Frequently Asked Questions

WhatsApp is great for chat, awful for coordination. Bookings scroll away, expenses get forgotten, photos disappear, the Wi-Fi password is in an old message from last summer. Ripazo keeps the structured stuff together (for example: calendar, expenses, house info, albums) and leaves WhatsApp to do what it's actually good at. Most families keep both. That's the point.

Spreadsheets start tidy and end in chaos, twelve tabs, broken formulas, column F still called 'delete me', and nobody can find last year's cleaner invoice. Ripazo has the same columns under the hood, but with roles, approval flows, photos, and a mobile-first design. Nobody has ever said 'I love our shared family spreadsheet'.

Google Calendar shows when someone is at the house. Ripazo shows the whole story around it: who approved the week, what got spent during that stay, what broke and who fixed it, where the Wi-Fi password is, which photo album is from which trip. Calendars are a slice; Ripazo is the whole binder.

No. Ripazo is private, invite-only software for families and friends who own a vacation home together. There is no marketplace, no strangers finding your listing, no public rating, no money flowing through Ripazo. It's the opposite side of the coin: Airbnb helps hosts rent to strangers; Ripazo helps co-owners share with each other.

You remain the owner of all your data. After cancellation, the page stays active until the end of the paid period so members can still view and use everything. After that, the page is archived. If you come back within a reasonable window, we can reactivate it and you pick up where you left off.

Ripazo is a private, invite-only dashboard for families and friends who co-own a vacation home. One shared page holds the booking calendar, arrival and departure checklists, expense tracking, photo albums, and house information, everything a WhatsApp group or spreadsheet can't keep in one place. Pick a theme, invite your co-owners, done.

For anyone who already shares a vacation home: co-owners who bought one together, heirs who inherited one from their parents, or groups of friends with a cabin. Not for professional hosts, hotels, or people running an Airbnb business. Ripazo is strictly for private use, between people who already know and trust each other.

Create a free account, give your house a name and short URL (like ripazo.com/casa-bosque), pick a country, timezone, and color theme. Your first property starts with a 7-day free trial, no credit card required. During the trial you can invite as many people as you want to test together. Most families finish the basics in an evening.

Yes. Pick one of several color themes (for example Italian Summer, Coastal Breeze, Mountain Lodge, or Nordic Cabin), upload a banner photo of your house, choose an icon, and set a login cover image. Every module can also show its own welcome message or highlight card in any theme color.

Go to Admin → Users, type each person's email, and pick a role (admin or member). Ripazo sends an invitation email with an accept link. If they already have an account they land straight on your page; otherwise the email sets up their account for them. All invited members use Ripazo for free, forever.

No. Every plan, including the free trial, lets you invite unlimited people: co-owners, partners, children, in-laws, friends, and cleaners. The price is per property, not per person. A family with twenty cousins pays the same as a couple with two kids. Bring everyone.

Click the link in the email. If you're new to Ripazo, the link takes you to a one-step account creation where you pick a password. If you already have a Ripazo account, you go straight to the shared vacation home page. You can book weeks, log expenses, and share photos right away.

Yes, a free account is required so your bookings, expenses, and comments stay tied to your name. Accepting the invitation creates your account in one step, pick a password and you're in. No credit card, no setup fee, no monthly charge. Invited members never pay a cent.

Every property has one shared calendar. Any member can request a booking by picking dates and adding an optional note. Admins see requests as pending and confirm them. Confirmed bookings are visible to everyone with the booker's name, so the whole family can see who is at the house and when.

Member bookings start as 'requested' and need admin approval before they're confirmed. This keeps one person in the loop on the calendar. Admins can also create confirmed bookings directly, handy for Christmas week that was agreed at the dinner table. Rejected requests include a short reason so no one is left guessing.

When an admin confirms a booking, Ripazo checks for overlaps with other confirmed bookings and blocks the approval if dates clash. Pending requests can overlap (two people may ask for the same week), but only one can be confirmed. The calendar always reflects the confirmed state, so nobody arrives to a surprise.

Yes. While your booking is still pending, you can edit the dates, change the note, or delete it yourself. Once an admin confirms it, ask an admin to update or cancel. It takes one click, and the admin can add a short reason so you and the other members know what changed.

