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New Guests Payments module

Safna
  • Updated


The New Guests Payments Module comes with many improvements and new functionalities.

Payment status

Payment status refers to the amount that was already paid by the guest. 

We will have 4 types of payment statuses:

  1. Paid: The total price was paid. This includes some cases where more than the total price was paid too

  2. Partially paid: Only a part was paid

  3. Unpaid: Nothing was paid

  4. Unknown: We imported the reservation but we don’t have these details (b.com, Expedia, iCals, CSV imports, including Vrbo); it changes to partially paid or paid when a charge is added

When OTAs take care of the payment, we generate an auxiliary charge to reflect what the guest paid. Therefore the logic is as follows:

  1. Internal channels (direct, booking engine, wordpress, partners, google), Vrbo, Expedia and usually Booking.com (when we receive CC or VCC details): We’ll base it completely on our system charges
  2. Airbnb, Marriott, Booking.com (when we don’t receive CC or VCC details): We generate an auxiliary charge with the method “OTA payment”

The payment status is visible inside and outside reservations.

1. Inside the reservations

A. A status tag next to the reservation status



B. payment balance bar. It only considers due, paid, awaiting confirmation and failed charges there. Not created charges will appear as “remaining charges”. There is a different colour for each status

C. list charges timeline: they are represented by a dot (charge) or square (pre-auth). It is possible to do some actions for each of them



D. Next to the progress bar you will be seeing a warning message when the system detects that it has or is going to charge over the total price, or vice-versa: when the system detects that some charges may be missing.


 

E. A tooltip for each different case will be displayed to help to understand where the numbers and charges come from

F. Inside reservations we have a section called “Payment” (we merged invoices & charges and payment sections) consisting of these details, a min table with the charges and the available actions per charge and the credit card options




The “Is paid” option will not be visible anymore in the reservations


We will only have one dropdown for all reservations with the different payment statuses: Paid, Partially Paid, Unpaid.

Note : This status can be manually overridden if needed. If it happens, a warning will explain that this status needs to be manually handled from now on

 

2. Outside reservations

A Reservations table.

Added: We have added Payment status filters and additional Columns (Payment status, Balance, Remaining balance and Paid amount) in the Reservations page

These columns will also appear in the reservation csv files





B. Inbox: payment status is visible in Inbox now



C. Calendar: Same in the calendar the payment status is visible now



 

What are the changes in the system when using the New Guest Payment Module?

 

1. Invoices 

Invoices are generated per reservation and they will reflect the last changes of the reservation. Auto-invoices will not exist anymore when using this new guest payment module. Instead, we'll have auto-payments (see point 5 below). Invoices can be found:

A . Inside the reservation

B. In the charges table → You can filter By reservation view



C. In the guest portal



Below is the screenshot of an example PDF Document Download  

The invoice number is unique per reservation, and has a “version”. So if the reservation or template becomes updated after a previous invoice was generated in the past, well change the number (in the example below, it would become Invoice #15442710-2) for next reservation's invoice



2. Receipts:

Each charge has a receipt, and it can be downloaded in a pdf. A template can be set for Receipts as well, and a pdf can be downloaded for each of them. These are visible:

A. Inside reservations



B. In the charges table



C. In the guest portal (only for paid charges)


Below is the screenshot of an example PDF Document Download  



Note Now you can choose if you want to show or not invoices and receipts in the guest portal

Now it is possible to choose if you want to show invoices and when: Always, After check-in, After check-out, After fully paid. It is also possible to select the channels.
Eg : you prefer guests to still get their invoices from Airbnb, but not for the booking engine or direct bookings. And only after they have fully paid. Well, now it is possible!
Receipts for paid charges can be hidden as well.
Atm, by default both options will be turned to ON and all channels selected for new listings.


3. Offline Charges 

For many reasons, payments can happen outside Hostaway: bank transfers, cash, credit card payments not going through Hostaway etc. 

We introduced payment methods for charges which will generate “offline charges” and behave in a very similar way to current charges. The main difference is that these will need to be 100% managed manually by you.



4. Charges table

  • The charges table contains all statuses of charges
  • Filters can be applied 
  • CSV reports can be downloaded according to the selection 

    mceclip0.png
  • Columns now can be drag&dropped and sorted by their values.
  • Actions are also possible from this table

    mceclip1.png
  • We added a “by reservation” grouped view where it show any reservation that contains charges based on the filters that you have selected. It gives an overview of the payment status for the reservation, and if unfolded it will show the charges it contains. The CSV’s will always be the same, no matter the view you have selected 




    5. Auto-payments

    In the new guest payment module, the invoice and charges will not be together. Charges will not belong anymore to an invoice but to a reservation.

    This affects Auto-payments, our simplified and improved version of Auto-invoices.

    Line Items - This component is removed from the charges 
    We have removed the currency selector in the charges and the system will use the reservation currency:



    Channels can be multi-select

    Remaining balance: We added a “Remaining balance” type of amount, on top of percentage and flat. This is a smart auto-charge whose value will adapt in case other charges are added or the total price changes. This is very useful to cover cases such as reservation alterations (dates got extended or reduced, we added manually extras, increased the value of some price components etc.).
    Today only one remaining balance per reservation should be applied (and can only be added automatically, not by manual charge).

    Based on this option some suggested setups are:

    1. 50% at reservation time + Remaining balance at check-in

    2. 50% at reservation time + Remaining balance at check-out

    3. 100% at reservation time + Remaining balance at check-out (generally will be 0, but it would collect any pending items; doesn't cover well reductions however)

    Let’s keep in mind that extras purchased via the guest portal generate immediately a charge for the purchased amount

    6. Document templates

    Finally, we added a section to customize the templates for Receipts and Invoices.

    They have very similar options, but the highlights are:

    1. Logo

    2. Colors

    3. Information

      1. This data can be listing-specific, so it will adapt based on what is set on listing level

        1. We have merged the sections “Contact person” and “Invoicing” of listing settings

      2. Reservation and custom listing fields are

    4. It has a preview that adapts (or sets place-holders when we need specific information)



    Note : Today only one document template can be set per document type (receipt/invoice)

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