Payment Schedules

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Yes!

I appreciate the honest recognition that development schedules, much like construction timelines in the real world, are hard to meet!
At this point just knowing it is on the schedule is good news.

Is the option for this any closer to being done? It’s a real need and been in the works since 2017/2018? 

can you solve this need by simply sending the guest a payment link within their welcome email (for example) and they can pay whenever however much (they can make 50 payments if they want to), as long as it is paid by the due date? They get an OR receipt for every payment made. The balance is auto-charged on the due date. I have been doing this for years. 

Is the option for this any closer to being done? It’s a real need and been in the works since 2017/2018? 

We need “set and forget” to eliminate the need to check repeatedly to see if someone is “caught up” on payments.  If we can set payments for “monthly” due on a specific date there would be an alert if the guest falls behind on their payment.  The expected payment would hopefully show up in reporting for future income too  

We need “set and forget” to eliminate the need to check repeatedly to see if someone is “caught up” on payments.  If we can set payments for “monthly” due on a specific date there would be an alert if the guest falls behind on their payment.  The expected payment would hopefully show up in reporting for future income too  

 

This is set and forget. Once you take the 1st payment on day X (usually when the guest books), the guest's credit card is recorded in OR; The guest gets a payment receipt with a link with an explanation in their "welcome" email.

the balance is auto payment is scheduled Y days before arrival  (whatever is your Y is) at the time of booking. That is it. You are done. Guest can make as many (or as few) interim payments between date X and date Y as they want. every time they pay, OR generates a receipt showing money paid to date and how much is still owed. . On date Y, if the balance is still outstanding, it is auto-charged to their card on file.  They cannot "fall behind" because the balance payment is scheduled to be auto-collected on date Y. 

 As a courtesy., I schedule a triggered email 5 days before date Y something like this:

No, this doesn't work for me or anyone who takes a "reservation hold". The problem is that the "rules" of the booking and the "rules" of my agreement can't match up. If a guest is booking in July of 2023 for a stay in May of 2024, I only require a $500 deposit to hold the reservation. 1/2 the balance is due December 1st 2023 and the balance is due 30/60 days before their stay in 2024. There is currently no way to automate this process.

My agreement says $500 up front, 1/2 on Dec 1 and 1/2 on April 1.
OwnerRez either says 1/2 up front and 1/2 on April 1 

or

$500 up front and the balance on April 1.

Neither of these align with the actual payment structure and I don't want to send an email to a guest to explain why they don't align and which one is actually correct....and that they should ignore one of them and rely on me to update it after they book.

I truly need multiple payments with multiple due dates and multiple amounts / percentages. I hope someday OR is able to provide this.

No, this doesn't work for me or anyone who takes a "reservation hold". The problem is that the "rules" of the booking and the "rules" of my agreement can't match up. If a guest is booking in July of 2023 for a stay in May of 2024, I only require a $500 deposit to hold the reservation. 1/2 the balance is due December 1st 2023 and the balance is due 30/60 days before their stay in 2024. There is currently no way to automate this process.

My agreement says $500 up front, 1/2 on Dec 1 and 1/2 on April 1.
OwnerRez either says 1/2 up front and 1/2 on April 1 

or

$500 up front and the balance on April 1.

Neither of these align with the actual payment structure and I don't want to send an email to a guest to explain why they don't align and which one is actually correct....and that they should ignore one of them and rely on me to update it after they book.

I truly need multiple payments with multiple due dates and multiple amounts / percentages. I hope someday OR is able to provide this.

It is easier to change RA maybe? Also, it actually does not matter how much you take upfront - can be a fixed amount like $500, or a percentage like 30%. The flow is still the same. I used to have a fixed amount upfront too and it worked. I thought about 3 payment schedules before but did not see any real benefit to it since I can give a payment link to guests and they can pay every week if they so desire, as little or as much as they want. 

