Is it possible to make sure a security deposit is held before confirming a booking?
Before confirming a booking? No, because security holds expire after awhile, and it could be any length of time between the booking being made/confirmed and the actual arrival.
My system is set up to hold a security deposit 3 days before arrival.
Yes, this is the normal best practice.
There has been a recent incident where a guest caused damage but there is no security deposit held for them.
It looks like they removed the credit card from the system before a security deposit could be held.
That's not actually possible - once the credit card has been provided by the guest, there is no way for them to remove it from OwnerRez.
It is possible for the guest to cancel the card so it won't work for future charges though. If you'd like to write in to the Helpdesk with the ORB number of the booking, we can investigate and see exactly what happened.
Is there a way to make sure a security deposit is held?
When properly configured, the system will automatically request a card if one is not already provided, and, will automatically hold the security deposit. Of course, for bookings where a card is not provided to us (e.g. Airbnb), there is no way for the system alone to force the guest to provide one when asked for it. You'd have to enforce that manually, such as by cancelling the booking due to violating your rules requiring them to provide the card.
You can see which bookings do and do not have cards and/or security deposits, by using the Filters available on the List view of the main Bookings screen.
