Security deposits is a common practice to ask for a fee to the guest, to protect against possible damages that may occur in the stay.
Activating the feature will allow you to request the payment your guest within the Online Check-in process that could be completed before the check-in date.
Note: In order to activate this feature, first you need to complete the Payment Settings.
How it works?
After activating the Security Deposit feature, an extra page will be included in the Online Check-in page.
At online check-in, your guests will be asked to add a credit or debit card to proceed with the "payment" of the deposit.
The "payment" does not collect the amount immediately, but rather requests a "retention" from the bank to block the amount.
You can charge the amount withheld if necessary within 7 days after check-out.
If the charge is not made, the hold will be automatically released and returned to the guest.
Important: If you also have payment of reservations or tourist taxes activated, the guest will have to do 2 operations: Pay the reservation and taxes, pay the retention of the deposit.
Note: this feature has a fee of 1.5%+30 cents per each preauthorization and we won’t charge any monthly fixed fee.
Activating Security Deposit
1 - Go to you properties and select the desired property to activate Security Deposit
2 - Scroll down until you fon the "Security Deposit" section and click the switch to activate the feature.
3 - Add the deposit amount that you'd like to request you guests to pay.
4 - Select if you want to exclude some reservations from being requested to pay the deposit based on the booking source. You could leave this empty if you want to request the deposit for all reservations.
5 - Select if you want to request the deposit optional or mandatory on the Online Check-in process.
If you select Optional, the lead guest will see an option to "Pay at the accommodation" and skip the step.
If you select Mandatory, the lead guest will need to pay the deposit to continue, otherwise it won't be able to continue with the rest of the process or register the rest of the guests.
6 - Click "Save changes" on the property to save the data.
Deposits with or without pre-authorisation
FLOW WITH PRE-AUTHORISATION ON
Guest completes the online check-in where they will be asked to add credit/debit card details for the deposit;
The amount desired by you will be retained on the guest card;
You have up to 30 days to collect the deposit or up to 7 days from check-out date, whichever comes first. If 1 week has passed since the check-out date, there is no option to make any charge.
The amount is retained by generating a pre-authorisation each 7 days. Every 7 days the existing pre-authorisation expires, once that pre-authorisation expires a new one is created. There will never be 2 pre-authorisations in use at the same time.
In some banks these pre-authorisations appear as payments, so when they are renewed weekly the guests can receive a notification from the bank and they may think that they have for a second time another amount blocked but it's not like that, we block the amount the second time only once the first pre authorization has expired.
FLOW WITH PRE-AUTHORISATION OFF
Guest checks in
Then the payment gateway appears where the cost of the deposit is informed.
The operation is made with the bank, which shows that the amount to be charged is 0€ (no withholding or collection is made).
If you want to make a charge to the deposit, this pre-authorisation is used. The operation is carried out as if it were a normal payment but with the particularity that the client does not have to accept the operation.