What is the online balance?
The online balance is a link that can be sent to the guest, which allows them to view their room bill online.
They can then see what they'll have to pay at departure, offering a smoother check-out process.
Below is an example:
Does the online balance work for all guests?
It works for the majority of the guests, but there are a few exceptions:
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Pre-paid OTA rates (commission deducted):
- Many OTA rates are now set so that the commission for the reservation is deducted before it is delivered to the PMS (particularly Expedia). Because of this, the rate appearing in the folio will be lower than the rate the guest thinks they have paid when booking. It is therefore important to hotels that this rate is not displayed to the guest via the online balance. To avoid this, rate plan charges are routed to the ledger folio (which is not shared via GuestStay). This can be done either at the reservation stage (using a pre-configured charge routing plan), or on the day of check-out before the balance is shared with the guest.
- Other pre-paid rates (such as those from DBM or other IBEs, or made direct) can be shared via GuestStay, as the guest will see the charges, and the pre-payment and therefore only have to pay for any extras they have added during their stay.
- Update: Ledger is not the only solution to this problem, since beginning 2023 we have also a new toggle under each bill split to "Hide from guest", which allows hoteliers to not share the transactions under such bill splits with their guests.
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Pre-auths:
- The online balance doesn't consider pre-authorisations made at check-in. The hotelier can still share the balance with the guest but will need to cancel the pre-auth at check-out in case the guest paid online.
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Bill splits and separate folios:
- The online balance shows an aggregation of all charges in all guest folios and all bill splits (but not ledger!). It's currently not possible to see the balance and pay only for a specific bill split. Note that this also applies to separate folios (such as sharers in the room)
How can the online balance be shared with guests?
There are 3 ways the balance can be shared with guests:
- Manually from the Room Billing screen of the dedicated reservation:
- Manually from the "Check out" screen for all reservations departing on that day:
- Automatically via a Rezlynx template with the dedicated tag called "GuestStay Online Balance":
How does the email sent to the guest look like?
The email sent when clicking on the button "Send balance" in Rezlynx is branded with the hotel logo and colours, you can find here an example:
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