Bookings

Searching the bookings

Rentals United collects for you all the reservations as well as reservation requests from all the channels you are connected to in a single place. You are able to easily check the availability of your properties, confirmed and rejected reservations, reservation requests and the guest personal details and credit card details. Please, read further if you want to learn how to navigate in the Bookings tab.

If you want to get to the details of your accepted bookings or check the latest reservation, you need to log in to Rentals United and click on the Bookings tab. After the dropdown appears, select the Your bookings option.

A list of all booking received by Rentals United is displayed. You can view the details of any reservation including sales channel the reservation came from, property name, guest details, date when the reservation was made, date of check-in, number of nights, price and the reservation statuses.

If you want to see even more details, you can click any reservation in the list. You will be presented with the following sections:

  • Booking details

    Booking details include the reservation details like the channel the reservation comes from, exact time the reservation was made as well as reservation ID and property ID that may be useful for troubleshooting in case of any issues with this reservation. You can also cancel a reservation and confirm or cancel a reservation request. Note, however, that not all sales channels can retrieve cancellations and some even have a strict policy in terms of the allowed number of cancelled reservations.

  • Guest details

    This section also provides you details of the guests' personal data that may be useful to contact or invoice them. Some channels provide you with some additional comments regarding the reservation, for example commission amount or additional charges. Note that you can also check reservation details in Reservation price breakdown.

  • Property details

    With property details you can check the check-in and check-out times for your guests, property exact name, number of guests included in this reservation and the pricing details, for example the guest price or price for you. You can also check here if the guest paid for the reservation and, if not, how much is left to be paid. If you need more information on the above prices, see Price components.

    Reservation received from regular sales channels

    In particular situations agreed with your guests, you can also move your guests to another property, if needed. Before you do this, you need to know that no modified information will be passed to the sales channels. Also, note that if the booked property is changed, the calendar will be blocked for both the original property and the newly-assigned one. This is because majority of sales channels do not support receiving reservation modifications from Rentals United, but do receive changes in availability for all properties. Hence, your guest will not be informed about the changes through the sales channel and the sales channel received a blocked availability for another property. It is recommended to modify an already-existing reservation directly from the sales channel dashboard.

    Changing the property can be done by clicking the Edit button and selecting another property from the dropdown. The prices will be automatically recalculated on the basis of the prices in Step 5: Price and availability of All properties for the financial transparency purposes only (but this data will not be updated in the channel, either). The price is recalculated in case of changes to the number of people in the reservation, length of stay or property. Other updates should not trigger price recalculation. If you decide to introduce any changes, remember to save!

    If you are interested in any particular channel, please see the Sales Channel Integration Documentation.

    Reservations received from Book Direct

    Modifying an already-existing reservation is safe if the reservation comes from the Book Direct. The channels that currently use Book Direct are Google Travel, for example. You can see more information in the video below and have a read at Book Direct..

     

     

    Note, however, that it is up to you to arrange the communication with guests and make sure that they are aware of the changes you made.

  • Guest credit card details

    When it comes to charging the guest, there are few ways sales channels operate.

    • sales channel charges the guest and pays you out

    • sales channel collects the credit card details and you charge the guest

    • sales channel charges the guest and provides you a virtual card detail and you charge the channel

    • in rare cases, you can charge the guest in cash upon arrival

    Depending on your contract with the channel, credit card details will be displayed in Rentals United or not. If credit card details are not displayed, you can always contact the sales channel support and clarify what the payment process is for you. Read here for details.

    Rentals United recommends using an integrated solution, Stripe. If you want to integrate with Stripe, check here. Once you do so, you can charge the guest in an easy way.

    Additionally, some channels, for example Booking.com, make it possible for you to report an invalid card. Reporting may be done by clicking the Report invalid credit card button in Rentals United immediately after the time of booking up until midnight of the check-in day. This option is only possible for reservations that have credit card details in them. Guests who provided invalid credit card details will then receive a notification from sales channel, inviting them to provide an alternative card information within 36 hours. If customers do not take action within 36 hours, the reservation may be cancelled directly by the property manager in the sales channel extranet only. If the guest provides new credit card details within this time, then Booking.com provides it to us and we display the updated information here.

Inserting a new offline reservation

With Rentals United, you can insert and manage reservations that have been made offline, for example through a phone call or at the reception. You do not have to manage your offline reservation in an external location, but instead you can create them in Rentals United system and have all the needed information in a single place. Read further to learn how to create such a reservation.

In most cases, sales channels will only receive blocked availability and will not have access to this reservation details. If it is possible to transfer such an offline reservation to any particular sales channel, such an option will be displayed in Rentals United. This is possible for Vrbo, for instance.

  1. Log in to Rentals United and hover over the Bookings tab. Select the New booking option from the dropdown.

  2. The New booking page opens and informs you that the current status of this reservation is a request. You can change its status already at this point, if you wish. You can proceed with the request, too, and update it in the end or come back to this place anytime later, as described in Searching the bookings.

    In contrast to sales channels, the Channel name row and logo contain the data you provided, as described in Company profile. You can easily differentiate an offline reservation from booking coming from sales channels.

  3. Provide the guest personal information. Only name and surname are mandatory, the rest of information is optional. You can also fill in the Comments section, for example if guests has any special wishes or requests.

  4. If you insert the reservation offline, you need to charge the guest on your own. Rentals United integrated with the payment provider, Stripe. If you use Stripe, you can collect the credit card details of your guest and charge them automatically from Rentals United. For more information, please seeMy services.

    If you do not use Stripe, you can log in to any other payment gateway and charge your guest's credit card. Also, you can charge your guest upon arrival, if you only wish to.

  5. Click the Add property button and provide the stay details and select the property your guests will be staying at. First, provide the time range of the stay and, additionally, the check-in and check-out hours. Click the Property dropdown list and start typing the property name. The list filters out the matching properties. Finally, provide the number of guests in the reservation. Upon this selection, Rentals United will use the pricing data available in the Step 5: Price and availability of the property you selected and calculate the exact reservation price.

    If you find that some of the pricing should be adjusted or the guest has any extra-charged special wishes, you can change the Guest price and Price to you and update the Comments section. Also, remember to update the Already paid field in case your guest paid only part of the reservation price or did not pay at all. You can get back to this anytime and update, as described in Searching the bookings. Also, if you need more details of what the two above types of prices are, please see Price components.

  6. If you have not done it earlier, change the status of this reservation from Request to Confirmed, as described in this Step. If you are still waiting for any confirmation, you can always come back to this later.

  7. Click the Save button.

Editing a reservation

Before you edit a reservation in Rentals United, make sure that you read the Cancel and modify booking article. Your changes will not be sent to majority of the channels! Reservations should not be modified in Rentals United and there are only few exceptions. Rentals United does not take responsibility for these actions, so make sure you understand the effects it may have.

  1. Log in to Rentals United and hover over the Bookings tab.

  2. Search for the reservation you would like to edit. Click it.

  3. Scroll down and find the edit button.

  4. You can edit the reservation details.

  5. Click Save.