Yes. The Overview page shows upcoming confirmed bookings as a dashboard card. Admins also see a badge in the navigation with the count of pending requests waiting for approval. The full agenda has calendar, list, and filter views, so you can check availability months ahead in seconds.

Two shared checklists per property: one for arrival (for example: gas on, check Wi-Fi, turn on the fridge) and one for departure (for example: close shutters, empty bins, gas off). Each item can include a description and a photo. Tick items off during your stay as a personal overview of what you've done and what's still open.

Yes. Checklists can include a special meter reading item where you enter values for peak electricity, off-peak electricity, water, and oil on arrival and departure. Readings are saved on the booking and admins are notified automatically by email, so they can split consumption and utility costs fairly.

Yes. Admins can add, edit, reorder, and delete checklist items per property from Admin → Arrival & Departure. Give each item a name, description, optional photo, and decide whether it shows on arrival, departure, or both. Your house is unique, your checklist can be too.

The Tasks page has two columns: tasks for every visit (for example: wash windows, change sheets, check the fridge) and one-off tasks (for example: buy a new dishwasher, replace the boiler). Each task has a title, description, priority, assignee, optional photos, and colored labels. Members tick off their own; admins can create and assign tasks to anyone.

Ripazo has two kinds of tasks. Tasks for every visit (like washing windows, changing sheets, or checking the fridge) stay on the list until they're ticked off and come back for each new guest. One-off tasks (like buying a new dishwasher or replacing the boiler) are single jobs. Assign each to a co-owner so everyone sees what's open.

The Contacts & Info page holds two things: a contact list (for example: the doctor's phone number, the neighbors, or the alarm company) and structured house-info cards (for example: Wi-Fi code, alarm code, house rules, trash collection days, inventory). Anyone can pull up the Wi-Fi password or the boiler manual on their phone, even offline if they screenshot it.

On the Expenses page, members submit costs they paid on behalf of the house (for example: oil refill, new dishwasher, lawn care) with amount, date, category, and receipt photo. Admins approve, deny, or mark each one as reimbursed. A dashboard at the top shows pending amount, approved-but-not-yet-reimbursed, and year-to-date reimbursements.

Every submission starts as 'pending'. An admin reviews it, optionally adds a note, and approves or denies. Approved expenses stay in 'to reimburse' until an admin marks them paid, usually when the bank transfer actually happens. The submitter is notified at each step by email if their preferences allow.

Yes. Admins can add, rename, and reorder expense categories from Admin → Expenses. Every property gets a starter set (for example: cleaning, utilities, maintenance, supplies) you can replace with categories that match your house. Every expense carries a category, so year-end summaries split cleanly by type.

Each property has a single default currency (euro, dollar, pound, Swiss franc) set once from Admin → Expenses. All expenses for that property are recorded in the default currency so totals and splits stay clear. If you co-own two houses in different countries, each Ripazo page keeps its own currency.

No, by design. Ripazo never touches bank accounts, credit cards, or money transfers. Most families don't want a shared house app anywhere near their private banking. You enter expenses yourself or upload a receipt photo; the actual reimbursement happens through your usual bank transfer, Tikkie, or PayPal.

The bulletin board is a private feed just for your house. Post photos, stories, questions, or updates ('we forgot to restock olive oil', 'the lemon tree is blooming again'). Family members can like, react with emojis, and leave comments. It replaces the scrolled-away WhatsApp chaos with something still findable a year later.

Yes. The Media page holds photo albums. Any member can create an album, upload photos or videos, and browse them fullscreen. Albums stay organized by trip, season, or theme. No cloud storage limits under normal use, and no one outside the family ever sees the photos.

Yes. Board posts, photos, activities, and tasks all support emoji reactions (thumbs up, heart, laugh, etc.) and threaded comments, reply to a comment, quote a specific line, mention someone. Admins can turn comments or reactions off per page if you'd prefer a calmer, feed-only experience.

Yes. The Activities page holds tips grouped by category (for example: restaurants, ice cream, beaches, hikes, sights, kids' activities, shops, markets, sports, nightlife). Each card can include a name, description, link, and location, plotted on a shared map. In-laws visit, nieces come back, and the tips collection just keeps growing.

