Vacation Rental Software Support: Online User Manual: Section 2 - First Time Configuration
Your TenantWIZ Premium Account Login Information
Once your TenantWIZ Website and sotware has been configured you'll be able to gain all of your access information by logging into our your account on our Website. You'll notice a link that says Access your TenantWIZ Premium Account Service which will contain the information required to access both your TenantWIZ Administration system on your Website as well as your Hosting Control Panel on your Website. Keep this information in a safe place.
TenantWIZ Administration System
Getting started with TenantWIZ for the first time is easy and involves the configuration a few different settings. In order to login to your TenantWIZ Administration system, simply click on the link located on our Website in your account to your TenantWIZ Administration system. Once here you'll notice that you'll need to read through and confirm the online agreement to proceed to your login. Once you've done that enter in your username & password for your TenantWIZ Administration system.
There are a few important settings that you'll need to address in the system, once you've logged on, in order to start using it for the first time. These include the following (listed below).
Settings > System Settings
The system settings section contains important information and settings for the overall operation of your Website. It's important that you modify the information in this section prior to doing anything else. It contains fields for your business name, address information, phone number, and more, as well as some important settings that affect various functionality on your Website. To access the system settings simply hover-over the main menu button for settings and click on system settings. Most of the fields are self-explanatory, however descriptions of some of the settings which are not immediately obvious are detailed below.
Owners can add/update Properties?
This setting is the most important one. It will allow owners to actually add and update their own properties after they've purchased a listing from you. Please note that this only applies if you want to allow owners to have control over their own listing or not and should not be enabled if you don't want owners modifying different aspects of a property listing, rates, etc. In addition to adding & updating their properties, they will also be able to add & update special offers and blackout dates on their properties as well.
Owners can see Renter Details on Invoices?
Allowing owners to see renter details would only be a setting you would want to turn on if you weren't providing property management services. As a pure vacation rental listing service, you'll want owners to see the renters' details so that they can follow up with owners when receiving reservations for their properties.
Owners can see Pricing Details on Invoices?
Akin to seeing renters' details you'll want to make sure that owner's can also see pricing details when this feature is enabled. This option simply allows owners to see the price for which the reservations were entered into the system for. As a traditional property management service, some property managers don't want owners seeing just how much they're making, however, if you're running a vacation rental listing service, then this option should be enabled.
Owners can Confirm their own Reservations?
If you decide to run reservations through your system to allow owners to take bookings as a Vacation Rental Listing service (as opposed to a Vacation Rental Management or Property Management company), this setting will allow the owners to confirm their own bookings. In the traditional settings as a pure vacation rental management company, most don't want owners confirming their own reservations as it would take away administration control from the property management company. However, as a vacation rental listing service, you want to put as much power into the hands of the owner as you can so as to automate tasks you would generally have to do manually.
Allow Renters to Place Reservations Online?
One of the most important considerations you'll have to make as an online vacation rental and property management business is whether or not to allow the placement of reservations online. There are several pros and cons to whether or not you would want to enable this feature or not with your TenantWIZ Vacation Rental Software driven Website. Allowing reservations could also mean that you would increase your revenue since you can charge a fixed percentage for all reservations that run through your system, yet at the same time you would need to bear the brunt of processing payments if you chose to do so real-time.
Settings > Email Settings
Your TenantWIZ Email Settings should have been configured for you by your account representative, however, you should double check your settings to ensure these have been enabled for you. If your email settings are not properly configured you will experience errors on your Website when renters register for an account, books a reservation, you try to process reservations, and any other function that involves the automated email system.
The following are the proper Email Settings that should be configured in your TenantWIZ Administration system.
SMTP - mail.yourdomain.com
POP - mail.yourdomain.com
username - youremail@yourdomain.com
password - password
Settings > Payment Settings
Deciding on just how you are going to process payments with your TenantWIZ Website is an important decision that you'll need to make. There are two ways to process payments with TenantWIZ:
Real-Time Payments
Real-Time Payments allow you to process real-time credit card transactions on your Website when renters make a reservation (or after a reservation is made through the renter's account). Our most popular pre-integrated real-time payment system is PayPal. Setting up a PayPal account is easy.
To configure PayPal as a payment option you'll first need to make sure that you've setup a PayPal account. Once you've setup an account with PayPal (or if you already have one), within your TenantWIZ Adminstration system mouse-over the settings main menu button, hover-over and click payment settings and once on that page click on real-time payment settings. Scroll down the page until you find the PayPal payment option, click the checkbox for PayPal and enter your PayPal email address then hit the Update button.
