Security Deposit.

  • This topic has 20 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated 3 months ago by J. Davis.
Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 21 total)
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  • #838988
    Ryan Labelle
    Participant

    First I want to say that your plugin is awesome. Thank you for creating it.

    Two part question:

    1 – Can I setup the plugin to take a security deposit as a flat rate? So, let’s say a $250 deposit flat fee on top of the booking cost. This money would be refunded at some point, but I just need them to pay for it first.

    2 – If I can do a security deposit, can I add it without it being taxed even though I have added taxes to all my services and fees already?

    I see the taxes section and I know I can add fees already, but the problem is, if you charge a “Fee Tax” it applies to all Fees. In other words, I’d like to set up a “Cleaning” fee that should be taxed at 12%. But, they want to charge a $250 Security Deposit that is basically to cover possible damages, and if none occur, would be refunded. This Fee should not get taxed. Is there any way you know of that would allow one fee to be taxed while another fee is not taxed? (That “Taxes & Fees” page doesn’t seem to have any setting that would allow you to set Fees as either taxable or not taxable.)

    Also, a flat fee would be awesome, vs the per guest / per day, and per accommodation / per day.

    Thank you so much.

    #839187
    UPR
    Participant

    Ryan, I am interested in this too as we request a security bond as well and I’ve yet to find a way to incorporate this into the booking process.

    Keen to get John’s view on this.

    Cheers,
    Sascha

    #839587
    J. Davis
    Keymaster

    Hi Ryan,

    You may try to add a security deposit as a tax http://prntscr.com/orndb8 and it will not be taxable.

    best regards,
    J. Davis

    #839638
    Ryan Labelle
    Participant

    That’s great! Thank you 🙂

    #840306
    Ryan Labelle
    Participant

    I see the workaround using “Accommodation Taxes”. Thanks.

    Just a suggestion: The “Security Deposit” gets listed under “Accommodation Taxes” which might look funny to customers. Would be great if there was a way to list it as “Fee” but set to “Not Taxed” somehow.

    Love the plugin. Thanks.

    #840394
    UPR
    Participant

    Hi Ryan, you can use the Loco Translate plugin to ‘translate’ or change this term to your liking. Any term or word in the hotel booking plugin for that matter. I’ve been using this and it works great!
    Check this post: https://motopress.com/forums/topic/search-result-page-text/#post-785230

    Cheers,
    Sascha

    #841799
    Ryan Labelle
    Participant

    Great idea. Thank you. 🙂

    #847066
    Ron Mor
    Participant

    Hi,
    In relation to damage/security deposit, is there a way to define it as a separate charge and set it to be authorised but not charged at payment, so it serves as a hold only and released at end of guest stay if no damage done (which is the common case)?
    Thanks.

    Ron

    #847092
    UPR
    Participant

    Hi Ron,
    I’ll help with an answer as I have looked into this for our needs. At this stage, there is no way as this is beyond the scope of the plugin.
    Paypal offers pre-authorisations through their BigCommerce solution via Braintree:
    https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/bigcommerce/transactions/managing-authorizations
    However I wouldn’t rely on this as they are only honoured to 100% for up to three days, after that you need to hope for enough funds in the guests CC-account to recover the charge.
    Furthermore, I think you can do only one at a time: take payment or a pre-authorisation, not both, which would make it very hard for Motopress to implement. Correct me if I am wrong @J.Davis . 😉

    We process the security bond through Paypal (as a separate invoice/charge manually) as it is quite high for our needs and then hold the funds in our Paypal account and refund after guests have checked out with no damage occurred.
    If your bond is low, you can use a separate fee to charge it along with the payment and then refund at a later stage. You would need to process this manually through your payment gateway.

    Hope this helps.
    Sascha

    #847577
    Ron Mor
    Participant

    Thanks a lot for the quick and detailed reply Sascha.
    As you mentioned, at the moment, the only way is to charge a damage deposit as part of booking process and refund it manually later via the payment gateway (which I have done once via Stripe).

    Thanks.
    Ron

    #847584
    UPR
    Participant

    Hi John & Stacy, keen to get your view on this?
    Do you guys think you could implement a separate charge which we could specify to be processed as a pre-autorisation only (maybe via the woo-commerce plugin)?
    This charge needs to be free from any taxes or other fees.
    Visa & Mastercard have 7 days expiry, while Amex has 10 days, so this should probably be alright for most short term stays and maybe would help quite a few people using the plugin.
    However, since the expiry is short, the pre-authorisation can only take place at the day of check-in (another hurdle to jump through).

    I imagine there are quite a few providers taking security bonds?

    Cheers,
    Sascha

    #858887
    Guy Collins
    Participant

    Is there a way with to change the order that taxes / deposit are calculated?

    We want to be able to charge a deposit, which as 15% percent of the rental fee.

    This 15% also acts as a security deposit.

    So, in reality, my deposit is 15% on top of the actual fee – rather than 15% of the fee.

    If I try to add the 15% as a tax, it gets calculated before the deposit gets calculated – so I’m unsure how to get what I need.

    #867663
    Mary Evans
    Participant

    Hello,

    Thank you for your ideas and suggestions, however, we do not fully understand what the desired result should be. Also, our developers make a decision on what features to add based on the quantity of requests for different features. So, you can write you ideas providing detailed description of the required feature.
    For now, you can use workarounds suggested above.

    Guy Collins, as for your question, the only workaround we can offer is to recalculate a booking price manually in the Bookings tab > open the needed booking > the Total Booking Price section.

    Best Regards,
    M. Evans

    #867940
    Ryan Labelle
    Participant

    Hi Mary, I was the OP on this one and my question has been answered. I’m not sure about the other posters but I’m good now.

    Thank you.

    #1045081
    Amy Page
    Participant

    Is this still on the request list? I would really like to NOT have to manually refund my renters if I do not need to charge them a deposit. The process would be much easier if the plug could pre-authorize their card. Just curious on the status, as this is a determining factor if I will keep the plug in…and I love it, so Id hate to change.

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