Richer, more automated Work Orders await you!

You've had the ability to create, manage, and report on Work Orders for a while now. But Bookerville has now produced a Maintenance Mobile App that your maintenance personnel can use to navigate to the property, see any photos of the issue(s) submitted for that work order, provide estimates, final amounts, and report as completed.

Setting Up Maintenance Users

Step one is setting up one or more sub-users and assigning them "Maintenance" permission for one or more properties. This is done in your Dashboard >> Account Settings tab, look for the "Members With Permissions" box. Once you do this, that user will then have access to the new Maintenance Mobile App.

Creating & Assigning Work Orders

Once you (or your housekeepers/inspectors) have created a work order, you'll need to set the status to Approved, and set a scheduled date for it. We have also improved this: the pop-up date-picker calendar shows you booked dates so that you can more easily choose a scheduled date in between bookings when needed. You also must assign the work order to the maintenance user. Once that's done, they will then see the work order appear in their prioritized list in their Maintenance App.

Completing Work Orders

Your maintenance personnel can then mark work orders as completed, and your dashboard is updated to reflect the latest statuses. They can also create new work orders as they see needs for things while they are in the field, and these can then be reviewed and approved by you before they can commence work and mark as completed.

Give Us Your Feedback

As always, Bookerville thrives on feedback from actual active users. If you're using this new feature, please don't be shy about your ideas to improve it.

Refund payments with a click. Or even set them up to be completely automatic

It's been a long time coming, but at long last, you can now initiate refunds for electronic payments in the Bookerville dashboard, without having to log in separately to your Lynnbrook/BridgePay dashboard.

Lynnbrook: The Recommended Payment Processor

This can only be achieved through our recommended payment processor, the Lynnbrook Group, of course. If you don't have a Lynnbrook merchant account, there is no better time or reason to switch than now. Learn more about Lynnbrook

How Do I Refund In Bookerville?

In the Booking Details page, if you have a Lynnbrook merchant account, any payments made through them will now show a 3rd action icon, a green $ with a circle-arrow around it:





Clicking that (and confirming for safety) will cause Bookerville to attempt to refund that payment, and you'll see the results right then and there in a pop-up.

And How About Totally Automatic Refunds?

We're so glad you brought that up! As a matter of fact, we are looking for a few members to beta-test a new feature that will automatically refund refundable security deposits X number of days after the departure date, unless you have gone in and marked it for retention (in whole or in part). If you are interested in pilot-testing this next-level of automation, please email us:





When we turn it on for your testing, look for this in the Property Setup page:

More To Come!

Our next phase in this richer integration with Lynnbrook is to let you (optionally) auto-charge the card-on-file for subsequent, scheduled payments. We will announce that when it is ready.

Your Bookerville experience is constantly improving!

If you are currently using either iCal feeds or a Channel Manager, then this announcement is very important to you.

How It Works Now

Bookerville has been suppressing Automatic Scheduled Emails and triggered emails for bookings that originate from external sources like Channel Managers and iCal feeds. This is because some emails just don't make sense depending on where the booking came from. For example, AirBnB collects funds from the guests, so sending them a Payment Reminder email doesn't make sense, and might confuse or even concern the guest. There are many other examples, but suffice to say, to err on the side of caution, Bookerville has not been setting up the Automatic Scheduled Emails, nor the initial "triggered" emails for these bookings, but instead allowing you to go into these bookings and either send the emails manually, or set up an alternative set of Automatic Scheduled Emails, etc.

What We're Doing Next

To improve things, Bookerville has recently added new criteria fields to your Email Templates, which allow you to specify if the email should be sent only for certain listing sites, or suppressed (not sent) for certain listing sites. If you are using iCal feeds, and/or a Channel Manager, it is important that you go in and configure these new Email Template settings soon, because Bookerville is going to turn on Automatic Scheduled Emails and triggered emails for these bookings.

When?

We have not yet determined a date at which we are going to turn on Automatic Scheduled Emails (and initial triggered emails) for external bookings, as we want to make sure our members have enough time to read and digest this news, and go make use of the new criteria feature to set up your Email Templates appropriately for the channels you're using. But we do want to act on this quickly, so that everyone can start enjoying the richer automation.

What You Need To Do

Please go into your Property Setup page >> Emails & Templates tab, and click into each of your Email Templates to see if you want to make use of these new settings.

And of course, reply here if you have questions or concerns.

Give your guests everything they need to maximize their vacation, right on their phone! Bookerville's new Guest Services mobile app is the perfect way to provide your guests instant access to everything they will need or want. It can also save you time by answering their questions without calling or emailing you. And - you could even earn commission on tourist sales by providing your own affiliate links!

What's In It?

The Bookerville Guest Services app. provides the following (when applicable, per your settings):

Your custom Arrival Instructions.
Property address - and with a tap of the button, their phone's navigation app starts and guides them to it!
Local weather - so they can see what to expect when they arrive.
Check-in, check-out dates and times.
Local Attractions - as you've entered them in your Features & Amenities.
Payment Status - lets them know where the booking stands and they can remit payments right on their phone.
View the contract.
Your custom Departure Instructions.
Link to leave a review.
Your contact info. (phone and email address).

Nothing to Download

Unlike Glad to Have You and other concierge-oriented apps, the Bookerville Guest Services mobile app is already available on any smart phone. And there's nothing to install or download - no "permissions" or terms and conditions needed to use it. You can provide a simple link for them to click right inside your Email Templates. Perfect for the Arrival Instructions email!

Customize With Your Special Deals!

Perhaps the most exciting part is that you can set up your own special deals/offers. Each of these can have a photo, title, description, and link to local tourist attractions. Golf courses, restaurants, theme parks, water sports - anything you want to offer. The links can be your own Affiliate Links, which can lead to commissions for you when guests click them.

How Do I Use It?

Simply place this (or something like it) into any of your Email Templates:



The best place to put it is probably in your Arrival Instructions Email Template, and schedule it to be sent just a few days prior to the arrival date, using Bookerville's much-loved Automatic Scheduled Emails. Note that depending on how new your Bookerville account is, this verbiage might already be in one or more of your Email Templates.

Need Help?

As always: just ask. We can also help you set up your own special deals or offers so that they appear in the Guest Services app.

You most-likely got to this page because you received some kind of "bounce" email message that said something about a 'From' address and a 'Reply-To' address.

Bookerville is software used by vacation rental managers to automate their emails. When Bookerville sends email on behalf of property managers, the 'From' address must be set to a bookerville.com email address, in order to be compliant with email standards (DKIM, DMARC, SPF).

So we set it to . Any emails sent to our address - whether directly or by replying to an email sent to you - are simply "bounced" - no human sees it.

But Bookerville also sets the 'Reply-To' address to be the email address of the property manager. This is supposed to cause your email system to use that address when you click the "Reply" button. Most of the time, this works fine, but there are some email systems that erroneously use the 'From' address instead of the 'Reply-To' address. When this happens, your response ends up going to instead of to the property manager.

When this happens, Bookerville sends you the message you received, and also attempts to send a similar message to the property manager so that you two can resume your conversation.

So that's all it's about. If you received such an email from Bookerville, it's probably a very good idea to look into your email system settings and see if it is doing the right thing when you click your "Reply" button. The easiest way to do that is probably to go find the very first email you received regarding your booking (or other correspondence) and see what happens when you click your "Reply" button. Does it try to send it to ? If so, there's something wrong with that email system, and you should try to find out how to correct it.

Always contact your property manager first. If that fails, and you are in need of assistance, or if you think there's something wrong with the way these emails are being handled, please let us know: contact us