We are in the midst of testing a major framework upgrade that will occur late this week. This is the first framework upgrade we’ve done for Lodgix.com and probably the last we’ll do for a couple of years. The upgrade will bring us to the current release of Django and enable us to utilize and deploy the latest development tools. We are also hoping that it will allow us to scale the application more efficiently and decrease the page load time on the availability calendar page for property owners with >10 properties and many reservations.

We ask for your patience during the period. While we have a team of testers reviewing the application, small glitches may still be present for a few days. Please report them to us immediately, we will have staff working additional hours to test and resolve any bugs very quickly.

Thanks so much for your understanding!

Brent

One of my developers is currently hard at work coding the ability for users to upload files to the system that can then be used as attachments to emails.  For example, let’s say you are traveling and away from your home PC and a guest wants you to email them directions to the property. but you don’t have that particular document with you.   If you plan ahead and store your most important and most used documents within your Lodgix.com account, you can simply choose the file from your repository and attach it in an email to the guest.

Another feature that is more of a “nice to have” type of feature that will streamline guest communications are appended email responses.  For example, for every vacation rental guest that books a reservation I have to manually send them a confirmation email.

Thus I have to manually type out:

“Dear ____, thanks for the recent online reservation.   Please find attached your confirmation in adobe pdf format.  Please read it carefully.  If you have any additional questions or concerns, please call me at _______.   Thanks again for your business!

Best regards,

Brent M. Kleinheksel”

Now, with the “Appended Responses” feature,  I will be able to save this response and simply append it to my email making it a much quicker way of communicating with my guests.

In the future, we will take it the final step and allow property owners and managers the ability to automate their communications with guests.  It’s a not a feature that is in real high demand among smaller property owners and managers, but for my clients with >20 properties they’ve voiced a need for more automation, and it’s something we are definitely planning for as the software adds more features to support clients with greater numbers of properties / rooms.

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.

Thanks to all who helped with their feedback and patience during Phase I of the soft launch of Lodgix.com.  We are now actively accepting new vacation rental and B&B owners   However,  all new customers need to be patient and understand that there is still a great deal of bug fixing and tweaking going on with the application.

We are a small company with a limited budget and a talented development team.   We look at ever suggestion, every piece of feedback, every bug report and make some tough decisions on what is most important in the short term to make the product the most useful for the great number of people.

The primary faults of the current application are:

1. Help files and help resources remain limited
2. Small interface glitches remain
3. Occasional bug pops up after code updates
4. Lack of decent reporting

I try and counter that with very fast, very personalized customer service.   In many instances if you encounter a bug, I’ll have it fixed within hours.  If you suggest a feature or enhancement that to me is a “must have” for the majority of folks, I’ll prioritize it and make it happen within 7-14 days.

One of the current customers has made four great suggestions in the past few weeks and all of those suggestions have been implemented and the application is better becaue of it.

A couple of recent feature requests that were great, but which I cannot support for another couple of months are enhanced support for property managers and multi-lingual support.    Both are relatively simple items, but require 4 weeks or so total development time.  So those will be put on the back burner until 2009.

Please feel free to fill out the Contact Us form and drop me an email with any questions you may have.  That email will go directly into my help desk software and I’ll get back to you with an answer ASAP!

Thanks again for your patronage and support!

Brent M. Kleinheksel
Owner, Lodgix.com

A soft launch means that everything is quiet.  The new site is live, but we are not yet accepting new customers.    Today I am installing the new blog theme and working on getting all that set up correctly.  Additionally the designers are working on some new booking banners that property owners can use on their websites.   The developers are busy coding some new encryption features and finalizing the code to allow VacationRentalDirect.com customers to transfer their accounts to Lodgix.com.

I have a lot of work to do on the marketing pages of the site, as well as getting the support software live with the new design, etc. Additionally, I will be implementing the online booking portion of the software on my own site at www.rosewoodpointe.com.

Lots and lots of work remain.  I have about 30 property and B&B owners interested in being a beta customer.  If you are interested in being a beta customer, please visit our Contact Us page and tell me more about yourself, your properties and what you are looking for in vacation rental property management software.  In exchange for your patience, participation and feedback, I will give the software to you for free.

Here are a couple of the new online booking banners I am considering for use on the application:

I have to apologize.  My development team and I greatly underestimated the complexity of this project.   There’s not been a day (except weekends) where work has not been accomplished.   But still the project remains unfinished.   It’s frustrating, because there is always a balance between wanting perfection and the realities that the product needs to be launched.

However, there are some features and navigational issues that I am not comfortable launching without.  One of those features was the ability for a property owner to book a property for a tax exempt organization.  This was a feature that I accidentally omitted from the requirements.  But it’s an important requirement, and it caused a delay.

Another important requirement is that the software correctly account for “advanced deposits”.   At the end of each year, the property owner will want to know how much money they have collected in “advance deposits”.  Advance deposits are deposits on reservations that have not yet occurred.   Using the cash method of accounting, those deposits need to e separated out so the property owner can report the true revenues for the property in the previous year.  This reporting feature was not a planned part of the software, that caused a delay.

