Hi I am not sure if you take development requests in this forum or not, but I have been thinking about an addition that would make a big difference for me.
Firstly I do have to say that I continue to love OwnerRez. Although a lot of my bookings come though VRBO (trying to slowly change that will my own web pages, etc) I still put every reservation - even manually - onto OwnerRez. I am happy to pay the extra $5/reservation just for the great tools that exist to manage the guest (automated emails, custom fields, good reporting, etc).
One thing that would be an outstanding addition to a booking would be the inclusion of a cleaning date. Yes I know that we can create a custom field and populate it with a cleaning date, but a real date (+time) field attached to the booking would be awesome.
I have done some thinking about this, and the cleaning date could help in driving the availability calendar. I would guess that I am like most hosts who schedule a cleaning after the departure of a guest. Sometimes the cleaners can get in immediately following the guest departure and sometimes it may be a few days later (based on their availability). Obviously if the cleaners cannot get in to clean until a few days later, the property should not be available for bookings and should reflect that in the booking calendar (internally and exposed via ics to other apps).
Perhaps a design could go something like this:
- One the dates tab for a booking, include a date for cleaning, a start time, and a duration
- The start date and time could be defaulted from the checkout time of the booking
- The duration (in hours) could be from a default for the property
- The user could change the date/time/duration as needed. The system will give an error if the cleaning time conflicts with the current booking or if it conflicts with the next downstream booking
- A checkbox beside the cleaning date would allow the user to extend the unavailability of the property to the calculated end time of the cleaning.
- For example if the guest is scheduled to check out on a Tuesday at say 10:00am, but the cleaner cannot clean until say Thursday at 7:00am, then the property would be unavailable (via that booking) until check-in time Thursday afternoon. I suggested a checkbox, because some users may not want to use the functionality
Thoughts?
This would really help eliminate a lot of manual work and manual blocks on my availability calendar. It would also hopefully allow me to send an easy report to my cleaner so that she can ensure her records match with mine.
Hi Glenn,
It just occurred to me that nobody ever answered you on this!! I did read it the other day. I understand completely what you're after. We have an "Events" feature on the back burner that we'll release at some point. It's more or less kinda sort what you're looking for. Basically you can add "pinned" events to the calendar that can (optionally) make bookings not be available depending on the event type. This will remind you where events occur and help with booking workflow. You could create housekeeping events for sure.
I had a brief email exchange with Chris about this a month or so ago.
Having some way to show which property, date, and time you have scheduled for cleaning would be great. The pinned idea would certainly work. One thought is that some of us use more than one cleaner so having the "pin" be able to be customized, like flags in Mac Mail, would be great.
The ability to search for all scheduled cleanings by a specific cleaner would really be helpful.
Thanks so much!
I am thinking, as a start, just a cleaning date (doesn't even have to be hooked up to anything) on the booking would be of tremendous value to me as long as I could see it on the bookings listing view.
Glenn
See this was added sort of here back in November 17 in the updates: Add cleaning date to stay reports
What does this mean and how do you add them to the calendar?
Where is the documentation for Cleaning Date?
There's no real documentation on it yet -- it's just a field that you can set on the Info tab on the booking, which then shows up on the calendar, in the stay reports, and on the portal for cleaners. Very simple single field there.
We are also working on a more detailed cleaning assignment and status tracking feature -- that will have a lot more functionality.
" am happy to pay the extra $5/reservation just for the great tools that exist to manage the guest (automated emails, custom fields, good reporting, etc)."
Am I missing something?
Don't we already get automated emails, custom fields and reporting without paying $5/reservation? Or was this in a prior payment structure?
The old payment structure back in 2016 was a per booking fee. That hasn't been in effect for years -- it's all per property now: https://www.ownerreservations.com/pricing
Even though the cleaning date is just a field, it is of extremely useful importance to me. I am quite happy with it already. In my setup I need to define a date for the cleaners. This also allows me to know not to book after a stay until the cleaners are done - a mutually decided date which usually is the next day but depending on weekends, holidays, etc can be a few days.
The cleaning date shows up on the calendar and that is great. It also shows up in the reports and occasionally I can run a report which shows this date per stay and ensure that my cleaner and I are well synced.
Very happy with the cleaning date ;-)
Glenn
Glad to hear it, Glenn, but we do have a lot more coming on Housekeeping. The cleaning date was just a temporary shim. For everyone else watching this topic, Housekeeping will be a full module with notes/pics, accepted dates, portal access for cleaners and more.
Next question is When? I am nervous with anticipation.
This is a real pain point for me. I stress too much that something will get missed and this could make it more seamless and worthwhile to continue with using OwnerRez.
We don't have a firm ETA yet, but development has started and we're hoping for early in the new year on the release.
I’ve just had a bit of a near miss with cleaning schedules so am keen to follow this feature too
As a stop gap, before the cleaning portal is available, is there a way to set up a trigger that would email our housekeeper our booking dates for the next month? Perhaps send an automated email the last week of each month, for the checkin/out dates of the next month? Thanks, Jeri
Two requests that hopefully are already going to be a part of the housekeeping module... :-)
- SMS notifications in addition to or instead of email notifications so that when a booking takes place, the housekeeper is automatically notified
- a preparation time feature that a major hosting platform has. It enables you to build an automatic feature in your calendar so that before and/or after every booking date you can set X hours or days that blocks your calendar so that the cleaning can be completed. I typically set for one day before and after a booking so that my housekeeper has sufficient time to clean the house properly.
Thanks!
Thanks for the continued feedback!
The only thing that I would request is that the basic cleaning date (as it stands now) remains in the base version. I know it is only a field on the info tab, but it is highly useful to me as I can mouse over the calendar and see when cleaning will occur. I get worried when I see discussion about the properly management plans as I would hate to see this field suddenly disappear into this module (which I am not using) and then I would be faced with having to pay a lot of extra money for this one very convenient field.
Glenn
Yep, the simple cleaning date will remain in the base plan. The housekeeping module will be all about the workflow and process of assigning and communicating with cleaners.
