Do you have your vacation rental owners sign annual (or other) contracts for your property management service? Would you like those contracts, their history and their electronic signing process to be automated seamlessly into your PMS dashboard?

Bookerville has developed a new feature that enables you to create your own custom owner contract templates - these can be unique per property - and send the owners a link to digitally enter the data (custom, whatever data you choose to require) and sign them. You get notified by email when they complete their signing, and the owner is then notified when you sign it. The history of these contracts is made available to you and your owners for posterity, downloading, printing, etc.

Customized

The contracts can be 100% customized: you probably already have one that you've been using, either on paper or elsewhere electronically (PDF, Docusign, etc.). We can help you set these up with proper formatting, and your pre-populated information, and also custom fields you want your owners to enter.

We have added a new template in the Property Setup page >> Emails & Templates tab, look for the button called "Owner Contract". It is here you would enter your contract text, and it is here you would likely require our assistance, which we are happy to provide.

Custom Questions, Owner-Options, Data Collection

The contract template can contain optional fields - text, dates, and simple yes/no check boxes - that are associated with questions or info. you need from the owner about the new contract period. Asking them to choose their open and off season dates, whether they would like winterization/spring cleaning, or open-ended questions like what work they plan to do to the home for the next year, etc.

Bookerville will make each of these required before the owner can sign the contract, and the answers are retained and made available to you for reporting, so that you can organize and keep track of which properties are participating in certain activities, options, etc.

Multiple Owners per Property

Our new feature supports multiple owners per property. Set these up as "sub-users" in your Dashboard >> Account Settings tab, in the Members With Permissions box. Make sure the "Owner" box is checked, this is how Bookerville determines which person is an owner, and pulls their contact info. into the contract.

Digital Signing

Their full name, date, and SSN (or EIN / ITIN) is required for them to sign the contracts, and this is stored and presented. Sensitive data is encrypted and stored securely.

Emailing Owners to Sign

You can create new contracts, and then send owners an email alerting them to go sign it. This is done in the new Owner Contracts Management page, which you can get to in your Dashboard >> Account Settings tab at the bottom.


Update 2023-02-07: There is now a new video, walking you through how this works: Owner Contracts Video

Just a quick heads-up: Bookerville is no longer permitting properties to be deleted.

Too many times people have accidentally deleted a property that they didn't intend to, or they deleted the wrong one, or realized later that even though the property may no longer be active, they still need the data from it to report on for year-end taxes, etc. And it is nearly impossible for Bookerville to reliably recover properties once they have been deleted.

If there is a property that is no longer active, simply turn it off-line in your Dashboard >> My Properties tab. You can also remove it from your Master Calendar view by un-checking that box there.

You may also want to un-check the "List this Property Publicly" box and the "List this property on Bookerville's listing pages" box in the Property Setup page for properties that are no longer active.

As always, if there is any confusion or concern about this, email us.

Richer, more automated Work Orders await you!

You've had the ability to create, manage, and report on Work Orders for a while now. But Bookerville has now produced a Maintenance Mobile App that your maintenance personnel can use to navigate to the property, see any photos of the issue(s) submitted for that work order, provide estimates, final amounts, and report as completed.

Setting Up Maintenance Users

Step one is setting up one or more sub-users and assigning them "Maintenance" permission for one or more properties. This is done in your Dashboard >> Account Settings tab, look for the "Members With Permissions" box. Once you do this, that user will then have access to the new Maintenance Mobile App.

Creating & Assigning Work Orders

Once you (or your housekeepers/inspectors) have created a work order, you'll need to set the status to Approved, and set a scheduled date for it. We have also improved this: the pop-up date-picker calendar shows you booked dates so that you can more easily choose a scheduled date in between bookings when needed. You also must assign the work order to the maintenance user. Once that's done, they will then see the work order appear in their prioritized list in their Maintenance App.

Completing Work Orders

Your maintenance personnel can then mark work orders as completed, and your dashboard is updated to reflect the latest statuses. They can also create new work orders as they see needs for things while they are in the field, and these can then be reviewed and approved by you before they can commence work and mark as completed.

Give Us Your Feedback

As always, Bookerville thrives on feedback from actual active users. If you're using this new feature, please don't be shy about your ideas to improve it.

Refund payments with a click. Or even set them up to be completely automatic

It's been a long time coming, but at long last, you can now initiate refunds for electronic payments in the Bookerville dashboard, without having to log in separately to your Lynnbrook/BridgePay dashboard.

Lynnbrook: The Recommended Payment Processor

This can only be achieved through our recommended payment processor, the Lynnbrook Group, of course. If you don't have a Lynnbrook merchant account, there is no better time or reason to switch than now. Learn more about Lynnbrook

How Do I Refund In Bookerville?

In the Booking Details page, if you have a Lynnbrook merchant account, any payments made through them will now show a 3rd action icon, a green $ with a circle-arrow around it:





Clicking that (and confirming for safety) will cause Bookerville to attempt to refund that payment, and you'll see the results right then and there in a pop-up.

And How About Totally Automatic Refunds?

We're so glad you brought that up! As a matter of fact, we are looking for a few members to beta-test a new feature that will automatically refund refundable security deposits X number of days after the departure date, unless you have gone in and marked it for retention (in whole or in part). If you are interested in pilot-testing this next-level of automation, please email us:





When we turn it on for your testing, look for this in the Property Setup page:

More To Come!

Our next phase in this richer integration with Lynnbrook is to let you (optionally) auto-charge the card-on-file for subsequent, scheduled payments. We will announce that when it is ready.

Your Bookerville experience is constantly improving!

If you are currently using either iCal feeds or a Channel Manager, then this announcement is very important to you.

How It Works Now

Bookerville has been suppressing Automatic Scheduled Emails and triggered emails for bookings that originate from external sources like Channel Managers and iCal feeds. This is because some emails just don't make sense depending on where the booking came from. For example, AirBnB collects funds from the guests, so sending them a Payment Reminder email doesn't make sense, and might confuse or even concern the guest. There are many other examples, but suffice to say, to err on the side of caution, Bookerville has not been setting up the Automatic Scheduled Emails, nor the initial "triggered" emails for these bookings, but instead allowing you to go into these bookings and either send the emails manually, or set up an alternative set of Automatic Scheduled Emails, etc.

What We're Doing Next

To improve things, Bookerville has recently added new criteria fields to your Email Templates, which allow you to specify if the email should be sent only for certain listing sites, or suppressed (not sent) for certain listing sites. If you are using iCal feeds, and/or a Channel Manager, it is important that you go in and configure these new Email Template settings soon, because Bookerville is going to turn on Automatic Scheduled Emails and triggered emails for these bookings.

When?

We have not yet determined a date at which we are going to turn on Automatic Scheduled Emails (and initial triggered emails) for external bookings, as we want to make sure our members have enough time to read and digest this news, and go make use of the new criteria feature to set up your Email Templates appropriately for the channels you're using. But we do want to act on this quickly, so that everyone can start enjoying the richer automation.

What You Need To Do

Please go into your Property Setup page >> Emails & Templates tab, and click into each of your Email Templates to see if you want to make use of these new settings.

And of course, reply here if you have questions or concerns.