We finally reached the minimum number of fans required to get a custom URL for my InnFirst.com fan page on Facebook.

Please visit our Facebook fan page and “like” us!

UpperMichiganLakeRentals.com looks like an amazing place to get away from it all in the UP (Upper Peninsula) of Michigan. Featuring incredible fishing and seclusion, the lodge and accompanying cabin offer an amazing combination of tranquility and seclusion.

UpperMichiganLakeRentals.com has chosen InnFirst.com to power their online booking and guest management requirements. They’ve also signed up for the CDGCommerce / Quantum Payment Gateway to integrate payment processing within the InnFirst.com application.

This feature is only available to property owners who are subscribed to the employees module.

The invoice status alert allows any “employee” (or any individual or group that you have setup with an account) to be alerted when the status of an invoice changes to “paid-in-full”.

Maybe you are a property owner with a condo at a large resort and you want to send the resort an automatic email with guest details, date of arrival, length of stay and any services ordered.  That way the resort can make sure the room is cleaned and ready for the guest.

Currently this feature is limited in it’s functionality.  You cannot set up one property to send an email to one third party and then a separate property to a different third party.

I can foresee a future where property managers have accounts for all of their property owners and can match that property owner to a property and receive alerts only for their properties, etc.  That is the future, but for now baby steps.

Here is a screenshot of where the invoice status alert can be located:

Some additional work needs to be done on the actual email alert that is sent to the “employee”, that will be done shortly.

Also there is an option to “confirm alert before sending”, this option is not available to PayPal users.  This option, if checked, will pop a modal window when they record a payment that results in a particular invoice changing status to “paid-in-full” asking the property owner / manager if they would like to send an invoice status alert.  If left unchecked, the alerts will be sent automatically with no property owner / manager approval.

Enjoy!

Statistics say that 58% of all the inquiries a property owner receives have already found another place to rent by the time you respond.   Even though we make every effort to stay on time of every inquiry, inevitably we have all had times where we heard the dreaded “Thanks for the response, but I’ve already found another rental.”  Or perhaps we just never heard anything back at all.

Online bookings result in a significant uptick in occupancy because it addresses this problem head on.  Potential guests can secure their dates immediately without waiting for a return phone call or email.

Many property owners are hesitant to try online booking because they have some mystical view that they want to talk to every potential guest on the phone.  The reality is that many in this generation do not want to talk on the phone, they don’t even want to communicate via email.   It is felt that if you do your job and provide the potential guest with a great website, then the website should fully answer all their questions.   Many guests today when they encounter a website that is easy to use, easy to navigate, features large, crisp images, clearly explains the terms and conditions, and displays availability and allows for online bookings, these guests will book online and many times they’ll do it during periods when the property owner is in bed!

I can’t tell you how many online bookings I get overnight.  I’ll go to bed at 11pm and wake up and someone will have booked at 1am.  My guess is that many families, like my own, are busy.  So busy that many times it’s late night before they have an opportunity to surf the web looking for a place for the family vacation.    These days few guests want to send out dozens of inquiries to property owners asking if they have availability for certain dates.  Why? It’s a huge, unnecessary waste of time.  For me, no availability on your website = no sale.  No rate information on your website = no sale.   Small, grainy pictures on your website = no sale. No online booking = no sale.

However, if you’ve taken the time and respected me, the guest, by putting up a great website with great pics, easy to use navigation, clearly defined T&C’s, availability and online booking, then I know the odds are that you will go above and beyond to provide me with a great place to stay and a great vacation and I will book with you without ever speaking to you on the phone or conversing with you via email.

Each the year there are larger and larger percentages of people like me.  We are a demand driven society.  Satisfy the demand,  have a great website,  accept online bookings and you are all set, you will reap the rewards.   These last two years have been the best years in the last ten years for vacation rental owners, but only for those that treat their business and their customers with respect.  The old ways of doing business don’t’ work so well anymore, and for those that still adhere to them, the last two years  have yielded many open dates and / or lots of discounting.  Don’t let that happen to you.  Try the InnFirst.com vacation rental management platform free for 30 days and we’ll show you how to make your business thrive again.

First, I have to give a shout out and thank-you to a new InnFirst.com customer, The Blue Horse Inn in Woodstock, Vermont. They’ve built out an amazing new website (still working on it) and had some great suggestions for a couple of small improvements to InnFirst. Those small improvements gave rise to the enhancements outlined in this email. Here is a screenshot and link to the Blue Horse Inn website in Woodstock, VT.

