You can decide between taking deposit or cancellation fee for reservations.
First, you need to connect your Stripe business account with Hostme in
Admin panel -> Settings -> Payment options.
Click Connect and follow the steps on screen to connect Stripe.
Enable fee collection by turning on the toggle (to orange).
You can disable it at any time without needing to disable all other settings.Choose a relevant currency.
You can also choose which payment methods will be active.
Cash and Invoice is available for in-house reservations only. Invoice is used when a customer should add a credit card on their end through an email/text link they'll receive before their in-house reservation is confirmed and visible in the system.
A successfully connected account should look like this:
After that you can decide between one of the two options.
Important note: You can have different Fee mode set for Events.
Deposit
Customers will be asked to leave their credit card details at the last step of making an online reservation. The fee amount will be immediately deducted. They will receive an email receipt from Stripe.
Cancellation Fee
Customers will be asked to leave their credit card details before making a reservation, but the amount won't be charged until certain time (for example 24 hours prior to the reservation - depending on the settings).
Refunds
Important: Refunds can be issued only manually by hosts.
Host can refund a customer in Reservation panel. Find a reservation, click three dots button next to Edit button and click Refund in the dropdown menu.
1) If a customer cancels a reservation that has already been charged a deposit fee, they need to contact the restaurant and ask for a refund. They will not be refunded automatically.
2) The same applies to rejected reservations due to Manual approval. After refunding, the host can reject the reservation.
Important: To learn how a host can cancel a reservation without charging the cancellation fee, please follow instructions explained in this article.