ThinkReservations has a feature called "Advanced Deposits" or Automatic Payments. This feature automatically charges a guest's most recently retained credit card on file for the full remaining balance in advance of their arrival date. The system charges the card very early in the day, around 5:15 AM Eastern.
How do I Enable Advanced Deposit?
Please reach out to ThinkReservations. It cannot be enabled on your own at this time. We need to know how many days prior to check-in you would like the remaining balance charged. Our tech team will enable this feature on your account free of charge.
Please note! This feature will apply to all bookings and all units, including OTA reservations where you have a credit card on file...
⚠️ Exceptions
ThinkReservations will not charge the balance on the following OTA Reservations:
Expedia - ExpediaCollect
Airbnb
Booking.com reservations with a Virtual Card
If you need to disable this feature, please contact support so we can disable it on your account.
Once Enabled...
After our team has enabled this feature, your guests will have the remaining balance taken a certain number of days before check-in for all units. If you need to have the number of days adjusted, please use this link, or reach out to support.
You will get a daily digest of the payments for your business via email each day. The guest will not get a separate email after a charge is made on their account. We recommend you set up one of your email and/or message rules to alert your guests that you will be charging their card (today/yesterday/this week, etc.).
Failed transactions will be retried the next day until the arrival date.
Automatic payments will have the note "
Automatic" next to the payment. This is also visible in the payment reports.
How to disable/re-enable for a specific reservation
It's important to note that you can also disable this on a case-by-case basis for reservations that you would like to not have the system take the remaining balance.
Open the reservation in question.
Change the setting on the left for ADVANCED DEPOSIT.
Enabled means that ThinkReservations will attempt to charge the card on file for the remaining balance.
Disabled means that ThinkReservations will not charge the card.
Done - no need to save.
Which card is charged?
When you retain a card in ThinkReservations, you either associate the card with the reservation or customer. The system will charge the most recently added "reservation" credit card. If no reservation credit card, it will charge the newest customer credit card.
Please let us know if you would be interested in enabling this feature!