Online Booking Process

The online booking process has had some modifications that both reduce the amount of screen space required for the reservation details and reduce the number of steps in the booking process. Both modifications make the display more simple and the booking process easier.

The “services” component of the online booking process has been added to step #1 and step #2 removed. The room total box was redesigned and positioned closed to where the number of guests are entered. Also the Show Rate Details area has been changed to a mouseover effect, rather then a drop down effect. The end result is that the interface is cleaner and more intuitive.

Visual Calendar

Using the same mouseover technology that is used in the Show Rates Detail during the online booking process, we were able to incorporate this into the visual calendar as well.

As a property owner myself, it always bothered me that I had to click on the reservation within the calendar to find more information about the reservation such as services ordered, check-in / check-out time, invoice comments, etc. Now it will be possible for you to simply move your mouse over each reservation and a window will appear with additional reservation details. It’s a great time saving people for all of us who value every second of the day! This will launch this week, we are still tweaking the display. Here is a screenshot:

Visual Calendar Rate Quoting

Another feature that I’ve wanted for some time is the ability to quickly quote a rate to a potential guest. There really is no easy way within the current application quote a rate – and that’s a problem!

Later this week (or perhaps next week Monday) we’ll launch the ability to quote rates for individual properties or rooms from within the visual calendar. Multi-unit rate quoting is more complex and will have to wait.

Once it launched you will see a new modal window when making a reservation using the visual calendar. The current modal window looks like this:

The new modal window with Rate Quoting will look like this:

The rate quoting will be general rate quoting it will pull specific rate data, but it won’t allow you to enter services, etc. I am hoping it will allow you to enter number of guests and then refresh the rate quote for those of you that have per person rates enabled. Either way, it’s a big improvement. I’ve been having to load up my online booing calendar to give quotes to potential guests and it gets on my nerves. :-)

Upcoming Enhancements

Reporting. Improved reporting framework that will allow you to create reports that suit your business on the fly.

Amenities Interface. Amenities interface will be replaced with a more dynamic interface that will allow you to enter custom amenities, as well as copy amenities from property to property or room to room.

Automated Communications. Option for property owners to automate confirmations. Currently all property owners must manually send out confirmations or balance due reminders. New options would allow confirmations or documents of your choice to be sent out upon completion of certain trigger events such as payment of reservation deposit or remaining balance due, etc..

Guest surveys. Guest reviews. Automated email surveys that guests can receive at the end of their stay to help track guest satisfaction as well as integration with TripAdvisor to help increase number of positive reviews being posted to TripAdvisor.

Property Management Module. This one will take awhile, but we are well aware that the property managers using the system need some significant new features and reporting before the application will fully meet their needs.

I hope your year is progressing well. If you have any questions or concerns please contact me directly at 877-593-2083 x3 or via email at sales@innfirst.com.

Best regards,

Brent M. Kleinheksel

Owner, InnFirst.com

Online Bookings by InnFirst.com

We’ve done some optimization to the invoices area of the application.   You should notice a dramatic improvement in speed when editing invoices once it is updated to the production server.   Thanks!

Wow, lots of great new features are launching on Friday!   All of these features were suggested by our customers and we listened.   It’s not always that easy, but we’ve designed our application to be extremely flexible.   Unlike many of our competitors with client-based or dated web-based applications, the InnFirst.com application can introduce new features very quickly – provided they make sense and help all of our customers run their business more effectively and efficiently.

We’ve finished up the coding and testing of the following items:

• Document upload.  Property owners can now upload ancillary documents and these documents will then be available for attachment to guest emails.
• Appended Responses. Property owners can now save frequent responses and simply append them to their guest emails.  This functionality will streamline guest communications and further decrease the amount of time spent on each reservation.  It’s a great new feature, one that I am excited to use for my own rentals.
• Guest Names.   Some of you have enabled “per person” rates.  This means that your rates vary by the number of guests in the group.  However, some were having trouble with guests that would book a property claiming to have (for example) three guests and then actually end up having >three  guests in the unit.   To help with that a few users requested that the guest be required to enter their names during the online booking process.  That functionality is now live on the production server and can be enabled within the “rates settings” area of each property.  Likewise, when enabled the property manager can manually enter guest names within the guest control panel.
• Enhancements to Online Booking Process.
  • More Information. On the first page of the online booking process there has always been a link to “more information” under the property description.  This link traditionally opened up a new window to the designated URL for the property.   Now when this link is clicked the additional property information will simply drop down within the page.  It’s a simpler interface that does not detract from the online booking process.
  • Integrated Rental Agreements. On the next to the last page of online booking process,  at the bottom of the page we traditionally displayed the property owner’s cancellation and deposit policy, as well as a box which outlined the reservation deposit required.   The guest could not continue with the reservation unless they checked the box which stated that they read and understood the deposit and cancellation policies.This page has been changed.   The cancellation and deposit policies will still be displayed,  but the box containing the text that outlined the reservation deposit requirements has been removed.  The reservation deposit requirements will now be displayed as the last item of the page under a section entitled “Next Steps”.