Setting up your PayPal Account to work with TenantWIZ
In order to configure your PayPal account to work with TenantWIZ, here are the steps you'll need to take:
* Log into your PayPal account
* Click on My Account
* Click on Profile
* Under Seller Preferences click on Instant Payment Notification Preferences
* Click Edit
* Click the Checkbox
* Enter Notifcation URL: http://www.mydomain.com/tenantwiz/store/processReturn.asp (where mydomain.com is your domain name).
Non Real-Time Payments
Non Real-Time Payments alllow you to process payments in an offline fashion. In start relation to real-time payments, with non real-time payments you can setup and name an unlimited number of offline payment types. For example, if you process rental reservation income via wire transfer, cashiers checks, money orders, and others, this is where you would create these payment types. This does involve a little bit more work on your end to ensure that payments are made before reservations are confirmed.
To configure Non Real-Time Payments within your TenantWIZ Adminstration system mouse-over the settings main menu button, hover-over and click payment settings and once on that page click on non real-time payment settings. Once on the page, scroll down to add a non real-time payment type or modify any of the existing ones in the system under the list at the top. You can also add credit cards as a non real-time payment type but they must be processed offline with an existing merchant system that you already have.
Reservations > Add / Modify Rental Agreement
The electronic rental agreement is at the heart of the TenantWIZ reservation system and acts as a security measure for you when renting and managing properties. We've created one electronic rental agreement in the system for you by default, however, we recommend modifying the agreement to include information specific to your company (since information in there is fictious and relates to TenantWIZDemo.com).
When writing your rental agreement you can also use the following variables (exactly as presented) within the agreement to populate information from your renter:
<CUSTOMER_NAME>
<CUSTOMER_ADDRESS>
<CUSTOMER_CITY>
<CUSTOMER_STATE>
<CUSTOMER_ZIP_CODE>
<CUSTOMER_PHONE>
<CUSTOMER_EMAIL>
Please Note: We recommend contacting an attorney when revising or writing your electronic rental agreement.
There are a few important points to stress in any good rental contract. If your current contract doesn't have some of these points, then it's important to review your contract:
DEFINE SHORT TERM RENTAL - it's important to define that the rental contract is a short term "transient" rental contract. By definition a "transient" rental falls under 30 days. There are certain rules and regulations that make a short term rental different than a long term rental. Check with your local municipality, state and federal regulations regarding these laws.
DEFINE THE RENTAL PERIOD - Of course, it' important to define the rental period that the renter will be occupying the premises for. The rental period should also describe the check-in time and check-out time. Standard check-in time is usually between 3 and 4 pm and standard checkout time is usually between 10 and 11 am.
LATE FEE - It's important to define your late fee for your property. While not a pleasant thing, you may sometimes get renters who stick around for a longer time than agreed upon. Sometimes this may be okay, but other times when you have rentals back to back, it's important to get your renters out in the morning, get the house cleaned, and then the next renters in the same afternoon. The amount you charge is up to you, but it should be proportionate to the rental amount per hour at an increased multiple. For example, if your house rents for $240 per night, then that equals out to $24 / hour, a fair charge may be $50 per hour or some other rate per hour that they stay beyond the agreed upon checkout time.
RENTAL RATES - One of the most important aspects of your rental agreement is the rental rate with full detail on daily charge, number of days the guest is staying, sub total, cleaning charge, applicable taxes, security deposit and any other fees (such as lockout fees if a renter locks him/herself out, etc.) related to the rental stay. The more detail you provide in this section, the better.
REFUND/CANCELLATION POLICY - A refund/cancellation policy is also critical to your rental agreement along with payment terms. It's important to detail what your policy is relating to refunds & cancellations. Industry standard dictates that a small deposit is normally due upon booking unless that booking is within 45 to 60 days. Other owners will refund the rental rate if they're able to book the house for another party during the same period of time. It's important for you to determine your own policies and clearly state them in your rental agreement.
LEGAL STUFF - Other things to consider are clauses such as arbitration, governing law (what state, county, municipality, etc.) that will govern the agreement in the case of a dispute.
This may all seem pretty ownerwhelming, but it's important to handle the legal details. Spending a small amount of time and money in the beginning will surely save you a lot of headache (time and lots of money spent) in the future.
Hosting Control Panel
The hosting control panel provides you access to your TenantWIZ hosting account which would include a file manager for accessing some of the front-end files in your TenantWIZ build, managing your email addresses, and more. In order to access your TenantWIZ hosting account, simply click on the link located on our Website in your account to your TenantWIZ Hosting Account.