Online Reservations fees
By using Online reservations, restaurant guests can be charged for a booked reservation by providing their credit card details during a reservation process. Guests can be charged immediately, when requesting a reservation, or later, at planned time of arrival.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Please be aware that if you have installed your SeatOn app before November 3rd, 2020, you have to reinstall the app in order to successfully use this feature.
Here are the instructions how to set up online reservation fees (when everything is set up, guests can make their reservations on the online reservation customer pages):
1. Enabling online reservation fees
In order to enable online reservation fees, you have to go to the Settings/Online Reservation in the SeatOn Web application, tab Settings, and check the checkbox "Enable online reservation fee", as shown on the picture:
When you are finished with the setup, you must click the button Save settings in the upper right corner of the screen in order to save your choice.
There are two types of fees set up which differ in a way how a reservation will be charged. These are:
- capture funds immediately, release them later eventually
- reserve funds first, capture/release them later if necessary
Fee type is set up by enabling or disabling the checkbox "Enable instant capture of funds, otherwise only reservation of funds will be processed":
If you want instant capture of funds, enable the checkbox. If you just want to reserve the funds, and later decide what to do with the funds, disable the checkbox. If you choose the latter option, please be aware that reservation of funds lasts for a maximum of 7 days, that is, capture of funds will be possible in the next 7 days from the time of the authorization. If the funds are not captured after 7 days, they will be automatically released.
Finally, when you are finished with the setup, you must click the button Save settings in the upper right corner of the screen in order to save changes.
In order to set up the amount for which a guest will be charged, you first have to decide whether you will charge fixed amount per reservation, or amount per person. You have to select appropriate option from the drop down menu as shown on the picture below:
Finally, you specify amount and tax percentage by entering numbers in appropriate fields. Please be aware that the maximum amount which can be specified is $999:
When you are finished with the setup, you must click the button Save settings in the upper right corner of the screen in order to save changes.
Example: on the picture above, the amount is set to 10$. Let's say that a guest makes a reservation for 4 people. If "Fee per reservation" is selected, the guest would be charged $10. On the other hand, if "Fee per person" is selected, the guest would be charged 4 * $10 = $40.
Capturing and refunding can be done on the Event details page. There are several ways to access Event details page, but probably the most common way you will access it is through the Pre-Reservations tab on the Table management page, by clicking the Details button on the selected event.
Event details will always show the current and the past status of the reservation fees, whether the funds are reserved, captured, or refunded:
Capture funds
Click on the Event details page. You can capture funds which have been reserved by clicking on the blue button "Click to capture funds":
Refund funds
Click on the Event details. You can refund funds which have been captured by clicking on the red button "Click to refund":
Please note that sometimes a refund transaction can be declined. In such cases, one should try to do it again a few times until it is successful.