Watch: How to Setup Recurring Billing (with Guide)

Recurring Billing allows you to bill your guests for their stay on a monthly, weekly or daily basis. Bills are sent out automatically and you also have the option to charge your guests automatically.

Setup 

Setting a reservation and invoice to bill guests periodically is done through the Billing tab of a Reservation under Billing Settings. The ability to edit Billing Settings is permissions based. If you do not see this option in your view of Campspot, update your permissions in User Management or contact your manager for assistance. 

Recurring Billing is set up in a few easy steps. A step-by-step video of this process is shown in this short clip below. 

Payments and Invoices  

When a reservation is set up on Recurring Billing, multiple invoices are created on one Reservation.

Single payments can be applied across multiple invoices on Recurring Billing reservations. The way a payment is applied depends on the cost of the individual invoice and the amount paid by the customer.

Example: if a guest's monthly bill is $500 and they make a $550 payment, $500 will apply to their current bill and $50 will apply to their next bill due.

 

Multiple payments may also apply to one invoice. The date a payment was made and applied will always be listed in the Payments section of the reservation as shown in the image below.

Screen Shot 2022-03-14 at 10.42.48

Payment Reallocation

The Reallocate Payments button internally moves money from over or underpayments around on invoices. This button will only appear on the Billing tab when edits to reservation items cause an over or underpayment on an earlier invoice.


Example: If you have decreased pricing or removed a charge from an invoice that is already paid in full, that invoice will show an overpayment. Hitting the Reallocate Payments button will move that overpayment and apply the money to next invoice with an outstanding balance.

The clip below shows a charge being removed from a fully paid invoice resulting in an overpayment. The Reallocate Payments button is then used to move the money to the next invoice.

guide-media-d5cf4d44-3884-4e73-a49b-4227cd038c76

 

Recurring Billing Best Practices & Tips

Limit long term reservation lengths to 1 year when possible

Look for natural breaks in reservations and consider starting a new reservation rather than extending.

Example: the 6 month or 1 year mark, when price changes are occurring, when a new year is starting, or when a guest asks to extend.

 

Before making edits to a reservation (site changes or date changes) make note of pricing across earlier invoices

Edits to long term reservations can change pricing on past invoices if prices or rules have changed at your park since the start of the reservation. 

Example: If you increased your monthly rate from $400 to $500 within the course of one of your long-term reservations, editing the reservation (extending dates) may change the price of past invoices to the new $500 rate depending on how your package pricing is set up.

Recurring Billing cannot be applied until a reservation is confirmed

Consider setting up a Payment Policy that does not require full payment for longterm reservations so that you can take a smaller amount up front and then bill guests periodically going forward.

In order for automatic payments to process, the reservation must be setup to Automatic before the day the invoice is sent out

This is set in the Billing Settings.