Onboarding to Guesty

Before your kickoff call, we'll send you a Core Onboarding Intake Questionnaire to understand your business, priorities, and current systems.

What you need to prepare:

Tax information

• Gather all necessary tax information before your financials call.
• Determine which taxes should be charged to guests based on your location and business requirements.
• Research relevant tax rates in advance for a smooth setup.

Additional fees

• Prepare information about the fees you want to charge guests:
  • Specific amounts and purposes for each fee.
  • Whether fees are mandatory for all reservations or optional (add-ons/upsells).

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During this call with your Guesty onboarder, you'll:

• Meet the Guesty onboarding team.
• Understand your business and objectives.
• Define platform expectations.
• Review your tech stack.
• Create a customized onboarding roadmap tailored to your needs.

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Follow the steps below to access and configure account settings:

1. Sign in to your Guesty account.
2. In the top navigation bar, click the mode selector and hover over Setup.
3. From the dropdown, select Account settings.
   • Upload your company logo to personalize your account so your branding appears on guest invoices.
   • Update your company information for billing purposes and to ensure compliance with global regulations.
4. From the dropdown, select Billing.
   • Set up a default billing payment method.
5. From the dropdown, select User management.
   • Create users in Guesty to give your team appropriate platform access. Assign appropriate permissions for cleaners, communications specialists, accountants, and developers.

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Now that your Guesty account is up and running, the next step is to add your listings.

1. If relevant, disconnect your booking channels from your existing/external PMS.
   • Disconnecting from another channel manager.
   • Disconnecting another PMS from your Airbnb account.
2. Connect your Guesty account to booking channels. You can also connect your booking channels via a channel manager:
   • Rentals United

   • SiteMinder

     Note:

     Connecting with a channel manager is optional — you can connect with as many supported channel managers as you'd like. Contact us to learn about Rentals United's pricing and account creation. Contact SiteMinder to learn about their pricing and account creation.

3. Connect (import or link) your existing listings from Airbnb and other channels.
4. Learn how to create new listings directly in Guesty.
5. Set up your notifications in Guesty (e.g., notifications for payment statuses, reservation updates, etc.).
   • Set up your account-related notifications (forwarded to your personal email address).

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Fill out our reservation import template with all current and future reservations you wish to add to Guesty.

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• Set up your payment processor before integrating channels to ensure you can process payments.

• If you're planning to use Guesty Pay, you must apply as soon as possible—it typically takes up to 3 days for it to become active after your application is submitted.
• If you're using another payment processor, learn more about available options.

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Determine which taxes should be charged to guests based on your location and business requirements. Research relevant tax rates if you don't have this information readily available.

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Identify fees to charge guests, including:

• Specific amounts and purposes.
• Whether fees are mandatory or optional (add-ons/upsells).

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Download the Guesty app to stay connected and manage your operations on the go. With the app, you can access your reservations, respond to messages, manage tasks, and more—all from your mobile device.

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Configure your booking engine to enable direct bookings through Guesty. This allows guests to book directly on your website, streamlining the reservation process.

If you're using the custom booking engine API, coordinate with your web developer instead of setting up the standard Guesty booking engine.

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Choose from several options:

• Use Guesty's Basic or Advanced website builder to build your website.
• Link your existing website to Guesty's direct booking engine.
• Use our Open API for full customization with your existing website.

Whichever you choose, it is important to start building out your website before you are ready to go live with channels.

If you intend to create a custom booking engine or website outside of Guesty and want to use our open API, you can find the information below:

• Open API Documentation
• Booking Engine
• API Documentation

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Each channel has its own completion time to finalize the connection process between Guesty and the booking channel or to link and publish listings.
During connection time, calendars won't sync, so manage incoming reservations directly in your booking channels.

Channel connection timeframes

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To get your business running effortlessly, add additional services for pricing, keyless check-ins, luggage storage, automated reviews, and much more. Learn more about our Marketplace Partners.

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After connecting your booking channels, configure your financial settings:

• Core financial setup
  • Add taxes to your Guesty account.
  • Create an inventory of additional fees in Guesty.
  • Set up channel commissions.
  • Configure guest invoices to ensure that guests receive clear and accurate billing details for their reservations.
• Payment management
  • Set up auto-payments to ensure seamless and timely transactions by automatically charging guests based on predefined rules.
  • Beta users: Set up the enhanced automations feature for greater flexibility and control over your payment collection process.
• Pricing and revenue
  • If you’re not using a dynamic pricing tool, set up rate strategies in Guesty to manage pricing and restrictions.
  • Learn how to use Guesty's revenue share to divide income between property managers and owners.
  • Add markups to your Guesty account to cover booking channel fees.
  • Add a booking channel's commission to your Guesty account.
  • Learn more about how to use our pricing tools to optimize accommodation fares and availability tools to control when a listing can be booked.

  • Schedule a call with a Guesty Price Optimizer (GPO) specialist to set up calendar pricing.

    Note:

    To activate GPO on a listing, the property must be active and listed in Guesty for a minimum of 2 business days, excluding weekends (Saturdays and Sundays).

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Use our automation tools to save time on recurring actions, maintain continuous communication with your guests, and streamline operations.

