Hosting reservtion

[Chris2040]

I have never hosted before.  Somehow a reservation was accepted without my accepting of it.  Not sure how this happened as I am new to hosting, however I have agreed to make it work with the renter.  The reservation starts in 12 days.  When does ABNB collect the money from renter and do they acknowledge me that they have it prior to the move in date?  Just trying to acquaint myself with the process.

Chris

[Lawrene0]

The best thing, @Chris2040 , will be to read everything you can in the Help pages. There are so many things that will broadside you if you don't! 

But short answers are that you have Instant Book (IB) turned on. That will be why the reservation came in. Well done making it work! It is such a mess if you don't.

You can turn it off in the edit section by selecting "all guests must send a reservation request"

Always stay on top of your calendar! If you cannot host a certain day or week or month, block those off.

Airbnb collects from the guest immediately. You are paid the day after check-in, but when you are new, payment comes much later. This is to prevent fraud. You can look that one up in Help. 

As to knowing whether Airbnb has the money, they nearly always do. I have not had a problem myself. You can always look at Upcoming Payouts in Earnings to check. 

Hope that helps, and all the best with hosting!

[Sarah977]

@Chris2040  From my reading over a couple of years here on the forum, while there may be individual cases of Airbnb not being able to collect the $ for the reservation, that seems to mostly happen sometimes with same-day reservations- the guest arrives before the payment has cleared, and either through some glitch with their payment method, or because their credit card was invalid, or maxed out, the fees are not collected and the host doesn't get paid, even though the guest stayed. So I'd say to avoid same-day reservations. You can do this in your booking settings- choose 1 or more days advance notice. It's also less stressful for hosts not to have to rush around last minute because a guest is suddenly arriving in a few hours.

But there are some hosts who rely on last minute bookings, like those who may have a listing close to an airport- they might get a lot of guests who are looking for a place right away because their flight was cancelled or seriously delayed, they live far away and have an early morning flight, or have a layover.