NOTE
When creating an overpayment on an existing invoice (folio that has already been invoiced), the invoice line will be blue, indicating the overpayment.
Payment Plans
The data required to track accounts receivable are payment plans, charges, and payments received.
Payment plans make it simple to see which payments are due and when. See our guide on the Payments Due report for further info on monies due.
Payment plans define when payments are due, e.g. 30% due 7 days after booking and 70% due 30 days before arrival. Due dates can be calculated from the date of reservation, arrival, or departure.
You can define as many payment plans as you require and allocate a default payment plan to each agent. That plan will automatically be applied to any reservation made by the agent, although adjustments can be made at the reservation level.
To create a Payment plan, see the Payment plan code table guide and see the Updating payment plans guide under Central Reservations to see how to update payment plans on a reservation.
Setting up your payment plans
Using your guide on setting up payment plans, have a look at the following fields and how to work with them.
- New record
- Save icon
- Base date – date that the plan is offset against
- Final date – Used with plans that require payment on a specific day of the month. Your selection, in this case, would be “Final date offset in days”.
- Agent Override – Only applies if the selection in (4) is “offset in days”.
- Amount – Fixed amount or percentage of total booking cost
- Base offset in days – works with (3) ie Base date is reservation/creation date, a number of days in a positive will be after this base date, numbers in a negative will be before this base date.
- Final date offset in days – Only applies if Final Date is set to “Day of the Month”. Set the day of the month that payment should be due ie the 25th day of the reservation/creation month of the booking. The positive number is the actual day of the month, if the booking arrives after this date ie 28th, payment will be due on the 25th of the following month. Days in a negative will deduct the number from the last day of the month ie -2 would be the 28th (30 – 2).
Here are some nice examples of the more popular types of plans and how to set them up.
Example 1:
50% payment 7 days after reservation/creation date
50% payment 30 days before arrival
The positive 7 implies that the first payment of 50% will be due 7 days after the reservation date or the date that the booking is created in your ResRequest system.
The negative 30 will stipulate a final payment date 30 days before the arrival date.
Example 2:
100% due on the 25th day of the month of arrival
Here we have specified that the customer is due to pay 100% of the total booking cost on the 25th day of the month of arrival ie arrives 15th, payment due 25th.
Example 3:
Specific agents are expected to pay on a different day of the month than the payment plan selected. Ensure that the expected day of the month is set up on your agent profile.
The only change needed to the payment plan would be to specify “yes” to Agent override.
When the agent is set to override the payment plan, the agent’s default settings will apply to the booking’s due amounts.
In the above captions, you can see that the agent’s default “Day of the month” is the 28th.
The Payment plan specifies that all agents require to pay on the 25th day of the arrival month.
If this agent and specific payment plan is used on a booking, the full payment of the booking total will be due on the 28th day of the month as the agent default settings have overridden the payment plan.
Should you need any help setting up payment plans, feel free to contact us at support.resrequest.co.za, and one of our friendly consultants will gladly assist you.
Reservations often undergo a lot of change between the time of the original inquiry and the ultimate departure of the guests from your property. It is therefore usually preferable to obtain advance payments on the strength of a proforma document and only produces a Tax Invoice on or after the date of guest departure.
The implication of invoicing a folio is that the proforma is converted into an official accounting document complying with statutory presentation requirements, with an auditable sequence number. The chargeable items on an invoice cannot be altered – hence the benefit of leaving the invoicing until there is little likelihood of any change being required.
In some countries, VAT is payable upon receipt of payment or upon delivery of the service, whichever happens, earlier. In such circumstances, it is necessary to produce an invoice for each deposit received. This does add some workload but ResRequest is able to provide you with an operational procedure that will enable you to comply with the statutory requirements and cater for the eventuality of multiple taxes (e.g. VAT and Catering Levy) being due at different times.
Have a look at our guide on Payment of VAT in advance for more info on this process.
So, the factors influencing the timing and location of invoice generation are the time that the VAT is due, which environment (Reservations Office or Property) owns the folio, and the likelihood of changes to the folio.
If the itinerary date is later than the specified day of the month, the payment will be due the following month on the specified date.
By placing a negative number in the Final date offset in the day’s field, the reservation will subtract this amount of days from the end of the month ie -2 will result in the payment is due on the a) 28th of a 30 day month; b) 29th of a 31 day month; c) 26th of February with a 28 day month.