    Most importantly, property owners can now display a generic rental agreement embedded within the page that will be available for downloading and printing.   Many property owners have a rental agreement that they have traditionally emailed or mailed to guests for reading and signature.  The guest must then sign the agreement and return it to the property owner.  Property owners retain these agreements to protect themselves in the event of a chargeback and also to make sure the guest understands all the various terms and conditions of the rental.

    Many property owners don’t have a clear answer why they use rental agreements, they simply do it because so many others do.  Personally, in ten years of owning eight vacation rentals, I have never had a chargeback and I do not use a rental agreement.  However, I do make sure that the guest CLEARLY understands the terms and conditions of my rentals and prominently display this information in my website and on all guest correspondence.

    There have been times where a guest has not had their deposit returned as a result of violating my cancellation policy or as a result of damage to the unit.  In a couple of instances the guest got upset.  However, I simply referred them to their confirmation (which InnFirst.com archives) and to the appropriate area of the website where my policies are displayed.  In all instances, the guest dropped their appeals and many times returned as a guest at a later date.

    My point is that by integrating a generic rental agreement within the online booking process and adding an additional checkbox that the guest must click to assure that they’ve “read and understood the rental agreement” before the reservation can proceed, the property owner can remove the entire process of having to obtain a signed rental agreement.

    In the future we will reinforce this process with the addition of digital signatures, which a guest can sign during the online booking process.  The property owner will then have an archived copy of the signed agreement stored with the reservation and available within the guest control panel.   We are not there yet, but this implementation is a great step in that direction.

    A rental agreement will ONLY be displayed during the online booking process if the property owner has uploaded a rental agreement to InnFirst and designated that document as a “rental agreement” within the system.   The document is uploaded to InnFirst and then reuploaded to Scribd, which uses their patent pending iPaper technology to convert the document to flash which allows InnFirst to seamlessly embed the document within the actual webpage.   Guests must have Flash installed on their PC to view the document.  However, they must also have Flash installed to view the online booing calendar.  99% of all PCs now have flash installed on their PCs.

    

Some new features will be rolling out in the next 7-10 days, including:

1) Customizable visual calendar.  This is a feature on the back end where property owners / managers can quickly view, at-a-glance what their reservations are looking like over the next couple of years.

The problem exists only for property owners / managers who have more than 8 properties and also use large monitors.  The current size of the calendar is fixed.  Thus if you have more than 8 properties or rooms and you use a large desktop monitor at a high resolution, the calendar doesn’t maximize the use of your display size.

The enhanced calendar will automatically size to the height of your screen.  However, the property owner will also be able to set the row height.  This will allow users with large screens and many properties to display a very large amount of properties without having to scroll down to view the remaining units.

Additionally, once that is complete we will be working on options to expand the calendar horizontally that will allow more dates to be viewable without having to scroll forward.

These are some great enhancements and I have Frank at MiamiVacations.com to thank for the suggestions.

2) The second set of features might not launch for a couple of weeks or more yet, but these features will allow a property owner / manager to display additional information about the guest and reservation on the visual calendar by simply mousing over the reservation.  This will be a nice time saving feature for the property owner to quickly view the full guest name and contact data, as well as important information on the status of the reservation, remaining balance due, security deposit, etc.

3) The third set of visual calendar features that are still probably a month away are visual calendar rate quoting.   Many times I have guests who call and want a quote.  There isn’t currently a real easy way to do this in the system.  However, in the future you’ll be able to use the visual calendar to easily obtain a rate quote for a property or room.

