Task Reminders (linked to bookings)

I am trying out OR for the free trial period and I am already missing the ability to schedule a reminder for certain tasks that need to be done at some point in the future related to each booking. My current software allows you to set/schedule "Reminders" using a date picker calendar, and each day you are presented with a notification on the dashboard to view the Reminders set for that day.

I hope you'll consider adding Reminders to your future enhancement list.

Yep, that's a good idea. We are thinking about some tasks/reminders options.

If it is related to a booking, you could schedule an email to go out to yourself, like "check to make sure all the payment/renter agreement signature is in order 1 week before arrival"

@Valerie R - I too have asked about having scheduled tasks, but it's pretty much a nice-to-have feature that you can easily work around with a calendar app.

I personally use google calendar for all of my reminders to myself, and I find it's super easy to include reminders there anyway. I don't really think there's a huge benefit to having it in OR, except for maybe property managers who want to track the result of the task with a status update. For an individual like myself with 3 properties it works fine to just set a reminder quarterly to do taxes, annually to reset kaba lock codes, and semiannually to perform deep cleans.

Unrelated to tasks, I learned early on that OwnerRez doesn't have an enormously feature-filled email system, but again I've just learned to send emails from my dedicated personal email (eg: myname@lovelyvacationrentals.com) and keep all of that communication in my personal email. Of course automated emails come from OwnerRez, but both those and the ones from my personal email appear to come from the same email address so guests never know. I just have two places to look for emails, OwnerRez and personal when I'm searching for something that was sent.

I appreciate the feedback, and I am aware that I can add reminders to my Google calendar....in fact, that is how I used to do it before beginning to use reservation software.

The "problem" (not really a problem) is that the current software that I use has the ability to attach reminders right in the booking when you are getting it set up within the system which is very convenient....no need to go to a separate website (like the Google calendar) or tool to do it.

So I've experimented with setting up an email template in OR to be sent to myself to remind me of the task that needs to be done.

I've discovered that you can only use an email template once within a booking. So, I cannot schedule a reminder email to be sent to me more than once per booking.

I'd like to request that this limitation be removed, so that you can use any email template as many times as you wish per booking.

What are the reminders for? If it's something standard like you send it one day after arrival, you could use a trigger that would send it automatically. You can have multiple triggers using the same template.

@Valerie - I think it's best to post requests for feature changes in the other forum, makes it easier for the OR team to not overlook it.

I agree with your comments, there is a lot of value in keeping short term rental stuff all in one place.

Thanks, @Rich. What is "the other forum"?

"Say No to VRBO Service Fee" and "Short Term Rental University"

Hi Rich,

I was thinking today of sending a few feature requests for OR to consider when I remembered this earlier suggestion you sent. Re-reading it, it seems you are asking me to go to "Say No to VRBO Service Fee" and "Short Term Rental University" to submit feature requests for OR. Is this correct? Where can I find these forums? I don't see a link here in OR, only "Feedback" which is why I thought this was the place for such suggestions.

Hi Rich,

I typically set a reminder for the items below. I've created custom email templates and set a trigger so that these reminders are automatically sent to me at the desired times.

CONFIRM REZ ITEMS (used to check the booking 21 days before arrival to make sure we have everything needed before sending the Check-in packet: paid in full, signed rental agreement, copy of ID)

FOLLOW UP: reminder to refund security deposit (if applicable) and send a follow up letter depending on which site the booking came from)

PAYMENT IS DUE: reminder for me to be aware of a payment that is due in case I need to trigger the payment or to check to be sure it is scheduled to be sent automatically

PAYMENT IS DUE (FINAL): reminder for a booking that has more than two payments; this one is for the final payment. (I had to create this reminder in OR because the system would not let me use the "PAYMENT IS DUE" template on the same booking twice. It presented an error that said the template was already in use.

Valerie - there are no links to those places you mention because they are groups on Facebook. Seems like this Forum is the best place if you have questions for OR programmers/staff. Only other place you can go for general advice from other OR users (not from OR employees) is a Facebook page called "Unofficial OwnerRez Support Group." That page is NOT managed by OR.

Hi Valerie,

I don't really know why I responded with those facebook groups. Very sorry, I can only imagine that I was trying to respond to someone else's post and got confused.

If you scroll down the page when you are reading forum posts here you'll see other forums, the appropriate one for a feature request is called (drum roll) feature requests ;-)

Sorry about the confusion!

Yep! The confirming reservation, followup, etc. actions are things we're starting to think about. Our current idea is to establish a booking status and show by color on the ribbon so it's easy to see if it needs items to confirm, payment is overdue, etc. No ETA yet, but we're working on the planning.

Thanks, Lydia!

Hey there! 

It's looking like this feature request is from just over three years ago. Has anything come from it? 

My specific use case that does not currently seem possible is I would like a reminder at a specific date and time if I have not filled out a custom field. Am I overlooking a way of triggering an email based on custom fields or the lack thereof? 

Thanks!!

No, but, there are thoughts of doing something like this next year.

add a task to a booking, alert a manager,  manager assigns it to a team member with a due date, reporting on upcoming and past dues to team members and managers.

Don't forget the auto creation of tasks based on triggers... IE... task checkout clean is assigned to team member x for property abc on checkout date   or  task clean hot tub is assigned to 3rd party vendor for property abc on booking with a due date of checkout date

Scheduling tasks in OwnerRez isn't likely, as OwnerRez isn't designed to do task management - we leave that to our housekeeping service management partners.  It would likely be possible to transmit the tag data to our partners, who could perhaps create actions at their end based on the presence or absence of specific tags - I'm not sure of their capabilities though, so that would need to be a question for them.