Deposits and card capture are both a great way of ensuring your restaurant's revenue is secure and that customers attend their booking so you avoid the dreaded no show.
Important: simpleERB has recently made changes to the payment process. We received feedback that some customers were abusing the old process where the payment rule for the booking was not enforced, leaving some customers not making the deposit payment or supplying a card prior to the booking date. See the new enforced process for bookings outlined further in the article. For information about how to monitor existing bookings with a payment rule, please click here.
simpleERB payment rules are flexible allowing you to set specific deposit amounts based on date or time and party size, you could charge per cover or per table and you can also set deadlines for telephone customers to pay by which you can monitor, set a due date for reminders before it is auto-cancelled in the system.
All of this is done securely and PCI and SCA (PSD2) compliant so that you don’t have card numbers or payment details lying around or visible to staff. It also usefully helps out your cash flow!
But what happens if the customer makes the payment after the booking is cancelled?
If the payment screen remains open, the customer can still make the payment after the booking is cancelled, if there is availability in the restaurant, the booking is reinstated and the booking is updated to let you know this.
Under the notes section you will the following notes;
Reservation cancelled. Deposit/card details not supplied.
Booking reinstated – Deposit/card details supplied
This can also be seen in deposit reports here
If no availability remains, for example someone else has booked the table after the booking was cancelled or the table was closed off, the customer will receive a message that the link has expired and will not receive a booking confirmation.
The booking will remain cancelled and the deposit will be marked as refunded in simpleERB. You will see the following in the deposit reports;
You can see more on deposit/card capture in the following articles;