4) New reporting framework.  We will also be rolling out a new reporting framework which should simplify the process of creating and saving custom reports.    Each user tends to have custom reporting requirements.  We’d live you to have the ability to mine your own data and create reports that that meet your needs.  Having to contact us for custom reports is time consuming and unnecessary.

5) Rates that vary by length of stay.   We are really close to completing testing on some enhancements for our rates.  Many property owners and managers have rates that vary by length of stay.  These discounts are usually in addition to weekly and / or monthly rates.  For example some property owners give a 10% discount for stays >10 nights and 20% discount for stays >20 nights.  Our current system supports daily, weekly and monthly rates, as well as per person rates, but we don’t support rates that vary when certain stay triggers are tripped.  This will soon change.

I hope you continue to enjoy the InnFirst.com system.  I certainly am enjoying working with all of you and am really happy at the number of new customers who continue to sign up and use the system each day!

How to Setup Rates – InnFirst.com Vacation Rental Software

Vacation Rental Software by InnFirst.com. This video shows how easy it is to setup seasonal rate bands and then apply them to a graphical calendar.

This is my first Camtasia video, so please forgive any quirkiness in it’s production.  I will get better, much better as I produce more videos and start using scripts, etc.

Today I got a call from a new trial user requesting an enhancement to the system.  During the course of that call he told me that another firm was trying to woo him away from InnFirst.   However, they used a pricing model which charged a percentage of every reservation that was transacted using their system.  This did not sit well with the customer due to the cost.

While I understand the benefits to the technology company of such a revenue model, I don’t see any benefits to the actual customer.  For my own vacation rentals I’ve worked hard over the past 10 years to build up a huge network of repeat and word of mouth business.  My website is robust and I understand how  to effectively market my rentals.  WHY IN HELL WOULD I PAY A COMPANY 1.5% – 3% OF EVERY RENTAL TO USE THEIR SOFTWARE? Maybe I’d pay them .5% for every new rental they could verify they brought me, but I’d pay them nothing for existing rentals.

Assuming $250,000 a year in sales I would be paying them at a minimum $4000 a year to use a simple vacation rental management platform?    I think over the long term companies like LiveRez and Escapia and any other product that prices as a percentage of revenue will ultimately face too much competition from companies like InnFirst.com which price at a reasonable level according to the number of rooms or properties under management.

True, they can make the short term argument that they offer more features than what InnFirst.com currently offers, but that gap only exists in the short term.  We are putting out new functionality on a weekly basis based upon the input and requests of our rapidly growing customer base.  It’s not rocket science to put out an on-demand vacation rental CMS, or offer enhanced distribution methods or offer additional search / sort / booking options…it’s just not rocket science.  It just takes time and money and a great understanding of the market.

I am quite confidant that someday when a VR Manager takes a look at the InnFirst.com platform and compares our pricing to that of LiveRex or others, versus our features, and realizes “wow I can save $xx,000 a year or more by switching to InnFirst.com and have similar functionality?”  It’s a no brainer.  I’ve got to laugh at these companies with their big payrolls, sales staffs, etc..  I just don’t think they understand the true metrics of SaaS and how to build a long term, sustainable business model on the Internet today.

Take notes my friends, I’ll show you the way.

For all of you PayPal lovers out there,   today InnFirst.com officially supports PayPal.

To integrate within the InnFirst.com application, you must first have a PayPal Business or Premier account and follow the instructions I’ve posted here:

http://support.innfirst.com/entries/117060-how-do-i-setup-paypal-to-integrate-with-innfirst-com

Once you’ve completed those instructions, guests will be able to book online and pay the reservation and security deposit using PayPal.  As a property owner you have the ability to approve / void PayPal reservations, as well as invoice guests using PayPal for remaining balances, etc..   ALL FROM WITHIN THE INNFIRST.COM APPLICATION! Actually, that’s not completely true, you will have to login to your PayPal account to capture or void payments and issue refunds.  But behind the scenes all of the results of your actions within your PayPal account will update within InnFirst.com.

The implementation is very tight.  Granted, it’s not as tight as for merchant accounts, but that is the fault of PayPal not our development team.    It’s still a very nice option for smaller property owners or for European property owners who might not want to bother with the hassle of obtaining a merchant account.

Instructions for using PayPal within the application will be forthcoming soon.

Note this support is for PayPal Website Payments Standard

We have no short term intentions of support PayPal Website Payments Pro or the PayFlow products.