Notes attached to your own bookings are visible to admins (they need the calendar context) but stay personal to you otherwise. Nothing you write in a note is posted to the bulletin board unless you post it there yourself. Ripazo never cross-posts or surfaces content you didn't intend to share.

Fully private. Your page is invite-only, strangers who somehow find the URL hit a login screen with nothing visible behind it. Ripazo never indexes or lists private property pages, we don't sell family data, and the page doesn't appear in search engines. Only people you invite can see anything.

There are three roles per property. The owner set up the property, controls billing, adds or removes admins, and transfers ownership. An admin confirms bookings, approves expenses, and manages templates and appearance. A member can book, submit expenses, post, comment, and edit their own content. Roles can be changed any time from Admin → Users.

Yes. One click from Admin → Users removes their access immediately. Content they created (for example: bookings, posts, expenses) stays in the history with their name for the record; you can delete specific items afterwards if needed. They can't log in again unless you re-invite them.

You remain the owner of all your data at all times. Ripazo runs on EU servers, is GDPR-compliant, and we never sell or share family data. We don't train AI models on your content. Your house page is private by design: not listed anywhere, not indexed, not discoverable.

Yes. From Settings → Email preferences, you control four notification categories separately: bookings, expenses, arrivals and departures, and member invitations. Everything defaults on; turn off whatever feels too noisy. Ripazo never sends marketing emails, only transactional updates tied directly to actions on your house.

Single ($59/year intro price, later $89) covers one vacation home with unlimited invited members and every feature included. Multi ($139/year intro price, later $199) covers up to ten vacation homes with one login and one invoice. Enterprise is custom for property managers and families with more than ten homes, contact us at info@ripazo.com.

Only the person who set up the property (the owner) pays. Every invited co-owner, family member, friend, and cleaner uses Ripazo for free, forever. There is no per-seat pricing. Bring everyone, the $59 or $139 is for the property itself, not the people using it.

Sign up, create your first vacation home, and you get seven days of full access, every feature unlocked. No credit card required. During the trial you can invite unlimited people, so your whole family can test together. Pick a plan any time to keep going without interruption.

Credit and debit cards (Visa, Mastercard, American Express), SEPA direct debit, and iDEAL for Dutch customers, all handled securely by Stripe, our payment processor. Ripazo never stores your card details. You can update your payment method any time from Settings → Billing. Invoices are emailed automatically after each charge.

Yes. One click from Settings → Billing. Cancellation works any time, but your subscription keeps running until the end of your paid period (usually a year), and after that all access to your house stops. Everything keeps working normally until that date. No termination fees, no retention calls, no 'are you sure' mazes.

Full refund within 5 days of any annual payment, no questions asked. After that, refunds aren't available, but you can always cancel and your subscription keeps running until the end of the paid period. Because invited members are free, you're the only one paying, so you're the only one we need to make whole. Email info@ripazo.com to request a refund.

Yes. Upgrade any time from Settings → Billing, the price difference is prorated automatically. Downgrade the same way and it takes effect at your next renewal date. No migrations, no re-inviting members, no lost data. Your existing vacation home keeps all its bookings, photos, and history intact.

Yes. One co-owner holds the Ripazo subscription (the owner role) and pays the $59 or $139. From there, log that subscription as a shared house expense on the Expenses page and split it across co-owners like any other cost. Ripazo tracks who owes what and gives you a clean year-end summary.

English and Dutch. The full interface is translated, and each person picks their own language on first login. Italian, French, and German are on the roadmap. Property names, posts, and custom content always appear in whichever language the author typed them in, so nothing gets lost in translation.

Yes. Every invited member picks their preferred language on first login, your Dutch cousin sees Dutch, your English in-laws see English, all on the same shared vacation home page. Dates and currencies follow each person's regional settings. Content other people wrote always appears in the original language.

Yes. Ripazo is a responsive web app that works on any modern browser, iPhone, Android, iPad, laptop, desktop. No app to install, no app-store gatekeeping, nothing to update. Add Ripazo to your home screen for an app-like icon and fullscreen experience on mobile.

Yes. Ripazo supports DD-MM-YYYY and MM-DD-YYYY, 24-hour and 12-hour time, and the currencies families tend to hold: euros, pounds, dollars, and Swiss francs. Each person configures their own display from Settings. Underlying data is stored in one canonical format, so formatting choices never change meaning.