Listing snooze settings

• Set specific times for your listing to be automatically displayed (listed) or snoozed (unlisted) on booking channels.
• Message automations

  • Create a series of automated messages throughout a reservation's lifecycle that allows you to streamline communication.

    Tip:

    Learn more about our message automations best practices, how to add variables to easily personalize your messages, or add Custom Fields as sending conditions.

• Saved replies
  • Set up saved replies to save time and ensure consistency in your communication with guests. Create predefined responses for common questions or situations to quickly reply to guests.
• Auto Payments
  • Collect payments from guests automatically — including virtual credit card payments.
• Auto Response (currently for Airbnb reservations only)
  • Make sure messages from Airbnb guests are answered in a timely fashion, even when you're unavailable.
• Auto Reviews (currently for Airbnb and Vrbo reservations only)
  • Make sure Airbnb and Vrbo guests are always reviewed by setting up an automatic review and default star ratings.
• Auto tasks
  • Schedule auto-tasks around the life-cycle of the reservation (such as a mid-stay turn-down service, a maintenance check after check-out, etc.). You can also create calendar-based tasks.
• Smart Calendar Rules
  • Connect listings through their calendars and sync their reservation data, so that a confirmed reservation in one listing's calendar will automatically block those dates on another connected listing's calendar.

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Configure the day-to-day operational tools to streamline guest communication, property management, and reservation handling.

• Pre-stay tools
  • Create and send check-in forms through the Guest App.
• Inbox
  • Create a saved view, a customized view of the Inbox, created by a set of filters applied to the current set of messages being displayed. You can create multiple saved views and quickly switch between views.
  • Create a saved reply, templates you can create in advance to quickly respond to FAQs or other common topics guests may inquire about.
  • Opt to integrate ReplyAI into your inbox to analyze guest message sentiment, understand the tone and mood of inquiries, and ensure your responses maintain consistent, authentic communication that reflects your brand voice.
• Multi-Calendar
  • Learn how to navigate the Multi-calendar, manage reservations, and listing availability.
  • Block dates manually on the Multi-Calendar or the listing’s calendar to create manual reservations.
  • Change a listing’s price for specific nights.
• Listing management
  • Set a listing's booking window
  • Set a listing's Advance Notice
• Owners Portal (property owner management): The Owners Portal is a separate website for your property owners, powered by Guesty. Depending on the settings you enable, owners will be able to view data about their properties and earnings, block dates for personal stays, and more.
  • Choose a URL for your Owners Portal website
  • Add owners
  • Invite owners to the Owners Portal
  • Enable reservations for owners
    This allows your property owner to block off dates for personal stays.
• Contacts
  • Set up contacts for all of your guests’ and potential guests' personal information/details.
  • Add a contact to your Guesty account's phone book that includes all other non-guest contacts (e.g. owners, vendors, etc.). This is useful for storing helpful details and vendors, such as the local taxi station that can drive your guests from the airport.
• Guest App
  • Set up and personalize the Guest App to enhance guest experience by customizing branding, conveying important information (check-in forms, property rules, amenities), and creating custom check-in forms to collect essential guest data and streamline the process.

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Set up reporting tools to track performance and make data-driven decisions.

• Reservation report
  • Set up reservation reports in Guesty to track and manage bookings by accessing important details like booking dates, guest information, and financial data in one place, allowing you to gain insights into trends, performance, and areas for improvement.
• Properties report
  • Set up properties reports in Guesty to manage and track property performance by accessing valuable insights like booking status, occupancy rates, and financial data, helping you monitor key metrics and identify areas for improvement.
• Task report
  • Set up and manage task reports in Guesty to track progress and completion of assigned tasks (maintenance, cleaning, etc.) by providing visibility into task status, assignments, deadlines, and completion rates to improve operational efficiency and ensure nothing falls through the cracks.
• Understand Advanced Analytics (Paid subscription)
  • Review the Advanced Analytics Overview to understand the features and capabilities.
  • Give selected users in your account access to Advanced Analytics.
  • Save the Advanced Analytics help center section for easy reference.

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Airbnb

• Channel fee
  • Understand Airbnb's Channel Fee and how it may change based on your listing and location.
• Connect your existing Airbnb Account to Guesty.
• Import your listings to Airbnb.
• Review and update imported listings
  • Check amenities, terms, bedrooms and beds, pricing, reservation details, cleaning fees, availability settings, and marketing details (consider re-uploading photos directly in Guesty for better quality rather than using imported Airbnb photos).

Vrbo

• Integration
  • Complete Vrbo integration.
  • Manually add all existing Vrbo reservations to your Guesty calendar.
  • For new reservations created after integration, you'll need to collect and remit taxes yourself, and Vrbo will no longer process payments (these policies apply to all professional property management software connections with Vrbo).
  • Vrbo takes 3-7 business days to complete integration.
• Vrbo onboarding and contact
  • Respond promptly to emails and complete the Vrbo Onboarding Form.
  • If not already done, contact Vrbo IPM at +1-877-239-2592, note your Advertiser ID from the Vrbo distribution page.

Booking.com

• Integration
  • Complete Booking.com integration.
• Learn how to report invalid guest credit cards.
• Understand what data syncs between Booking.com and Guesty.

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• Locks Manager
  • Sign up and configure Guesty Locks Manager.
  • Explore additional features.
• Guesty Shield
  • Set up Guesty’s Damage Protection.

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