InnFirst.com will soon launch support for PayPal.  A vacation rental property owner will be able to select PayPal as their preferred payment method.    The integration of PayPal will allow guests to choose PayPal to pay for their initial reservation deposit.  Once the deposit has been paid via PayPal, the property owner will be notified they they need to login to their InnFirst.com account to confirm or reject the new reservation.

The property owner will confirm the reservation by being taken to PayPal, logging in to their PayPal account and “capturing” the fund which were sent.  If the property owner wishes to reject the reservation, a similar process will be followed except the property owner will “void” the payment.

InnFirst.com will communicate behind the scenes with PayPal to update account payments / voids / refunds, etc.

The one disadvantage to PayPal is that the property owner never receives the guest credit card details.  Thus the guest needs to be invoiced when the remaining balance is due.

We are excited to launch support for PayPal website standard payments and looking forward to supplying more details next week!

• improved speed / functionality for List Reservations page, including new column for Balance Due date with sorting feature
• Removal of credit card requirement to qualify for free trial
• Invoice Notes tab will now highlight in red if notes are present
• Invoice “Balance” and ” Deposit” buttons fixed to show correct amounts.  “Deposit” button was too confusing as there are reservation deposits and other deposits, so it was renamed to “Confirm”.    Confirm balance is the amount required to confirm the reservation.
• Bank transfer option added as a payment method option.  Property owner / manager can enter banking details and have those details displayed to guests that choose that option.  Primarily for European customers.
• Misc. changes to “invoices” that are automatically sent to guests and property owners when a reservation is made

Those items should for sure get launched next week.  Another significant new feature that has been in hot demand is “discounts triggered by length of stay”.  So while we currently support daily, weekly, monthly and per person rates, we don’t support the automatic discounting of rates when certain triggers are met.  A property owner might have a daily rate and a weekly rate and an automatic  10% discount for stays of 3 to 6 nights, or a 20% discount for stays of 14 nights or more, etc..

We hope to get this functionality coded, tested and out the door possibly by Friday of next week, but more realistic is either Monday or Tuesday of the next week.

Some property owners and managers have fees that vary and are dependent on the rental charges in the reservation.   A great example of this is travel insurance.    Travel insurance is typically quoted as a percentage of the overal rental charges for the reservation.   Most property managers in coastal regions mandate this coverage unless the guess specifically asks to opt out.

To setup a fee that varies as a percentage of the reservation, please go to the property setup area of the application and edit your property.   Then open the Taxes / Fees / Deposits tab:

Additoinally,  many property managers have some taxes that are not applicable to certain fees.  In the past, it has only been possibly to blanket exempt a fee from all taxes.  Now the property owner can select which taxes apply to the fee.  If none of the taxes apply, then all the boxes can be unchecked, if all of the taxes apply than all the boxes should be checked.

The current invoices don’t do a good job of handling security deposits.  For example, here is an example of an invoice from the current application:

The invoice is for 2 nights at $350.00 a night (plus tax) with a $100 security deposit.  Thus the total amount due is $842.00.   The guest has paid the $842.00.    In the current invoice there is an “Overall Summary” section.  It states that the remaining balance is $0.00.    This is true, but no where does the invoice detail that the guest has a $100.00 security deposit which is due back to them if they meet the terms and conditions of the rental agreement when the stay is complete.  In reality, the charges balance of the invoice is $0.00 and the other deposits balance has a credit balance of $100.00, which means the guest is owed that money after the completion of the stay.

The current invoice really butchers this process and it needs to be fixed.   With the new invoice being launched this week, the “Overall Summary” section is being removed.  Additionally, the “Charges Summary” section is redundant and it was removed.  The resulting invoice is easier to understand and less cluttered.

Here is an example of what the same reservation looks like using the new invoice:

The Charges section is largely the same.  The Other Deposits section is largely the same, except it will now show the original security deposit amount and detail any allocations of the security deposit to breakage / fees.   The Transaction History area has changed significantly.    There are now three columns (two if other deposits are absent) displayed.  These columns are meant to show changes in the balance of accounts.

Thus in the new invoice, you can clearly see that this reservation, which begins on 1/29/2010, has a “Paid-in-Full” status.  This means that all rentals charges and security deposits have been paid.   There is a remaining balance of $0.00.   However, if you look in the Transaction History area,  it is clear that there is a credit balance of $100.00 in the Other Deposits column.    When the reservation is complete, the status will change to “Refund Owed” and show a credit balance of $100.00.

