bills, and OwnerRez should know that so its reports will be correct.

In Excel, the Import Charges template is a 10 column document with some example data already added in to show you where to input your own data. You will want to delete these rows once you understand where to add your information.

Note that Refunds should not be included using this spreadsheet.  There is a separate spreadsheet to import those, discussed below.

Once you have completed filling your data into the sheet, save the document in your computer.  Make a note of where you saved it.

Import Refunds

In Excel, the Import Refunds template is a 10 column document with some example data already added in to show you where to input your own data. You will want to delete these rows once you understand where to add your information.

Once you have completed filling your data into the sheet, save the document in your computer.  Make a note of where you saved it.

Importing the Data

Then, in OwnerRez, go to Tools > Import/Export > Import (Bookings or Charges, as appropriate).  Make sure to import the bookings first, and then the charges.

Where it says "Choose File", either drag-and-drop the document onto that, or click it and select your file from where you previously saved it to.

You have the option of requiring surcharges, discounts, and taxes to match to a configured record of that type in the system. If unchecked, the import will use "Other" for any that don't match. Leave this unchecked if you did not enter an item number as discussed above.  In most cases, unless you are very consistent and detail-oriented and you know for sure all the Surcharges will match exactly, you should leave this box unchecked.

Click Import to actually import the data in the file.  If there are any errors, they will be displayed to you, and the file will not be imported.  You can open it up in Excel, make any necessary changes, and then try again.

Each file needs to be imported individually, starting with the bookings, then the charges, etc.  If there are errors with importing a file, resolve them first before proceeding on to any more imports.