•  $500 upfront (or whatever amount/percentage you like) in July 2023 to hold the reservation.
• <auto-send the payment link in booking confirmation email and tell the guest to make as many payments as they like between July 2023 and March 2024>
• < auto triggered balance payment reminder X days before due date - mine is set to 7 days> 
• Balance (anything not paid yet) 60 days (or 30 days out - whichever you like) set to auto-charge in March of 2024 for a May 2024 stay. 

Any update on scheduled offline payments? This would be easier for us to monitor who has pending payment due for the month! You could also just allow offline payments on the existing scheduled payments and just send an email reminder but we need to see this on reports too!

They're talking about the end of the year, which - let's be real - probably means early next year.  But that's progress at least.  :-)

I'd like to make another request for more flexible payment schedules, specifically with the option to have 3-4 payments and change the amount taken based on how far out the booking is. Is there an ETA on this yet?

It is easier to change RA maybe? Also, it actually does not matter how much you take upfront - can be a fixed amount like $500, or a percentage like 30%. The flow is still the same. I used to have a fixed amount upfront too and it worked. I thought about 3 payment schedules before but did not see any real benefit to it since I can give a payment link to guests and they can pay every week if they so desire, as little or as much as they want. 

•  $500 upfront (or whatever amount/percentage you like) in July 2023 to hold the reservation.
• <auto-send the payment link in booking confirmation email and tell the guest to make as many payments as they like between July 2023 and March 2024>
• < auto triggered balance payment reminder X days before due date - mine is set to 7 days> 
• Balance (anything not paid yet) 60 days (or 30 days out - whichever you like) set to auto-charge in March of 2024 for a May 2024 stay. 

 

No. Because I require 50% paid by Dec1. So allowing guests to pay as they wish doesn't work. There simply is no workaround to a required 3 payment system, and I don't want to burden people by holding thousands of dollars for over a year, and on the flip side I don't want someone who hasn't paid the bulk of the rental until 30/60 days beforehand when it would be difficult to re-book if they flaked out. So I NEED a multiple payment option with set due dates.

Three of our six properties are now mid-term rentals and I'm contemplating removing them from OwnerRez entirely. Payment schedules would make things SO much easier and give a reason to stay.

It is possible to manually set up payment schedules on individual bookings:

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/multiple-payments

Here's more ideas for how to handle nonstandard bookings:

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/mid-long-term-stays 

Crystal,
With regard to the "workarounds" that Ken noted there are a couple of caveats. 1) The messaging of the booking process doesn't match the actual payment schedule and there is no way around this. You have guests viewing payment terms on one page (The quote page that says "What to pay" will state either 100% up front or 50% up front) which then doesn't align with the payment terms in your rental agreement (1/3 up front and 1/3 every month on the 30th or whatever that particular rental is). And 2) It requires you to manually adjust this for every booking. If you don't mind those it may work for you.

Hopefully OR gets this into development as I know it would benefit a lot of owners.

Crystal,
(The quote page that says "What to pay" will state either 100% up front or 50% up front) which then doesn't align with the payment terms in your rental agreement (1/3 up front and 1/3 every month on the 30th or whatever that particular rental is).

The quote page will say whatever is in the property rules. If the property rules are set up to be 1/3 upfront, that is what it will say. You can adjust your property rule to your RA or your RA to your property rule so they match. I do not include any amounts other than sec dep amount in my RA - all the amounts are handled by quote/receipt emails.

I don't think you are getting my point. You can say 1/3 upfront or $200 up front. But the bottom line is the quote will never match the agreement. If you have 3 or 10 payments OR will always say upfront is X and then the balance is due on Z. 

For example....

If you have a 6 month rental that's $1000/mo OR can only break it down into 2 payments. The up front and the balance. And while you can modify it AFTER the booking.... your guest will be confronted with a 2 payment plan on the quote page no matter what your actual structure is. 

I don't want to have to explain to guests that my software is wrong and the actual payments are different.