VRconnection Tutorial - Refunding Deposits & Closing Out Reservations

Refunding Deposits & Closing Out Reservations
After the guest has been admitted to the property and enjoyed their stay, the final step in the reservation process is usually the refunding of the security deposit. As time progresses, VRconnection adjusts each reservation as necessary, denoting when a guest is arriving, staying at, and ultimately departing your property (see image to right). After the departure date, VRconnection will indicate how many days have elapsed since departure and when a refund of the security deposit is due, based on the terms initially set up during the offer phase of the reservation.

Issuing a Deposit Refund Notice
After confirming a successful stay and departure with your cleaning service, VRconnection allows you to easily initiate the refund of the security deposit by clicking the 'Refund Deposit' link in the 'Next Actions' column of our active transactions queue. This will load the built in e-mail editor with another pre-configured and customizable message template. Additionally, the e-mail editor will provide some additional functionality to record any deductions to the security deposit and an itemized accounting of those deductions (see image to left). The deposit refund template typically indicates that you intend to refund the security deposit to the mailing address provided by the guest during the reservation acceptance process. Any deposit deductions entered into the form will also appear in the message the guest will receive.

Soliciting Guest Comments
Additionally, the refund notice also contains a special link that the guest can use to leave you direct feedback regarding their stay. If the guest chooses to provide feedback, it is forwarded to you via e-mail for review with an option to edit the feedback for content (image top right) and add the feedback to a 'Guest Comments' page (image bottom right) that is part of your property listing. Comments from previous guests can be a powerful tool for marketing your property to others and VRconnection makes adding them to your listing a natural and intuitive part of your reservation process.

Generating a Receipt to Include with Deposit Refund
A final 'Next Action' provides a mechanism to generate and print a receipt for the guest, which you can include with their deposit refund (image to left). The receipt will summarize the stay, all monies paid and refunded, any deductions made to the security deposit, and provides a space to enter a special message to the guest. A provided link enables you to print the receipt quickly and another to complete and close out the transaction.

When the reservation is closed out, it is marked as 'Complete' and moved to an Archived Transactions queue. As you will soon see, archived transactions can provide an extremely valuable function in documenting and analyzing the success of your property rental endeavors, as well as soliciting future stays from previous guests and prospects.

If you like what you see so far, click here to list and manage your property with VRconnection. Otherwise, let's continue the tutorial with measuring the success of your rental property and soliciting repeat business.


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