Standard Payment Term setup instructions
- Carin van de Velde
Introduction Standard Payment Term
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.
First a Payment Term Set has to be created.
Per Payment Term Set, multiple Payment Terms can be added. The Payment Terms can be divided into 3 categories:
Standard Payment Terms
Spread Payment Terms (handled in Spread Payment Term set up instructions )
Business Snapshot Payment Terms (handled in Business Snapshot Payment Term set up instructions )
In this section the possibilities of the Standard Payment Terms will be described.
Setup Standard Payment Terms
When a payment term set has been configured, payment terms could be added (also called Main Terms) to the payment term set. The main terms define at what moment(s) a customer (or a group of customers) need to pay for the booking. To do so, select your payment term set and then press the “Add” button under the Main Terms board as shown below:
You should get the following pop-up window :
In the finance part of the basic payment wizard you can select the following options :
Payer/payee for this payment term: Select who is going to be payer of this payment term. This also refers to who will be notified when payments are to be made. A selection of one of the 3 options (customer, paying customer or agent) is mandatory.
Spread payments: When choosing this option, you can select to spread the payments that are to be received into multiple, smaller payments. More details you can find Spread Payments
Do not send reminders for this term: By checking this box, you can choose to not send reminders for this payment term. To setup reminders, please see the Reminder configuration page and it’s sub-pages for more information.
Total term amount has a minimum of: This field will set the first payment on a fixed minimum amount. Example:
the Down payment is set on 50% of the total amount
the Minimum is set on €100
the total amount is €150
The normal Payment term should give a Down payment of 50% of €150 = €75. But because the minimum amount has been set on €100, the first term will be set on €100 and the second term on €50.
=> Note: if the minimum amount is higher than the total amount, the second term will be negative.
Once all of the relevant information is configured, click on “Next>>”. You should get the following pop-up window:
In the date part of the basic payment term wizard, we can configure the following elements :
Name: This field allows you to add a name to the main term.
Priority: Here, you can select the priority of your payment term. The priority will determine the hierarchy of the different payment terms within a payment term set.
Reservation date from/to: Configure for which reservation time frame this payment term is applied. This is only necessary, when there are multiple payment terms within the same payment term set for different reservation periods.
Last due date: This is the moment when the payment term should be fully paid. In the screenshot above, the last due date is set on 1 week before arrival. If there is a reservation for 08/01/2024, the payment term should be fully paid on 01/01/2024. There are many other parameters on which you can configure the last due date:
A specific date:
reservation = the date that the reservation has been made Provisional
arrival = the date that the guests will arrive
departure = the date that the guests will depart
snapshot start date = the start date of the snapshot
snapshot end date = the end date of the snapshot
X days/weeks/months before/after a specific date, where specific date =:
the same options as above
1 extra option: X days/weeks/months before/after issue date = the date that the confirmation has been sent
Fixed date = a fixed date. 2 Dates can be given in, the first date field is shown in the Last due date field and also in the reservation that date is added as due date of the payment term.
Due date of month
Due on final day of month = The payment term has it’s due date on the last day of the next month. When reservation date = 29/05, the due date will be on 30/06.
Due on specific day of month ( X ) = The X day of the next month a payment term has it’s due date. When reservation date = 29/05, the due date will be on 15/06 when X = 6.
Issue date: This is the date that the reservation confirmation has to be sent to the guest. Usually this will be the day the reservation has been made. Previously, this was set on one day after reservation, so that there was some time to (manually) check all reservations. The options are the same as the options for the Last due dates, except for the option for Due date of month, which is not available under Issue date.
When you have entered all of the relevant information, click on “Next>>”. You should get the following pop-up window:
This is the final window where you have a recap of all of the setup you just went through. You can navigate back if you need to make any changes. You will also be able to edit the payment term set once it is created. Click on “Finish” to finalize the set-up of your payment term set.
Verify your expected outcome
To see if the configuration will give the expected outcome, a new reservation should be created in Reservation Manager/Dashboard. The Distribution Channel in which the changes have been done should be chosen. Or a child of this Distribution Channel.
When the reservation has been created, the payment terms could be checked in the menu More options/Finance/Installments.
The outcome could be dependent of the period between reservation date and arrival date.
Example: the result of a “standard” payment term configuration with a down payment of 30% calculated over all resources, due 2 weeks after reservation and a remainder due 8 weeks before arrival: