How to update your calendar availability
There is nothing worse from a potential tenant’s point of view than when they make a reservation request for a property that appears as available – but then the landlord declines it because it’s actually unavailable. This is the reason for rejection that we do not tolerate at Flatio, as it affects the credibility of both landlords and the Flatio service itself. Therefore, it falls into the so-called unauthorized rejections, which we count into the 3 Rejections Rule. That's why we offer you several ways to keep your availability up-to-date and avoid unnecessary rejections.
Automatic availability updates
If you also advertise your property on Airbnb, Booking, or other platforms, this solution will be useful for you. Simply export an iCal calendar for each of your listings on those services, and then import them into Flatio My Rentals. This ensures that any bookings you approve on other services will be automatically entered into our system and your property will not show as “available” on those dates. You can also export a Flatio calendar from our system and import it into other services so that when you approve a reservation request in our system, it will automatically post to your other services and your property will show as unavailable there.
We will now describe how to automatically update the availabily of your properties on the My Rentals application.
Calendar import
In order to be able to get the availability of an offer on other services, it is necessary to import the offer availability calendar from these services into Flatio.
- Go to Properties section, select the property whose availability you wish to edit and click Change dates button OR enter the Availability section in the property detail (by clicking its name).
- Paste the calendar URL address copied from the extern service into the Calendar address (URL) field at the bottom of the displayed section (Import subsection of Calendar synchronization) - do not confuse the calendar URL with the property URL on the extern service!
- In the Calendar name field fill in a name that makes it easy for you to find out which calendar it is (so, for example, Airbnb, Airbnb calendar, etc.)
- Press the Import calendar button to download the availability from the service. We will be able to show the most up-to-date information on the property availability to those interested in housing.
NOTE: The calendar must be imported separately for each service where you rent out your offer.
Calendar export
As soon as we find out about the availability of the offer on other services, it is necessary to pass on the information about the availability of the offer on Flatio to these services - if the reservation is approved at Flatio, it is necessary to inform other services about the change of availability.
- Go to Properties section, select the property whose availability you wish to edit and click Change dates button OR enter the Availability section in the property detail (by clicking its name).
- Copy the calendar URL address of the offer at Flatio at the bottom of the displayed section (Export subsection of Calendar synchronization) and paste it into the service you need to pass the information about Flatio availability - usually, it will be a field for the calendar import in the service (e.g. Airbnb or Booking).
NOTE: The Flatio calendar must therefore be exported (inserted) to all services on which you rent out the offer and for which a calendar import has already been done (see above).
To make it easier to perform these tasks, we enclose instructions for synchronizing calendars in the most frequently used rental services:
- Airbnb (here),
- Booking (here),
- VRBO (here),
- TripAdvisor (here),
- Supercontrol (export, import),
- Beds24 (here).
Manual updates
Don't have an iCal calendar and so can’t use the system above? No problem. You can also make manual updates to your calendar. This option is also suitable for you if you like to experiment with booking dates.
- Go to Properties section, select the property whose availability you wish to edit and click Change dates button OR enter the Availability section in the property detail (by clicking its name).
At the top of the displayed section where you set the menu availability manually, select a specific date range, choose whether your property is Available/Unavailable at this time and Save. The red-tinted field in the calendar means it is unavailable, while green means available.
NOTE: When you create a new property listing, it is always shown on our system as completely available until you change it.
