Payment from partner (OTA) / Payment by invoice
New update also brings change in reservation parameter “payment by invoice” and “payment from OTA” which was until now consider for the entire reservation (meaning all room account items).
These parameters could have been set in room account manually or were set automatically in situations where the reservation from partner was already prepaid (payment from OTA) and contained virtual credit card.
In company database you were able to set parameter “payment by invoice” for selected companies. When you assigned such company to reservation then the parameter was automatically selected.
With one of these parameters assigned you were able to see this information both in room account and more importantly in reservation hint in reservation calendar.
Parameter also affected for example the Alfred guest app. Reservations marked with one of those were considered as paid and no payment was required by Alfred (for example for providing access to room code / electronic room keys).
What was the problem with current parameters?
We have encountered several problematic situations regarding the fact that the parameters were set for entire reservation and not single account items.
Most common situation was that guests ordered at Booking.com (or any other OTA). Reservation was marked as “payment from OTA” because virtual credit card with reservation payment was included and provided to hotelier.
Guests then ordered some additional service directly in hotel or in Alfred app which was of course not yet paid compared to the prepaid accommodation. Despite that Alfred still considered the reservation as fully paid due to “payment from partner (OTA)” parameter and could have provided the guest room access without additional payment of extra service.
Same problem was also with accommodation tax which is sometimes not paid at the OTA (and not included in the prepayment on virtual cc), but its set to be collected upon guest arrival.
Similar story occured with receptionist which did not checked room accounts of reservations marked with “payment from partner (OTA)” during the departure because he/she also considered it as prepaid.
Then we fast forward to the problematic moment when hotelier wants to deduct the money from the virtual cc. Reservation price was 5000 in total, 4000 was prepaid accommodation price and 1000 was the extra service price.
Hotelier wants to deduct the entire 5000 but the virtual cc “contains” only actually prepaid 4000 and remaining 1000 remained unpaid (price of the service had to be requested from the guest who has already left the place).
How do we change the parameters?
Both parameters are not completely cancelled, we just adjust their behaviour so we can cover the situations mentioned in previous section. Newly these things are set using the “owner” function.
As mentioned in general article, owner of the account item can be also company and reservation partner (OTA). In our case it means that if we receive prepaid reservation from partner we assign the partner as the owner of all account items. Thats provides that these items will be considered as paid (by partner) for example in Alfred app.
Original “payment by invoice” works very similar. Still you set this for particular company in your database and when such company is added to reservation its also assigned to all account items as its owner and items are also considered as paid.
If you then add more items to room account, its completely up to you if you will assign the company as the owner of those items (company pays in one general invoice after few months for all its reservations) or if the guests will pay these items separately upon departure.
ATTENTION > If you add such company to reservation which already has some owners assigned, we will not replace the original owners with assigned company and you will have to do it manually (using the group edit of owner for account items).
If there is at least one item with owner partner/company you will still see the information payment from partner (OTA)/payment by invoice in reservation hint in calendar.
If we sum the entire article in one sentence – parameters are not set for every single item in account and you can set it by assigning company or can be set automatically by receiving prepaid reservation from the OTA. All this should really help with your invoicing.
Mailing campaigns and conditions for sending
Our mailing module already contains parameters for sending of campaigns based on this payment from partner (OTA) / payment by invoice parameter. Hoteliers differenciate the content of the emails based on the fact if the reservation is already prepaid or its reservation which needs to be paid in regular way (phone orders etc).
Mailing conditions will remain functional after the update meaning that all your preset emails campaigns using them will also continue working properly.
There will be only slight change in logic of the condition. If there will be at least one item in room account assigned to reservation partner (e.g. Booking) or to company (which is set to have payment by invoice) then we will still count the reservation as marked with payment from partner / payment by invoice parameter.