Other examples are ease of use features involving navigation and property setup.  Many owners have more than one property (or multiple rooms).  it doesn’t make sense to waste time setting up each property if the the rules / rates can simply be copied from one property to the other.   These sort of features take time to code and code correctly.

Work is progressing however.  It’s a nice platform.  I am confidant it will be the nicest, most feature rich, time saving vacation rental management platform on the Internet once complete.   Sorry for the delay.

Phase I beta testing of the new Lodgix.com is rapidly approaching. Most of the major subsystems are complete including guest management, payment processing, reservations, invoicing, user interfaces, help systems, online booking, etc. The flash portions of the project are expected to be complete later this week. User Interface and Help system s will be very similar to the old system in Phase I, there’ll be some neat new ajax to aid in property setup, but the real visual enhancements are being held off until Phase II. First the application logic needs to be sorted out and tested.

I’d like to lose the name Lodgix.com, as the new system supports all types of properties including B&B,s Inns, etc.. but also individual vacation rentals, resorts, cabins, cottages and even property management companies.I own Lodgix.com, which would be a call name for a company developing applications for the Lodgix industry, but I hate to move the application that I have on there now…but it could be done and I might do it someday.

I don’t think we’ll get this product out to the beta testers in March. Although I do hope that my personal properties will be up and running on it before then. I will be the ultimate guinea pig, if it doesn’t work for my properties, thanI can’t expect it to work for others!

This is going to be a great product. There is nothing left of the old system. The entire application and database was scrapped, but the application login was very useful in helping my developers understand how to architect the new system. The new application will also be running on a screaming fast server with 15,000 RPM SCSIs, NAS systems for backups and quad core 2.0+ GHZ xeons and 8+GB of RAM…so no problems handling new customers, and since it’s written in Python / Django, speed won’t be an issue like it is with some other frameworks.

The real novelty off the application will be produced in Phase II…Phase II is going to have some neat lead tracking and reporting features, some very useful web services enhancements and the integration of some great marketing partners.

Lodgix.com is quickly moving towards a middle of March relaunch.  We’ve signed up a couple of beta partners, but could use a couple more.  All beta partners receive the product for free, in exchange for providing feedback and suggestions on how to improve the product.

The new version of the software is written in a new language and will support all property types, not just inns and B&B’s.   It will feature some very advanced coding and database design, so much so, that it required a complete rewrite of the existing system.  However, we will be retaining much of the interface and other features which made the product so easy-to-use.

Our search engine rankings continue to improve ahead of the launch.    We now rank in the top 5 for most of the popular terms like “vacation rental software”, “vacation rental management software”, etc.  Over time, we’ll get to #1 with relative ease.  It should be a nice source of new business.

I’m really excited to unveil the new product.  I’m even more excited to begin testing it on my own properties.  That testing begins this week.   I am hoping to lauch the Beta product in the middle of March.

Please email me at support@innfirst.com if you would like to be a Beta tester.  You’ll save the $29.99 /month that our competitors charge, get a free listing on VacationRentalDirect.com and have access to the most advanced vacation rental / inn / B&B management software in the world.

Lodgix.com was recently acquired by myself! I had been toying with the idea of attempting to build an online property management application for several months. However, building a new application from scratch is not one of my strengths. However, I am pretty good at taking a solid, existing application and enhancing it with new features.

Lodgix.com is a very solid robust application that simply needs a little TLC. Over the past two weeks I’ve prepared a 25 page requirements document that will turn Lodgix.com into a full fledged vacation rental property management application. Because the market is competitive, I am not going to release the specifics until we are much closer to launch. But if you want to know how I know what to build into the application consider this:

1. I am the owner of Rosewood Pointe Resort (www.rosewoodpointe.com). Rosewood Pointe consists of seven vacation rentals on the shores of Lake Macatawa in Holland, Michigan. In the past seven years I’ve used no less than five different property management applications, and have been unhappy with all of them. Lodgix.com is going to address all of my pain, and the next version will include features that are progressive and utilize the latest in technologies with heavy doses of some web 2.0 technologies including ajax, modal windowing, tabbed browsing with equal touches of web services and ActionScript 3.0 as well as some nifty social media components.
2. I also own a web-based availability calendar that enjoy great search engine rankings and heavy usage. At the same time Lodgix.com is refreshed, so will RentalCalendarsDirect.com be relaunched with a fresh new design and enhanced features.
3. And let’s not forget VacationRentalDirect.com, one of the fastest growing vacation rental listing sites on the Internet with over 9,000 properties added in the past 18 months. VacationRentalDirect will be launching with a new logo and look next week. The site enjoys create search engine rankings. Using Google, search under the terms “vacation rentals”, “vacation rental”, “beach homes”, “vacation homes”, etc.. We are in the top 5 across the board.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see how all the pieces might fit together real nice – resulting in some great synergies for all past and future customers of all three sites. Hmmm….I also own several social media sites featuring embeddable widgets, I wonder what that might yield?

Coding on version 3.0 begins this week with an expected completion date in early March, so hang on, it’s going to be a great ride!

Brent