Automatic Deposits and Gift Certificate Payments on the Booking Engine

These are the steps required if you would like the Booking Engine to automatically charge a deposit at the time of booking and process payments for Gift Certificates in real-time.

PLEASE NOTE: In order to automatically take payments in real-time, you'll need to have Integrated Credit Card Processing enabled.

Step 1 - Create a "same-day" deposit policy.

See the KB article on Configuring Deposit Policies and create a deposit policy that is configured to calculate the Deposit Due Date "0" days after the reservation is created - so the deposit is due the same day that the reservation is made.

Step 2 - Enable  Automatic Payments in the Booking Engine

This is done in the Booking Engine Configuration > Payment Settings section.

Once these steps are complete, Booking Engine reservation deposits and Gift Certificate payments will be automatically processed in real-time within the booking engine. 

One more note! A credit card payment failure or decline will not stop a reservation from completing. The credit card world is not perfect and guests generally have good intentions, so the booking is created and the guest is notified about their payment failure. You can configure the messaging to that guest via the Booking Engine Configuration > Confirmation Options section and let them know what your policies are regarding this situation.