How to Post Payments on Room Accounts

Quick Answer: To post a payment on the Room Account, open the Room Account of the reservation, click 'Make Payment' button on the bottom-left, select the payment type, adjust the Amount if needed, and click 'Save Payment'.

GuestPoint Pay Users
If you are using GuestPoint Pay to process a card payment, the step-by-step procedures in this article are not necessarily applicable for you.

Please proceed to the GuestPoint Pay Article on how to process a card payment instead.

Below instructions still apply to GuestPoint Pay users for payment types like Cash and Direct Deposit.

What are Room Accounts?

A Room Account on GuestPoint refers to the Room Account tab of a Reservation where GuestPoint collects all room charges and payment transactions.

The fundamental idea of a Room Account is to balance the Account Balance to a 0 figure before a room can be Checked Out.

This is GuestPoint's way of indicating a booking has stayed and paid.

You cannot check out a room with outstanding payments unless you balance the Account Balance to 0 OR you transfer the charges to a Debtor Account.

A positive revenue figure is balanced by a negative payment figure to achieve this Zero Balance effect.

The negative payment figure you see when you post a purchase payment is not to be confused with a refund.

All purchase payments posted into the Room Account appears as a negative value, a Refund payment posts as a positive value instead.

For example, a booking for 2 nights at $200 per night would have two room charges of $200 totalling $400 room charge revenue.

This $400 revenue is then balanced to 0 by a purchase payment of $400 that you post to the room's Room Account.

How to Post a Payment on the Room Account

After you have physically received Cash or charged a card with your EFTPOS terminal (or about to charge a card), or received a Bank Transfer, you may proceed to record this exact transaction on GuestPoint as well.

1. Open the booking by navigating to the guest's Room Account tab (or from your Reservation Plan, right-clicking the booking and clicking the Room Account express action)
   
2. Click 'Make Payment' button on the bottom-left hand corner.
3. In the 'Make Payment' screen, select the appropriate Payment Type from the drop down selection.
   
4. If you are taking a card payment but have yet to charge the card with your EFTPOS terminal, you can access the card vault to obtain the full card details if you have saved those details to the Credit Card Vault of the booking.
5. Adjust the "Amount" field if required. The system usually defaults the Amount field to whatever the Account Balance currently is. Ensure you match the amount to the actual transaction whether it is Cash received, Bank Transfer received, or the EFTPOS terminal charge amount.
   
6. Proceed with "Save Payment" button.

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If the Payment will be received at a later date (Debtor Scenario)

If this scenario applies to you, you are dealing with a Debtor Account situation where you should send the room charges from the Room Account to a Debtor Account instead.

Transferring charges to a Debtor Account theoretically balances the Room Account Balance to 0 and allows you to Check Out the room.

A debtor account is an area that sits in the Accounts section of GuestPoint where it can hold outstanding charges to be paid by your guests in the form of unique-numbered invoices.

Outstanding invoices can be emailed to your Debtors for payment, and if you are using GuestPoint Pay, you can also make use of the Payment Link option to allow your debtors to securely pay online by inputting their own credit card details.

Please see sending charges to debtor account article for more information on debtors within GuestPoint.

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