Now let’s assume that there was damage to the unit that resulted in the property owner withholding $50.00 of the $100.00 security deposit.   That $50.00 now becomes income to the property owner, therefore it must be added as a fee to the invoice and it must reduce the credit balance of the security deposit by $50.00.

The new invoicing system allows a property owner to assign how a new fee is to be paid.   If no security deposits are present on the invoice, then the property owner won’t be given a choice.  The new fee will simply become an additional rental charge.  However, if a security deposit is present, then the property owner will have the choice of assigning the fee to the security deposit or assigning the fee as an additional rental charge.

Now let’s take a look at the invoice after a $50.00 breakage fee has been added to the invoice.  The property owner added the fee, and assigned it to the security deposit.  Thus,  of the original $100.00 security deposit, only $50.00 remains.  The other $50.00 was re-allocated from the security deposit balance to the rental charges balance and used to pay the $50.00 breakage fee.  In the invoice below, under the transaction history, you can clearly see how the charges balance was increased by $50.00 and then decreased by $50.00 resulting in a zero balance.  While the security deposit balance was reduced from a $100.00 credit balance to a $50.00credit balance.

All that remains for this invoice is for the PO to refund the remaining $50.00 which will reduce the other deposits balance to $0.00.   The invoice will not switch to showing a status “Refund Due” until the checkout date of the reservation.

The new invoicing system allows a property owner to apply refunds to either the rental charges balance or the security deposit.  This functionality helps keep the invoice all tidy.  Once the $50.00 refund has been applied to the security deposit, both the charges balance and the other deposits belance are at zero and this invoice is history!

Al of these changes are also updated on the PDF invoices generated from with the Communications tab of the Guest Control Panel as well.

I’ve pushed the payment gateway update back to Monday, January 18th to allow a couple of customers to get their payment gateways all setup.  I don’t want to pull the rug on anybody.  This is a BIG update, the biggest update we’ve had in 4 or 5 months, so please remain calm as we work through any hiccups that may transpire.

New Features:

1) Integrated payment gateway support. To allow guests to use a credit card to make an online booking ALL customers must use a supported payment gateway.

Read more about supported payment gateways here:

http://support.innfirst.com/forums/87391/entries/79993

Integrated payment gateways will allow a property owner or manager to process credit cards from within the application.    Your guest credit card data will now be stored on the servers of the payment gateway.  NO GUEST CREDIT CARD DATA WILL BE STORED ON INNFIRST.COM SERVERS AFTER JANUARY 18TH, 2010.

2) Invoices made easier to understand. For property owners / managers that don’t utilize security deposits, invoicing has always been prety straightforward.   However, once a security deposit is added into the equation, the current way invoices are displayed is confusing and in some cases makes no sense.    The new invoices, while not perfect, at least make sense and are easier to read and understand.   I consider it a big step forward.

I will publish screenshots of the new invoices and integrated payment gateways in the coming days.

In response to this mornings communication problems, we’ve setup a Twitter account for InnFirst.  I’ll have the design tweaked soon, but it looks pretty good.

www.twitter.com/innfirst

We use Enom.com to manage our nameservers.  For about 2 hours this morning, Enom experienced a large denial of service attack which took all of their namerservers offline which affected about 30 million domains worldwide.

You can read more here:

http://twitter.com/enom

The outage also took down our support system and our  email servers.  And since we didn’t have a twitter account, we couldn’t post updates to our customers.  Even our third party mail server wouldn’t send out emails as a result.

We are going to start to address the communications issues immediately.  I’ve setup a new Twitter account today at:

http://twitter.com/innfirst

Everybody should try and keep that URL handy, as we’ll be using extensively in the future.

Thanks for your patience during the outage.

Sincerely,

Brent

We will soon be dropping our current help desk platform and integrating with ZenDesk. ZenDesk is an advanced web 2.0 platform that will provide all current and potential InnFirst.com with the finest customer service.

I do not advocate using PayPal Website Payments Standard for vacation rentals. Many vacation rental owners use this option to accept payments from their guests.