Voiding invoices
Inevitably, there will be occasions when it is necessary to alter a charge subsequent to the invoice having been generated – or to reverse an invoice that has been generated in error. For this reason, it is possible to void an invoice.
When this is done the voided invoice is retained, with its unique number, and it can still be viewed and printed. Thus the integrity of the invoice audit trail is maintained.
You have the option of simply voiding the invoice, which is likely to be your choice if the invoice was generated in error and has not been sent to the customer, or reversing it with a credit note.
Credit notes
If a credit note is created then a new document, with its own number and a negative value, is generated. You may choose this option if you need to reverse the full charge already sent to the customer.
In yet other cases, you may wish to issue a credit note without voiding an existing invoice. The simplest way to do this is to create a negative value extra and place it on a new folio. See the Extras guide on how to create extras. On detecting the negative charge the system will automatically change the document title to ‘Credit Note’.
Alternatively, if you need to issue a credit and also reduce the bed night count, e.g. if you have charged for an extra night, you can create a new itinerary line with a negative number of rooms. Provided the original itinerary lines have been invoiced, the system will generate a new folio and because the value of the folio is negative the title will be ‘Credit Note’.
Generating invoices
Invoices and Credit Notes can be generated either individually or in bulk from the Folio / Invoice report, the Reservation > Financial > Folios tab, or from the Rooming Calendar. For detail on the generation process, see the Invoicing guide under Central Reservations.
Here is a summary of the various financial documents that can be created and the situations under which each is applicable.
- Situation
- Generate a normal client invoice
- Void the invoice without having to send anything to the client.
Example: there was an error on the invoice but it has not yet been sent to the client.
- Client has received an invoice, which now needs to be reversed. Reversal needs to be an exact contra of the invoice.
Example: there was an error on the invoice and the invoice will subsequently be re-invoiced.
- Client has been correctly invoiced but a credit is now required.
Example: a full credit is to be granted in response to a guest complaint.
- Document Implications
- TAX INVOICE
· Financial entries are generated
- VOID INVOICE
· Document does not show negative values.
· Document title is ‘Void Invoice’.
· Financial entries are generated to contra those of the Tax Invoice.
- CREDIT NOTE
· Financial entries are generated to contra those of the Tax Invoice.
· Document title is ‘Credit note’.
· Document shows negative values.
- CREDIT NOTE
· Bed nights are reversed. (You can create a credit without affecting bed nights by entering 0 pax and a negative override per stay or per unit. However, room nights will be affected.)
· Credits can be generated for accommodation and / or extras.
· An independent set of financial transactions is generated.
· Document title is ‘Credit Note’.
- Procedure
- Generate a new invoice (from the reservation or from the Folio / Invoice report)
- Void an existing invoice (from the reservation or from the Folio / Invoice report).
- Generate a credit note from an existing invoice (from the reservation or from the Folio / Invoice report)
- · Create an itinerary item for a negative number of nights. (The new itinerary item should be added to the reservation on which the original invoice was generated.)
· Alternatively, create a negative value extra and place it on a new folio.
· Generate a new ‘invoice’ (which is titled ‘Credit note’).
Working with Cancellations
(cancellations, cancellation status, link to CRS cancellation)
It is vital for reporting and financial purposes that all Users deal with Cancellations consistently. Generally, it is advised to change Provisional bookings that are cancelled to Quotation status and Confirmed bookings that are cancelled to Cancelled status.
Cancellations of Confirmed bookings will be discussed in more detail below but before deciding how your Company should deal with Cancellations, the following must be considered:
- What constitutes a Cancellation for you? Any Confirmed booking that is released, regardless of whether Cancellation Fees apply or not? Would you also consider a reduction in the number of people or nights a Cancellation (which will impact negatively on your revenue) and if so, does any reduction count, or must the value of the impact be over a certain amount for you to treat it like a Cancellation? Consider Option 1 in combination with one of the below.
- What aspect of Cancelled Bookings might you want to report on?
- If you want to report on lost revenue and bednights: consider Option 2
- If you want to report on lost bednights only: consider Option 3
- If you are using ResRequest for General Ledger posting: consider Option 4
- If you will never report on any aspect of Cancellations: consider Option 5
Option 1
When a reduction in number of nights or pax on a Confirmed booking constitutes a Cancellation:
- Create a new Reservation for the Cancelled portion of the booking with a Cancelled status (so that you have a record of what was cancelled bednights and revenue).
