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Credit card fees & payment requests

Credit card fees

Often travel companies pass on the charge of letting the customer pay by credit card directly to the customer. For example, if the merchant accounts charges you 3%, you may add a 3% credit card fee to all payments that the customer makes.

Fees will not appear on travel itinerary reports - but do appear on financial statements.

Credit card fee example:

The customer owes 100 GBP....

Method A

You charge the customer 103 GBP with a 3% credit card fee added. The customer will pay 103 GBP and 103 GBP will be reduced from the outstanding balance. A 3 GBP fee will be added to the booking.

Method B

You charge the customer 100 GBP with a 3% credit card fee included. The customer will pay 100 GBP and 100 GBP will be reduced from the outstanding balance. A 2.91 GBP fee will be added to the booking.

Method B works fine for deposit payments - but not for full balance payments (as it leaves money owing). Depending upon what tokens you put in your communications with your customers, you can choose which way to work. (Or you can just leave automated credit card fees turned off!). Fee setup for virtual terminal payments (where supported) are setup in the credit card payments section of Configuration & Setup

Requesting payments using TourCMS email tokens

TourCMS Booking Templates (Email) can generate email messages containing a wealth of information regarding a given component, booking, or customer populated automatically using tokens. The list below details the various tokens, these can be used to generate links in emails requesting payment:

• %customer_payment_balance_sale% - The outstanding balance owed (on the booking) (in sale currency)
• %customer_payment_deposit_sale% - The initial deposit payment required (in sale currency)
• %customer_payment_balance_dn_sale% - The money owed by the customer NOW (in sale currency). Normally follows the logic of deposit owed, then zero, then, when due, the full balance. However, if the booking is made within the full balance due period, this will be set to the full balance immediately

For historical reasons (sorry!) the PayPal tokens are different:

• %paypal_balance_sale% - The outstanding balance owed (on the booking) (in sale currency)
• %paypal_deposit_sale% - The initial deposit payment required (in sale currency)
• %paypal_balance_dn_sale% - The money owed by the customer NOW (in sale currency). Normally follows the logic of deposit owed, then zero, then, when due, the full balance. However, if the booking is made within the full balance due period, this will be set to the full balance immediately
• %paypal_novalue% - No value sent to PayPal. An input box will be given to the customer (within PayPal) for the customer to determine how much they want to pay (in sale currency)

For more information on these and other email tokens see the Documentation manual (Emails / Invoices) and the Sample documentation library.

Producing nicely formatted links

TourCMS emails are sent in HTML format (rather than plain text format) - hence you can, in your email template, use this format:

<a href="%paypal_deposit_sale%">Pay your deposit</a>

 
This will "hide" the complex URL from your customers and keep your emails neat and tidy.

Handling different fees for credit and debit cards

You can combine multiple links in a single email. e.g.

Debit Card: <a href="%customer_payment_balance_sale%">Pay Now with Debit Card</a>
Credit Card: <a href="%customer_payment_balance_sale_fee%">Pay Now with Credit Card</a>(2% Handling Fee Applies)
PayPal: <a href="%paypal_balance_sale_fee%">Pay Now with PayPal</a> (2% Handling Fee Applies)