How to Charge a Reservation After It’s Been Modified
- When using automatic payments, charges are created automatically when Hostaway receives the reservation. The total of these charges should match 100% of the reservation amount. But what happens if a guest makes changes to their reservation?
- If the guest modifies any details—such as dates, number of guests, etc.—the reservation total will be updated accordingly. However, whether the new total automatically adjusts in your charges depends on how your auto-charges template is configured, particularly regarding the remaining balance
- If the updated reservation total is higher or lower than the sum of the paid and scheduled charges, a warning will appear on the reservation. This will prompt you to either adjust the balance or manually charge the difference by adding a new charge or updating an existing one.
Key Notes
- The system will verify if the total of your charges matches the updated reservation total. If there’s a discrepancy, the system will mark the charge as "Failed." At that point, you will need to charge manually
- We don’t automatically adjust charges to prevent overcharging the guest and to avoid potential complaints.
Having the Right Notifications On
For you or your users, you should make sure to have notifications for "Reservation is modified" selected, so you will be notified when a modification has been done.
You have Notifications on Payment as well:
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Add card failed: The Channel could not send the card. The reason can be found in the Reservation > Payment
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Charge failed: The charge has failed. The reason can be found in the invoice with the failed charge
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Pre-auth failed: The reason can be found in the invoice with the failed charge
How to charge the difference to your guest?
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Review that the reservation breakdown making up the total reservation sum is correct
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Review if you have an adjusted remaining balance charge due to be paid that completes the 100% reservation sum to be charged
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In the event you wish to charge manually a new amount add it as a manual charge to the reservation
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If you are trying to add an extra charge for a credit card payment on a reservation, but the payment is not going through and the 'Retry' option is not working, the issue is likely due to the additional charge exceeding the reservation's outstanding balance. To resolve this, you should first add the extra charge to the reservation's financial fields before attempting to process the payment.
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To resolve the issue of a manual charge doubling the invoice, you can cancel the failed charges that were automatically generated due to the Auto Payment feature. Go to the reservation details, scroll down to the 'Payments' section, locate the failed charges, and click the three dots on the right side to cancel them. This will remove the duplicate charges and correctly record the manual payment made by the guest.
Charging for Additional Amenities
To charge guests for additional amenities without affecting the total reservation amount, you can add the charges as a manual fee on the reservation. Go to the reservation, click 'Edit/Modify', scroll down to the 'Financial fields and formulas' section, and click 'Add' to add the additional charge. This will ensure the total reservation amount is not affected.