Clarifying Security Deposit Automation Setup Options

Hi All!
I have done a good search on this topic but can't find the answer to this scenario. I hope someone can clarify.

Here's my current secdep setup:

A few months ago I set up my property rules so the system does an automatic security deposit *hold* that happens three days prior to a guest's arrival. Just below where you choose that, in the next section on the page, you have to choose to either SEND an email reminder or NOT send. I didn't know which one to choose, so I selected the "recommended" option which is "An email reminder will be sent to the guest *IF* a security deposit is "NOT* scheduled to be automatically collected."

That language was a little confusing but because it said "recommended" next to it, I went ahead and selected it even though it felt in contradiction to prior setting. Honestly, I figured that because the secdep was going to be automatically collected, the email just wouldn't get sent except in specific cases.

Fast forward to today... I have a guest arriving on the 14th (three days from now) and my guest received an email (which I was CC'd on) asking her to "click here to submit your security deposit." That confused me, because I expected that the secdep was going to be held automatically, as per my property rules selections.

Are you still with me? LOL... :-)

She DID click through the link provided and submit her $500 deposit, but then I got worried that the OwnerRez system would ALSO do the automatic collection, so she would end up with a $1000 hold on her card. To prevent a double hold, I went immediately into her booking, clicked on TRANSACTIONS, clicked on the security deposit transaction, and switched the automated secdep deposit option to "Do Not Collect." Was that the right thing or the wrong thing to do? I really have no idea.

Secondly, since she received an email to click and submit a deposit, does that mean that my secdeps are NOT being automatically held, even though I chose the automatic hold option in my property rules? Because I thought the email reminder was ONLY going to come into play for bookings where the secdep was NOT going to be automatically collected.

Going forward, how should I configure my email reminder settings so this doesn't happen again? Do I just choose "Do not send reminder" and if so, will that work?

Thanks so much!

Ahh, so lets trace this back. Best way to see what happened is to hit the Search Emails link in the top right of the booking area for that booking.

So looking at the history of the booking, the secdep was automatically scheduled and processed. HOWEVER -- that auto processed secdep had an error during processing: "The bank did not approve this request. Details: D01 - Denied by customer's bank (DECLINED)". So since the hold failed, the system sent out the security deposit fail and reminder emails with links for the guest to update their card. Then they did, and everything's good to go.

In terms of the rule, it's not going to double it from the rule -- that rule simply means whether it creates the scheduled security deposit in the system or not. If the guest goes to the link again and there's a secdep in place they'll get a "A security deposit has already been reserved for this booking." message and not be able to reserve another one (unless you release the existing one).

The reminder emails are a fallback for if you don't have an auto scheduled secdep -- for example you created a booking by hand and forgot to schedule the secdep, or something like that. Or if you have PayPal. But if it's an auto scheduled, that will override the reminder emails.

The only reason it was different in this case was because the auto secdep actually tried and failed.

Awesome THANK YOU! That makes perfect sense!