Reasons not to use PayPal Website Payments Standard for Vacation Rentals:

1. No opportunity to rebill the guests credit card. A property owner can collect a deposit, but to collect the remaining balance the property owner must again send the guest an invoice.  Thus the property owner becomes dependent on the guest for the timing of payments. As a property owner myself,  it is much more simple to require that the customer pay the deposit via credit card.  The guest credit card data is then stored at the payment gateway.  When I need to rebill the credit card for the remaining balance, per the terms of my rental agreement, I just fire up the virtual terminal and rebill the credit card.  This is not possible with PayPal.
2. PayPal has transaction limits. The maximum amount allowed for a single transaction is $10,000 USD by a PayPal member. If you don’t have a PayPal account, you can send a maximum of $4,000 USD for a one-time, single transaction. To many vacation rental owners this is not an issue, but for others that have higher end properties or take many group reservations, there are times when that transaction limit will be exceeded.
3. PayPal fees are higher than traditional merchant accounts. This is typically true if you process more than $2000.00 per month.  Below $2,000 per month, PayPal will typically have lower fees because they don’t charge any monthly fees or statement fees. This of course varies depending on what sort of terms you accept for your merchant account.   Merchant account pricing varies considerably from reseller to reseller.  It is VERY important to shop around for the best deal.  Check out this post on our forums which discusses which payment gateways we support with links to pricing and signup.
4. Chargebacks. There are countless stories on the Internet when dealing with PayPal customer support.  It is a nightmare.  For all the money in the world, you could not pay me to be a PayPal customer.   It is very very rare to get a satisfactory result from PayPal in the event of a chargeback.   What is a chargeback?  A chargeback is when a guest disputes a charge.  The guest might dispute a cancellation fee, or even more common is for a guest to stay at your vacation rental and then return home only to request a chargeback.

If you have chosen your merchant account provider carefully, they will provide great customer service and help you understand what steps are required to dispute the chargeback.  If you are using PayPal you will begin the process of pulling your hair out, because PayPal almost inevitably sides on behalf of the guest and their customer service is horrible.   A great merchant account provider will work with you to have the processes in place to prevent chargebacks and if and when a chargeback does occur they will work with you to protect your interests (and your money!).

Check out the experience of this PayPal customer who rents vacation rentals:

“I am in the same love/hate situation, although it now leans heavily toward the latter. PayPal has about a month ago started holding 20% of every payment I recieve in a floating reserve for 60 days. They stated to me that it was for my protection. I have used them since 2005 and have never had a dispute, chargeback or any type of problem that would have caused them to do this. They simply started this on their own. I also do not get any interest on this held cash. I run vacation rentals and sometimes get last minute bookings. Now, I am unable to access 20% of the payments for no reason, and my guests have come and gone. As of right now, they are holding about 2K of my hard earned money.
I am now looking to change my payment processor in earnest, as I have had enough of PayPal.
Thanks for letting me vent.”

InnFirst.com has two great relationships with US merchant account providers that we use ourselves and would recommend to others because they offer low fees, no contracts, are experienced with vacation rentals and offer great customer service:

E-OnlineData – Read More..

This merchant account will use the authorize.net payment gateway.   Authorize.net is the largest payment gateway in the US.   However, they do charge an additional $20 per month to securely store your guests credit card information.  This service is called the Customer Information Manager (CIM) by authorize.net.  You will have to enable it with your auth.net virtual terminal.  SUBSCRIPTION TO CIM IS MANDATORY TO ACCEPT CREDIT CARDS USING THE INNFIRST.COM APPLICATION.

View Authorize.net Fees (Merchant Account & Gateway)  and Online Sign-up

Quantum Gateway / CDG Commerce

To avoid the extra $20.00 a month fee that Auth.net charges to store credit cards, I would recommend signing up for a merchant account through CDG Commerce.   They have the same great rates w/ no contracts, and they don’t charge for the secure storage of credit card numbers.   To learn more click on the link below:

View Quantum Gateway Fees (Merchant Account & Gateway) and Online Sign-up

Many property owners and vacation rental managers have rates that vary by the number of guests in the group. Some allow children to stay for free, others charge for children. InnFirst.com now support all of these scenarios.

Per person rates are disabled by default. To turn on per person rates, please login to your account and edit each property or room that should have rates that vary by the total # of guests in the unit or room.

Go to the “rates” tab:

and click on the link for “Rate Settings”:

Next enable “per person” rates and decide whether or not to include children in the calculation of total guests.

Once per person rates are enabled please return to the daily, weekly and monthly rates and setup the rate bands for the total # of guests.

Once per person rates are enabled the daily, weekly and monthly rates area now have a new column for “# of Guests”. By clicking on the “+” symbil you can add different rates bands for each rate period that vary by the total number of guests.

