How to take a payment on a reservation

Three moments in a stay typically generate a payment: a deposit at booking, a top-up mid-stay (extras, room service), and the final settlement at check-out. The flow is the same in all three — open the reservation, add a payment, pick a method, confirm. This article walks through the variations.

Step 1 — Open the reservation

From the calendar, the reservations list, or the guest profile, click the reservation. The Payments panel on the right shows what's been paid, by whom, and the running balance due.

Step 2 — Add the payment

Click Add Payment. The dialog asks for:

• Method — every active payment method appears in the dropdown (Cash, Visa, IBAN, Voucher, etc.).
• Amount — pre-fills with the current balance due. Edit it if the guest is paying more or less.
• Currency — defaults to the reservation's currency. Change it if you're accepting a foreign currency payment; HotelBee converts using your configured rate.
• Note — optional, for the audit trail ("Cash, IBAN slip filed", "Card terminal ref 12345").
• Date — defaults to now. Change it if you're back-dating a payment that arrived earlier (e.g., a wire transfer that landed last week and you only just confirmed).

Click Confirm. The Payments panel updates immediately, the balance due drops, the calendar's payment dot updates color (no-dot → orange → green).

Deposits before arrival

For non-refundable rates or any policy requiring a prepayment, take the deposit before the guest arrives. Common workflows:

• Bank transfer — guest wires the amount, you record it as Bank method on the reservation when it lands.
• Card by phone — get the card details, charge on your terminal, record as Card method. Don't store the card number anywhere afterwards.
• Card authorization link — with HotelBee Payments enabled, send the guest a secure link from the reservation. They enter the card on a Stripe-hosted page; you charge it from HotelBee later.
• Booking engine deposit — for direct bookings, the deposit is charged at booking time and arrives on the reservation already paid. No manual action needed.

OTA virtual cards

When a Booking.com or Expedia reservation arrives with a virtual card, the card details are stored encrypted on the reservation. To charge:

1. Wait until the activation date (Expedia VCCs activate on check-in).
2. On the reservation, click Reveal Card. Permission-gated and audit-logged.
3. Charge the card on your terminal for the OTA-side total (the amount on the card, not the gross).
4. Record the payment in HotelBee with method "Booking.com Virtual Card" or similar.

Settling at check-out

At check-out, the folio totals everything — accommodation, services, room-charged POS orders, taxes — and shows the balance due after deposits. Take the final payment with the same flow: Add Payment, choose method, confirm. Once the balance is zero, finalize the invoice (and the check-out modal lets you do both in one step). See the check-out article for the full sequence.

Multi-method payments

Guests sometimes split the bill between cash and card, or between two cards, or between a personal card and a corporate card. Two ways:

• Add multiple payments — open Add Payment twice. First for the cash portion (€100), then for the card portion (€150). Two transaction rows on the folio.
• Multi-method dialog — when enabled in settings, the payment dialog lets you enter both amounts on one screen and confirm together.

Foreign-currency payments

If the reservation is invoiced in EUR but the guest pays in USD or ALL, change the currency in the payment dialog. HotelBee uses the rate configured in Settings → Currencies (or the reservation-specific rate if it has one) to convert and post the equivalent in the reservation's currency. The original currency and amount are preserved on the transaction so cash-up still balances.

Print receipts

After every payment you can print a receipt ("payment slip") from the Payments panel. For deposit payments before arrival, email the guest a PDF receipt directly from the same screen — useful for confirming the deposit landed.

Undo or edit a payment

Mistakes happen — wrong amount, wrong method, wrong reservation. Open the payment row in the Payments panel, click Edit, change the amount/method/note, or click Delete to remove it entirely. If a fiscal record was generated, HotelBee sends a cancel-side fiscal message to keep the tax authority's records consistent. All edits and deletions are logged.