Rental Control management for Home Assistant

Home Assistant Rental Manager is designed to handle the need for custom calendars and sensors to go with them related to managing rental properties.

Table of Contents

• Features
• Installation
  • MANUAL INSTALLATION
  • INSTALLATION VIA Home Assistant Community Store (HACS)
• Setup
• Reconfiguration
• Known issues
• Frequently Asked Questions
  • Why does my calendar events say Reserved instead of the guest's name?
  • Where can I find my rental calendar's ics URL?
  • How do I use custom calendars?

Features

• Ingests ICS calendars from any HTTPS source as long as it's a text/calendar file
• Configurable refresh rate from as often as possible to once per day (default every 2 minutes)
• Define checkin/checkout times which will be added to all calendar entries that are all day events
• Ability to ignore 'Blocked' and 'Not available' events
• Creates a customizable number of event sensors that are the current and upcoming events
  • sensor.rental_control_my_calendar_event_0
  • sensor.rental_control_my_calendar_event_1
  • sensor.rental_control_my_calendar_event_2
  • (...)
• Creates a calendar-entry that can be used with calendar cards
  • calendar.rental_control_my_calendar
• Calendars can have their own timezone definition that is separate from the Home Assitant instance itself. This is useful for managing properties that are in a different timezone from where Home Assistant is
• Events can have a custom prefix added to them to help differentiate between entities if more than one calendar is being tracked in an instance
• Forcing a calendar refresh is currently possible by submitting a configuration change
• Optional code length starting at 4 digits (requires even number of digits)
• 3 door code generators are available:
  • A check-in/out date based 4 digit (or greater) code using the check-in day combined with the check-out day (default and fallback in the case another generator fails to produce a code)
  • A random 4 digit (or greater) code based on the event description
  • The last 4 digits of the phone number. This only works properly if the event description contains '(Last 4 Digits): ' or 'Last 4 Digits: ' followed quickly by a 4 digit number. This is the most stable, but only works if the event descriptions have the needed data. The previous two methods can have the codes change if the event makes changes to length or to the description.
• All events will get a code associated with it. In the case that the criteria to create the code are not fulfilled, then the check-in/out date based method will be used as a fallback
• Each event has dynamically added attributes which consist of extracted information if available in the event description. The following attributes now get added:
  • Last four -- the last 4 digits of the phone number of the booking guest
  • Number of guests -- the number of guests in the reservation
  • Guest email -- the email of the booking guest
  • Phone number -- the phone number of the booking guest
  • Reservation url -- the URL to the reservation
• Integration with Keymaster to control door codes matched to the number of events being tracked
• Custom calendars are supported as long as they provide a valid ICS file via an HTTPS connection.
  • Rental Events should be created as all day events (which is how all of the rental platforms provide events)
  • Maintenance style events should be created with start and end times
  • The event Summary (aka event title) may contiain the word Reserved. This will cause the slot name to be generated in one of two ways:
    • The word Reserved is followed by ' - ' and then something else, the something else will be used
    • The word Reserved is not followed by ' - ' then the full slot will be used
    • The Summary contains nothing else and the Details contain something that matches an Airbnb reservation identifier of [A-Z][A-Z0-9]{9} that is a capital alphabet letter followed by 9 more characters that are either capital alphabet letters or numbers, then the slot will get this
    • If the the Summary is just Reserved and there is no Airbnb code in the Description, then the event will be ignored for purposes of managing a lock code.
    • Technically any of the othe supported platform event styles for the Summary can be used and as long as the Summary conforms to it.
    • The best Summary on a manual calendar is to use your guest name. The entries do need to be unique over the sensor count worth of events or Rental Control will run into issues.
  • Additional information can be provided in the Description of the event and it will fill in the extra details in the sensor.
    • Phone numbers for use in generating door codes can be provided in one of two ways
      • A line in the Description matching this regular expression: \(?Last 4 Digits\)?:\s+(\d{4}) -- This line will always take precedence for generating a door code based on last 4 digits.
      • A line in the Description matching this regular expression: Phone(?: Number)?:\s+(\+?[\d\. \-\(\)]{9,}) which will then have the "air" squeezed out of it to extract the last 4 digits in the number
    • Number of guests
      • A line in the Description that matches: Guests:\s+(\d+)$
      • Alternatively, the following lines will be added together to get the data:
        • Adults:\s+(\d+)$
        • Children:\s+(\d+)$
    • Email addresses can be extracted from the Description by matching against: Email:\s+(\S+@\S+)
    • Reservation URLS will match against the first (and hopefully only) URL in the Description

Installation

To make full use of this integration, install Keymaster as this integration depends upon it.

