Payment Term Set - Autopay function
- Carin van de Velde
Introduction Autopay
When a reservation is made, the guest will have to pay for it. Because there are multiple situations, it could differ, when and how much the guest will have to pay. To automate this, there are payment terms. Payment terms can be created with multiple dependencies. One of the specific options is to use Autopay.
Autopay functionality is used to automatically charge the stored guest credit card for a reservation due installment. This functionality is limited to credit card payments only.
There are two types of autopay charges:
Installment autopay
Reseller autopay
Installment autopay
The instalment autopay charges guest credit card for the reservations whose installment was due one day prior to the execution of the auto pay script.
Features:
Credit card is charged based on reservation due installments.
Runs only on production environment
Runs hourly every morning between 01:00 – 05:00 UTC, so five times every day.
If auto charge fails, a memo is added on reservation with the failure message.
In case autopay charging is failed for the first transaction, the autopay script tries at max 5 times or X times (as per retry configuration for a concern) to charge the same installment.
Configuration:
The autopay payer checkbox should be on for enabling auto payments for the distribution channel and payer should be selected in the auto payer combobox.
The autopay field should be set on for the payment term set configuration on the distribution channel.
Apart from the above some internal configuration is also needed which needs to be done by the payments team.
Criteria for selections of due installments:
Installments are due one day prior to the auto pay script execution date.
Installments status is Open or Partial
Reservation should have status between PROVISIONAL and CHECKIN (both included).
Distribution Channel auto payer field should be set on and payer should be selected in the auto payer combo box available in general settings of Distribution Channels. Also payment term set auto pay field should be set on which is available in Distribution Channels Payment Terms Tab.
Reseller autopay
Reseller autopay is used for reseller bookings. For some resellers we receive a virtual credit card for a booking and reseller autopay script charges such credit cards on the arrival date of the reservation.
Features:
Credit card is charged based on reservation arrival date.
Runs only on production environment
Runs every hour every day.
If auto charge fails, a memo is added on reservation with the failure message.
In case autopay charging is failed for the first transaction, the autopay script tries at max X times (as per retry configuration for a concern) to charge the same installment.
Configuration:
Distribution Channel auto pay field should be selected and payer should be configured in the autopayer combobox. (See above screenshots). This configuration is used to create mutation (payment entry) for the selected payer on successful payment.
For enabling reseller autopay for a new concern, some back end configuration is needed and that needs to be done by payments team.
Criteria for selections of due installments:
Generally all reseller reservations have a virtual credit card stored and that is picked up for charging based on the arrival date of the reservation.