To be paid or not to be paid!

Has the payment been confirmed or not.

The users of SimplyBook.me have for a long time been able to accept payments for appointments. They have been able to set different prices per each of their service and their clients have been able to make a booking and pay at the same time on their booking website. If the user sets payments as required, the system waits for confirmation to come back from the payment processor and if it arrives within the timeout time set in the payment plugin the booking is confirmed. The client then receives a confirmation and the service provider as well.

However, there have been situations where the client may not have the credit card by his side, and he may leave the computer and come back at later time to finalize the booking. Unfortunately, if the timeout set in the payment plugin has passed, then the booking has already been cancelled and although the payment is made the booking does not get confirmed. This also means that others can make a booking in the slot that the client booked so it may already be occupied by someone else. Here is the dilemma, if the user sets time out too long, and client does not pay at all, another client may have skipped to book because the wanted time was not available. On the other hand, if the timeout is too short, the booking may have been cancelled when the payment confirmation finally arrives.

An acceptable time out in the payment plugin may in many cases be 30 minutes or it can be shorter in case of high volume booking site, or longer in low volume booking site.

In any case, it is important to know the payment status of all bookings and SimplyBook.me has now added this function in the report section. In the Payment Transaction report the users can see an overview of all bookings, if they are confirmed and paid, unconfirmed and not paid and the important one: “Unconfirmed and PAID“! The Unconfirmed booking that is paid, is a booking that has been cancelled because payment did NOT arrive in time. If the time is still available, you can book the client in the same slot as he wanted or if the slot is now occupied, you need to contact the client personally and ask him when another time slot would be convenient.

If you accept payments and are unsure if a booking is confirmed and paid or not paid, please go to the Report section to the Payment transaction report and check it out.