Global Property Settings
These property settings are general or over-arching setting that apply to all your holiday properties. This saves you time adding the same information to a few properties, even if you only have two holiday homes, it’s the ideal way to update information across your holiday property listings. The information will be populated in all the holiday accommodation listings that you have connected to your account. This is particularly helpful when you are setting your seasons for holiday period, school holidays, long weekends and peak seasons – as these are often the same or similar for all your holiday rentals. Your Property Settings include ‘booking fee’, ‘check-in & check-out’ details, ‘bond requirements’, ‘Cancellation Policy’, ‘Payment Schedule’ and ‘Seasons’
Note: If you input information into the individual properties that is different from your Account Settings, it will overwrite your Account Settings.
Booking Fee
This is the fee that you’d like to add to each guest booking across all your properties. You don’t have to charge a booking fee and you can choose any amount to charge your guest and this will be added to the total payment, when your property is booked. This is a non-refundable fee that you will receive should your booking be cancelled.
Check-in/Check-out
This is simply the time that you would allow your guests to Check-In or when they can get access to the property. Also the time that you require the guests to Check-Out, to depart the property and/or return the keys.
Bond Requirements
A bond, also called a damage or security deposit, is required by most home owners to protect them from damages or loss to their holiday property. You can set amount of bond required on each individual properties under Pricing and Seasons and the funds will be held in Trust by Search and Stay. The Bond requirement is a fixed field, which sets Payment Schedule on Bond 7 days before check-in. And Bond Release 10 days after check-out.
Cancellation Policy
If owner allows booking cancellation, they can easily toggle to on. This will open the section which allows you to complete details and rules of the cancellation. You can set a non-refundable booking fee to be deducted from booking payment.
Refund rules will need to be set detailing the number of days before check-in (eg 0-7 days) and the related percentage of booking amount to be refunded to the guest. For example, if the rule is set as 0-7 days before check in receive 25% of total booking. If the guest cancels their booking 5 days before check in and the booking is $1000 they will receive 25% or $250. To set the rule they must be toggled to Active. Click on ADD RULE to include all cancellation time periods and percentage of refund. You can’t skip a consecutive range eg 0-7 days then 15-30 days. The rule for 8-14 days must also be included.
Guest Payment Option
If owner will allow the booking to be paid in separate partial payments, they can easily toggle partial payments to ON. No more than three (3) fixed payments in total are allowed including a set percentage of payment at the time of booking. Owners can complete the details and payment schedule, the percentage required at time of booking, then the remaining payments will be divided by the number of fixed partial payments.
For example, a $600 booking may require 25% ($150) at time of booking, then partial payment is set at two (2) fixed payments, guest will be charge another two (2) payments of $225 each to finalise the booking. Owner must state the number of days when the full payment must be made prior to Check-in and cancellation must be put in place if payment is more than a set number of days overdue. The cancellation refund will depend on that of the policy already set for the property or in the owner account, general settings.
Additional Fees
Here you can add any additional fees for the property as a percentage or a value for e.g. a charge for firewood.
Seasons
Seasons are a variation on the day rate or booking conditions, like length of stay, for holiday periods, school holidays, long weekends and peak seasons. When setting seasons owners will need to include the season name for example July School holidays, the season start and end dates, the minimum stay or minimum number of nights to be booked, for example 7 nights, set check-in days for example only Saturday is available for check-in and check-out and the cancellation policy, if it differs from the set cancellation policy. It’s important that all seasons are include up to any advanced bookings period. If a guest can book up to 18 months ahead all seasons should be included for the advance booking period.