Sometimes a guest unfortunately needs to cancel a Booking. Here's how to handle that.
Other times, a guest just wants to change the dates a bit, and here's how to handle that.
But what about when neither of these is the answer? Sometimes, a guest cannot come during the scheduled dates, and isn't entitled to a refund. They want to reschedule for sometime in the future, but they don't yet know when exactly.
At present, OwnerRez does not have the ability to record and store a credit "value" outside of a booking, so there is no clean way of handling this situation. There are, however, two approaches which can "sort of" do what's needed.
Ghost Booking
The simplest solution is to move the existing booking, as-is, off into the far future onto some dates where, in your market, it is very unlikely that any real guest will book anytime soon if at all. (You know when these dates are!) In effect, you're shoving the booking into a holding tank until the guest decides when they really want to rebook.
This method preserves everything about the booking just as it is - the ORB booking number, the credit card information, guest contact, etc. Thus, it is very easy to find the booking in a few weeks or months when the guest notifies you of the real dates they want.
Then, simply change the dates again to the right ones, and if necessary modify the charges, scheduled payments, and emails. If the original booking was moved well before arrival, most of the scheduled emails will probably still be fine.
And if the guest never does get back to you with new dates - well, you have a paid-for booking at a time you normally wouldn't.
Ghost Credit
But what if you are blessed with a location where there aren't any time slots you know nobody will really book?
In this case, you can modify the Charges of the Booking to reflect a guest credit balance of whatever you've agreed they should have - perhaps the whole thing, perhaps only part of it. Then simply cancel the booking as-is, without issuing any refund or credit. This clears your calendar.
When the guest contacts you to make a replacement booking, create that booking as normal, or create them a special quote with a very low down payment (in the Rules tab of the Quote). Then:
- Go to the original, now canceled Booking, under Transactions, Refunds dropdown button, and Record Refund in the amount of the credit. This should result in that Booking showing a balance of $0.
- Go to the new Booking, under Transactions, Payments dropdown button, and Record Payment in the same amount. In effect, that transfers the payment from the old booking to the new one.
Note that this method does not preserve the guest's credit card information - they'll have to re-enter it in the new booking.