When you collect
Every payment method used to bring its own timing: online checkout had one setting, bank transfer was decided by which rows your booking emails happened to show. Settings → Payments → When you collect replaces all of that with one rule that applies to every method you have switched on.
It sits above the payment methods on that page deliberately. When you collect is a term of your business, not a property of a card processor.
Leaving it off is a real choice, not an unfinished one: each method keeps the timing it has today and nothing changes.
When a guest can pay
Section titled “When a guest can pay”| Setting | What it means |
|---|---|
| As soon as the booking exists | The moment a booking is published, tentative or confirmed. This is how things work with no rule set. |
| Only after I confirm the booking | Nothing to pay while you are still deciding. The payment link appears the moment you confirm. |
| Shortly before arrival | Payment opens a number of days before check-in, checked hourly. |
The charge itself is always created when the booking is published — the price is fixed at that point either way. What this setting changes is whether the guest can act on it yet.
What it can hold back, and what it can’t
Section titled “What it can hold back, and what it can’t”- Online payment (Mollie) and test payments — held back completely. No checkout session is opened, so there is no link to follow.
- Bank transfer — advisory only. Your guest already has your IBAN and can transfer whenever they choose. The rule stops payment links and online checkout; it cannot stop a wire.
- Cash on arrival — not applicable. It is due at check-in by definition.
The console says this next to the setting rather than leaving you to discover it from a guest who wired the money anyway.
Changing it later
Section titled “Changing it later”Loosening takes effect on its own. Move from “only after I confirm” to “as soon as the booking exists” and the waiting bookings get their payment links within the hour.
Tightening applies to links that have not gone out yet. A guest already holding an online payment link keeps it — we do not take a link away from someone who may be part-way through paying. If you need to stop a specific payment, cancel or change that booking rather than the rule.
Which parts of the price you ask for
Section titled “Which parts of the price you ask for”The classic arrangement — a down payment while you decide, the balance once you confirm — is one switch: Ask for different amounts before and after you confirm. Pick what a tentative booking is asked for, and what a confirmed one is asked for, from Down payment, Balance and Full amount.
It applies to every payment method, and it changes what the guest is asked for, not what the booking costs. The price and its due dates were fixed when the booking was published.
Leave the switch off and each booking email decides for itself, as before.
When a payment is late
Section titled “When a payment is late”Once a payment passes its due date, a daily check does one of three things:
| Setting | Who hears about it |
|---|---|
| Nothing | Nobody. Due dates are recorded and nothing acts on them. |
| Tell me, not the guest | You do — an entry in your bell. No guest is ever emailed. This is the default. |
| Remind the guest | You still get the bell entry, and the guest gets a reminder email. |
The middle rung exists so you can watch this run on your own bookings for as long as you like before deciding a guest should hear from it.
Four things about the check are worth knowing before you switch it on:
- The first run only starts the clock. It sends nothing. A due date that passed while nobody was watching is a bill nobody sent, not a guest ignoring a reminder.
- It never reaches back. Payments more than 30 days past due are out of scope on every run, so a catch-up after a quiet spell cannot mail about last spring.
- One booking is one conversation. Three late payments on the same booking make one email naming the total, not three.
- It won’t chase what the guest can’t pay. A payment your own rule has not opened yet is never chased.
Guests are reminded three days before a payment is due, then once the day after it was due and again a week later. Those timings are fixed — the question worth setting is whether you chase at all and whether the guest hears it, which is the table above.
You can switch the two reminder emails off individually, and edit their wording, under Settings → Notifications.
Letting the dates go when nobody pays
Section titled “Letting the dates go when nobody pays”Release the dates if nobody pays is the “we hold the dates until the down payment lands” arrangement. It is off unless you switch it on, and it is the only setting on this page that undoes a booking, so it is worth reading in full.
Set a number of days, and a tentative booking still unpaid that long after its due date is cancelled and its dates freed. Cancelled, not just un-held: your cancellation policy applies, the ledger records it, and the guest gets the same cancellation email they would if you had pressed the button yourself. Freeing the dates without cancelling would leave a live booking with no room behind it, which is a double booking waiting to happen.
What it will never touch:
- A booking that has paid anything at all. Someone who paid part of it is a conversation, not a sweep.
- A confirmed booking. Only tentative ones are eligible.
- A booking held for any other reason — a hold waiting on your decision has no deadline.
- Anything older than the same 30-day window the late-payment check uses.
You get a bell entry the day before a booking is due to be released, and another when it happens. The option only appears once you have chosen to do something about late payments — if your answer there is “nothing”, you have already answered this one.
Where you see the result
Section titled “Where you see the result”- Dashboard → Money — the Overdue Payments card.
- Your bell — overdue payments, upcoming releases, and releases that happened.
- Settings → Payments, at the top of the page — a plain answer to whether guests are actually being asked to pay at all, with a link to whatever is standing in the way. Five separate settings decide it and four of them never mention money, so it is worth a look after any change here.