- Remove the Cancelled portion of the booking from the Confirmed booking.
- Reference the new Reservation in the Notes.
- Select the Option below which best reflects how you want to deal with Cancellations.
Option 2
Cancelling when no Cancellation Fees Apply
- Change Status to Cancelled
- Add Extra called Cancellation to every Folio on the Reservation and put in a negative amount to 0 the Reservation total. E.g. if total reservation cost is 8,900, the value of the Extra must be -8,900. Note that although this will reduce the value of the booking to 0, it will not necessarily balance each revenue element (rate components and extras) and taxes to 0.
Cancelling when Cancellation Fees Apply
- Change Status to Cancelled
- Add Extra called Cancellation to every Folio on the Reservation and put in a negative amount to 0 the Reservation total. E.g. if total reservation cost is 8,900, the value of the Extra must be -8,900.
- Add a Cancellation Fees Extra to each Property, ensuring it is Property Specific with the necessary Fees. If the Property falls under a different Invoicing Unit ensure the Extra is attributed to the correct Folio.
Option 3
Cancelling when no Cancellation Fees Apply
- Change Status to Cancelled
- Override pppn rate to 0, and de-select all Optional Components. (You can still report on cancelled bednights but not lost revenue).
- Override all chargeable Extras to 0 charge.
Cancelling when Cancellation Fees Apply
- Change Status to Cancelled
- Override pppn rate to 0, and de-select all Optional Components. (You can still report on cancelled bednights but not lost revenue).
- Override all chargeable Extras to 0 charge.
- Add a Cancellation Fees Extra to each Property, ensuring it is Property Specific with the necessary Fees. If the Property falls under a different Invoicing Unit ensure the Extra is attributed to the correct Folio.
Option 4
- You want to Invoice Cancelled bookings in case Cancellation Fees apply, and to lock them (once folios are invoiced they are not editable) to prevent future editing
- Bookings with a 0 Total do not get batched
- So bookings that do not have Cancellation Fees will not be batched (although they have been Invoiced) – provided you override the total to 0.
Cancelling when no Cancellation Fees Apply
- Change Status to Cancelled
- Override pppn rate to 0, and de-select all Optional Components. (You can still report on cancelled bednights – but not lost revenue).
- Override all chargeable Extras to 0 charge.
Cancelling when Cancellation Fees Apply
- Change Status to Cancelled
- Override pppn rate to 0, and de-select all Optional Components. (You can still report on cancelled bednights but not lost revenue).
- Override all chargeable Extras to 0 charge.
- Add a Cancellation Fees Extra to each Property, ensuring it is Property Specific – with the necessary Fees. If the Property falls under a different Invoicing Unit – ensure the Extra is attributed to the correct Folio.
- Ensure you include Cancelled bookings on Revenue and Payments Due Reports.
Option 5
Cancelling when no Cancellation Fees Apply
- Change Status to Cancelled
- Set # Rooms booked to 0
- Override all chargeable Extras to 0 charge.
Cancelling when Cancellation Fees Apply
- Change Status to Cancelled
- Set # Rooms booked to 0
- Override all chargeable Extras to 0 charge.
- Add an Extra called Cancellation Fees to each Property, ensuring it is Property Specific with the necessary Fees attributed to that Property.
- Ensure you include Cancelled bookings on Revenue and Payments Due Reports.
Chasing Payments
Chasing payments can become a tedious, but necessary, chore but ResRequest can help with this. The Payments Due report brings the payment plan, charges and receipts together to show amounts due at any given date. The report provides a summary per debtor, together with reservation details. From a single report containing any number of debtors, you can generate emails to each individual debtor with a PDF attachment that contains only that debtor’s section of the report.
An alternate report is the Customer Statement. The key difference of this report, compared to Payments Due, is that it does not take the payment plan into account – it presents the amount due irrespective of when it is due. It also presents more detail than the Payments Due report.
The Financial Analysis (Folio) report can also be useful in analysing amounts due although, unlike the Payments Due and Customer Statement, it is not designed for presentation to the customer.
Another tool for managing amounts due is the Age Analysis report, which shows the age (in months) of amounts outstanding as measured against the payment plan. This will not match with an age analysis produced from the accounting system, which only recognises amounts due once they have been invoiced and does not take account of credit terms.
Visit our website