MANUAL INSTALLATION

1. Download the latest release
2. Unpack the release and copy the custom_components/rental_control directory into the custom_components directory of your Home Assistant installation
3. Restart Home Assistant
4. Configure the Rental Control

INSTALLATION VIA Home Assistant Community Store (HACS)

1. Ensure that HACS is installed
2. Go to HACS -> Integrations
3. Search for and install the Rental Control integration
4. Restart Home Assistant
5. Go to Configuration -> Devices & Services
6. Press + ADD INTEGRATION
7. Add Rental Control
8. Configure the parameters
9. Adding additional calendars can be done by adding another Rental Control integration in Devices & Services

Setup

The integration is set up using the GUI.

• Go to Configuration -> Integrations and click on the "+"-button.
• Search for "Rental Control"
• Enter a name for the calendar, and the calendar's ics URL (see FAQ)
• By default it will set up 5 sensors for the 5 nex upcoming events (sensor.rentalcontrol\\<calendar_name>_event_0 ~ 4). You can adjust this to add more or fewer sensors
• The calendar refresh rate defaults to every 2 minutes but can be set to 0 for as often as possible (roughly every 30 seconds) to once per day (1440). This is adjustable in minute increments
• The integration will only consider events with a start time 365 days (1 year) into the future by default. This can also be adjusted when adding a new calendar
• Set your checkin and checkout times. All times are in 24 hour format. These times will be added to the calendar events. If the events come in with times already attached they will be overwritten (most rental hosting platforms only provide day in / day out in the events)

• For configuration managing a Keymaster controlled lock, make sure that you have defined the lock during initial setup and that you have the starting slot set correctly for the integration.

  • It is very important that you have Keymaster fully working before trying to utilize the slot management component of Rental Control.
  • NOTE: The Keymaster slots that are defined as being managed will be completely taken control of by Rental Control. Any data in the slots will be overwritten by Rental Control when it takes over the slot unless it matches event data for the calendar.
  • The following portions of a Keymaster slot will influence (that is override) data in the calendar or event sensor:
    • Checkin/out TIME (not date) will update the calendar event and also the sensor tracked information. NOTE: If you are using a timezone that is not the system timezone on your calendar, you will likely run into weird and unexpected issues as that is not presently supported!
    • Door code - by default when the slot is updated by the integration the code that is extracted / created by the sensor will be used. If, however, you have a need to override the code you may do so after the slot has been updated. This is useful if you have a non-managed slot that has the same door code (or starting code, typically first 4 digits) that is the generated code and thus causing the slot to not function properly

Reconfiguration

This integration supports reconfiguration after initial setup

• Go to Configuration -> Integrations and find the calendar you wish to modify
• Select the calendar and then select Configure
• Reconfigure as if you were setting it up for the first time

NOTE: Changes may not be picked up right away. The default update cycle of the calendar is to check for updates every 2 minutes and events are refreshed around every 30 seconds. If you want to force a full update right away, select the ... menu next to Configure and select Reload

Known issues

While the integration supports reconfiguration a few things may not fully update after a reconfiguration. If you are having issues with reconfigured options not being picked up properly try reloading the particular integration installation or restart Home Assistant.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does my calendar events say Reserved instead of the guest's name?

AirBnB does not include guest or booking details in the invite. What is included in the ics data varies by provider. Calendar ics URLs from some 3rd party tools (e.g. Host Tools) do include guest information and will show that rather than Reserved in calendar events.

Where can I find my rental calendar's ics URL?

Each provider has slightly different instructions:

• AirBnB
• VRBO
• Host Tools

How do I use custom calendars?

Custom calendars can be used as long as they provide a valid ICS file via an HTTPS connection. The events on the calendar can be done in multiple ways.

It is recommended that the event Summary (aka event title) contain the guest's name and not the word Reserved. It is strongly recommended that any calendar entries across the sensor count worth of events be unique. If the entries are not unique, Rental Control may run into issues as the event Summary is used in the slot management.

Data that will be pulled from the Description of the event (and the match keys):

• Phone numbers for use in generating door codes can be provided in one of two ways
  • A line in the Description matching this regular expression: \(?Last 4 Digits\)?:\s+(\d{4}) -- This line will always take precedence for generating a door code based on last 4 digits.
  • A line in the Description matching this regular expression: Phone(?: Number)?:\s+(\+?[\d\. \-\(\)]{9,}) which will then have the "air" squeezed out of it to extract the last 4 digits in the number
• Number of guests
  • A line in the Description that matches: Guests:\s+(\d+)$
  • Alternatively, the following lines will be added together to get the data:
    • Adults:\s+(\d+)$
    • Children:\s+(\d+)$
• Email addresses can be extracted from the Description by matching against: Email:\s+(\S+@\S+)
• Reservation URLS will match against the first (and hopefully only) URL in the Description

And example calendar entry with all of this data might look like this:

Title: John and Jane Doe
Description:
    Phone: 555-555-5555
    Email: jdoe@example.com
    Guests: 2
    https://www.example.com/reservation/123456789

The following information would be extracted from this event:

Slot name: John and Jane Doe
Phone number: 555-555-5555
Last four: 5555
Email: jdoe@example.com
Number of guests: 2
Reservation URL: https://www.example.com/reservation/123456789