Setting up a deposit (pre-auth and taking payments)

Posted in Pre Paid.

Here’s how to create a pre payment or pre authorisation

You can set up one or many pre paid or pre authorisations whether you would like to take a deposit per head which then comes off the price paid for their meal or just pre authorise cards which you will then charge a cancellation fee for if they are a no show or cancel.

These can be defined to specific days, dates and times. You can have a few different ones running if you wish to change the price for weekend bookings.

To create a pre authorisation / pre paid, follow the below steps

  • Go to Manage Venue
  • Venue Settings
  • Prepay Settings
  • On the left fill out
    • Prepay Description
    • Prepay Rule Trigger – This is what size the party has to be until they have to enter their card details. If its set as 1, it will make a party of 1 or more enter their card details
    • Prepay Rule Amount – How much you are wanting to charge/pre authorise
    • Prepay Rule Cutoff Days – This is how long customers have to put in their card details. ‘0’ is 1 hour, then it goes up in days from 1 upwards.
    • Take Payment or Preauthorise – whether you are wanting to take payment or pre authorise the card
    • Prepay Payment Type – If you want it to charge/pre authorise per booking or per head
    • Start Date & End Date – If you are running the same thing all year round, this does not need to be entered.

If you wish to define the payment to certain days and times, follow the below

  • Once you have made the prepay / pre auth click Manage on the right
  • at the bottom, click Defined Times
  • Set the Start Time, End Time and the Days it applies to

Please note that if you have more than one pre pay rule running at the same time, you will need to tell the system which pre pay rule to use first. For example you may have a generic pre pay rule that runs at all times. This needs to be set as priority 99 which will mean if there is another prepay rule running at the same time say for Fathers Day, the system will use the Fathers Day rule first rather than the generic rule.