Two requests have come up more than any others this year. Hosts with a growing portfolio want to hand routine work to an assistant without handing over their password. And property managers keep telling us the same story: an owner loves the guidebook, wants to see their bookings or tweak the WiFi text themselves, and there is simply no way to let them in. Their listing is connected through the manager’s PMS, so the owner has no API key and no account of their own.
Both are solved by the same thing, which is now live: Team & Owners, under your name at the top right of the members area.
How it works
You invite someone by email. They sign in with their own BetterSTR login, or create a free one on the way through, and the invitation attaches to that login. From then on they open Switch account on their dashboard and step into yours. A blue bar reminds them whose account they are in for the whole visit, and everything they do is done under their own name. Your password is never shared, and you can withdraw access at any moment; it takes effect within a minute, even if they are working at the time.
Pick a level, then fine-tune
Four presets cover most situations, and every switch underneath them can be changed on its own.
| Preset | Good for | What it includes |
|---|---|---|
| Viewer (read only) | An owner keeping an eye on things, or a new team member | Properties, guidebooks, reservations, WiFi and TV status. Every save, delete or send is refused. |
| Editor | A co-host who runs the day to day | Viewer, plus editing guidebooks and property settings, managing WiFi and managing TVs. No money, no guest ID documents. |
| Virtual assistant | A VA who maintains guidebooks, WiFi and TVs | Editor without the reservation list, without guest ID documents and without the WiFi guest email list. They can do the work without ever seeing a guest’s personal data. |
| Manager | Your most trusted person | Everything a team member can hold, including guest ID documents and security deposit actions. |
Some things are never on offer, whatever the level: your balance and transactions, your plans, your integrations, your profile, SMS, automations, creating or deleting properties, API credentials, and inviting other people. Those stay with you.
Which properties
All of them, a fixed list you tick, or everything carrying a tag. Tags are the trick for anyone with a lot of properties: tag by owner, by city or by cleaner, invite the person against the tag, and any property you tag later is included automatically without touching the invitation again.
For property managers: owners, finally
This is the part we are most pleased about. Owners who would love to use BetterSTR have been locked out simply because their manager’s PMS holds the listing. Now the manager connects once, invites each owner against their own property, and the owner gets a real window into it: the guidebook, the reservations, the WiFi, the TV screens. Nothing about the manager’s other properties, other owners or finances is visible.
Give them Viewer if they just want to see it. Give them Editor and many owners will happily write the local tips and house rules themselves, which tends to produce a better guidebook than either party would write alone. Turn off See guest contact details if they should see bookings but not guests’ phone numbers and email addresses.
Owners in parts of the United States face a particular version of this. Local rules can require a manager who lives within a set distance of the property, so an owner with four places across the country may have four different managers. Each manager invites them from their own account, and the owner sees all four on one Switch account page after logging in.
One more thing, coming shortly: the option for an owner to pay the BetterSTR Simple bundle for their own properties from their own balance, so the manager is only ever charged for the rest. If you have owners waiting for that, tell us and we will switch it on for your account as it rolls out.
For hosts: an assistant without the risk
If you have ever emailed a login to a VA and hoped for the best, this is for you. The Virtual assistant preset lets someone maintain every guidebook, keep the WiFi text current and manage the TV screens across all your properties, while never seeing a reservation, a guest’s ID or the WiFi guest email list. When they move on, one click and they are out.