Who sets the price: your calendar or the external tool
By GuestChat Team ·
With a pricing tool connected, there are two systems writing rates to the same place. Without a clear rule, neither one wins: whoever wrote last wins, and that changes depending on when you look. The Derived prices setting exists to declare who is in charge.
Where it is
In the Calendar, Settings tab, under "Who's in charge of each property". It shows up in two places:
- In each property's settings, to decide it apartment by apartment.
- At the bottom, for the whole account: it is the default value for properties nobody has changed on their own.
It has two buttons: External tool and Our prices.
External tool
The tool is in charge. We stop sending prices to the channels for those properties, and the one published is the tool's. The calendar reads it from there, and while it confirms you will see "Confirming live prices with the external pricing tool".
While it is set this way, editing a price in the calendar won't be sent: the tool publishes its own. The dashboard warns you so you don't waste your time.
Our prices
The prices in your calendar are in charge. When you switch back to this mode, they are resent right away to the channels of the selected properties. And if the external tool overwrites them again, the dashboard reasserts them regularly: you don't have to keep an eye on it.
What is always yours
Whatever the mode, availability and closures stay with the dashboard. Minimum stays are also sent from here, but PriceLabs can publish them too: turn them off in one of the two so they don't overwrite each other. Closing a period, or making sure a sold night can't be reopened, can't depend on a pricing tool.
Per property or for all of them
When you change it for the whole account, the dashboard asks before applying it: changing who sets the price for all your properties at once is a serious decision. You can choose which ones, and the label on the right of each one shows its real status at that moment, not what is selected.
A very common setup:
- City apartments with demand that swings a lot: External tool.
- The house you rent by the season at a fixed price, or the apartment your family uses in August: Our prices.
What happens to what is already published
- When you hand control to the tool, the dashboard resends its last known prices to the channels. If it hasn't published anything for that property yet, the channels keep your price until it publishes for the first time, and the dashboard tells you so when you save.
- When you take control back, your prices head back to the booking sites. Nights you never touched by hand go back to your base price; only if the property has no base price do they keep what was published.
- If it takes a while, the dashboard tells you and asks you to check again in a moment: the change may still be going through.
Common mistakes
- Turning on the tool and still changing prices by hand. They don't go out. If you want a special price, set it in the tool.
- Leaving the account default on external tool and adding an apartment that isn't in PriceLabs. That apartment inherits the mode and doesn't publish your price. Check every new property.
- Thinking the tool also opens and closes dates. Closures are still handled by the dashboard.
Quick list
- Decide a default mode for the account.
- Mark the exceptions property by property.
- After a change, look at the calendar the next day and check the prices are what you expected.