So if you have a high season, and your unit or room rents for $800.00 per night for 1 to 2 total guests and $850 per night for >2 total guests, then you would have two rate bands. The maximum number of guests for each room is determined by the number that was entered in the accommodations tab during setup.

If this number has not been setup or needs to be edited, please visit the accommodations tab and setup the maximum number of guests with the correct number for your property or room.

The InnFirst.com vacation rental management application has a very robust rates and rules engine which allows property owners and managers the ability to accommodate nearly every rate scenario. Previously the application supported nightly and weekly rates, but now we also have support for monthly rates.

The rate engine provides vacation rental property owners and managers with several choices on how the application should calculate rates for reservations that extend between two different seasonal rates.

The screenshot above shows how a property owner / manager can assign monthly rates for different seasons.

This screenshot shows how weekly and monthly rates can be turned on or off. If they are turned on, then the property owner / manager has the ability to choose how the rates are to be assigned if a reservation is made between two different rate periods. The rates can either be pro-rated, assigned the daily rate for that period or assigned the rate of the higher rate or lower rate season.

All property owners are different, and all have different policies and procedures. InnFirst.com does a great job of being an open system while also providing a very intuitive interface to keep property management as simple as possible.

The next 7-10 days will bring about a slew of new features including support for per person rates and payment gateway support for authorize.net.

InnFirst was originally an online booking system primarily for Inns and B&Bs. We’ve since grown into a much more flexible vacation rental and lodging management platform that services all types of properties including vacation rentals, inns, B&Bs, small hotels and also VRMs – vacation rental managers.

To better reflect our expanded product offerings and our growing markets we are rebranding ourselves as Lodgix.com. Of course, this will also include a new logo and an improved website when it launches.

The logo was just completed!

I built the InnFirst.com application because I really disliked the Webervations product.  Their customer support was non existent, their interface was (and still is) dated and not functional, and the product itself barely met the minimum standards for an availability calendar -  and online booking was out of the question.

I tried a couple of other products (all of which were very expensive), and in the end I gave up and decided to code it myself.  The result was InnFirst.com and my vacation rental business has been going gang busters ever since.

Initially, I thought that maybe 5-7% of my business would use the online booking functionality.   In my mind, it was the innovative availability calendar and its ability to show real time availability for years in advance, that would reduce phone calls and increase reservations.

However, I’ve been shocked at the response of the online booking component.   I would estimate that roughly 40% of my bookings are now originating online.  Additionally,  I am amazed at the number of guests who book online who have never called or emailed me.  Granted, my website is very thorough and full of information, but in many instances these are $4000+ reservations, and I just never would have guessed that someone would book that sort of reservation online without wanting to talk or email with me first.

Here is a screenshot of the email reservation notifications I’ve received from InnFirst.com in the last 4 months:

Take tonight for example, I woke up at 2am and couldn’t get back to sleep. I went downstairs, made myself a sandwich and decided to get an early start on clearing out my emails before heading into the office on Monday. Lo and behold, I had two InnFirst.com pending reservation notifications in my inbox that came in while I was sleeping. One of those reservations had emailed me once a few days ago with some more questions. The other reservation had no previous history and just came in out of the blue.

Would I have gotten both of those reservations without InnFirst.com? Possibly yes and possibly no. Why? This weekend was Father’s Day weekend. I spent the weekend with my family and not tied to my email or phone. Thus, my response times for any vacation rental inquiries were slower, if not delayed completely. In the past during times when my response times were delayed, even if just by a few hours, many times by the time I returned the guests email or phone call I either never heard back from them or they would tell me that they had already booked a place somewhere else. That doesn’t happen any longer. Today I get those reservations thanks to the online booking calendar from InnFirst.com.

The net result is that my local vacation rental competitors are hurting. This recession has really affected them this summer. Not me. I am having the best summer season ever. It’s a testament to the power of online booking, and the power of empowering your guests to make their reservation immediately, easily and quickly.

If you are a vacation rental property owner, don’t underestimate the power of providing an online booking and availability calendar component for your guests. Not only will you generate high occupancy rates and realize increased revenues, but you’ll also be amazed at how much time a web-based vacation rental property management solution can save you.

Call me at 877-593-2083 x3 or email sales@innfirst.com, I’ll be glad to answer any questions you might have or give you a hand in setting up your properties if you decide to try the free 30 day trial.