Additional Charge option

There are times when I do a quote I want to be able to give renter the option of additional features. I.E. pool heating fee. This is an additional fee. I could create a different rate type for each period for this. I think it would be preferable if there were additional optional charged that could be added to a quote. That way if I have two or three different add-on's I don't need to make all the possible combination of rates for each season.

Thanks,
David

Hi David,

Your request is not only on the development roadmap, but it's high on the list. This feature is requested quite often.

If you open one of your properties and click the Surcharges menu, you'll see a number of hardcoded surcharge types - taxes, cleaning, etc.

We're planning on extending this Surcharge area to make those custom. So you'll be able to enter any type you want, with any description/amount, and select its order of importance, whether its taxable or not (cleaning fees shouldn't be taxed since they are a pass-through or "reimbursed" expense on the owner)

At the same time, we'll be implementing an 'optional' feature so that guests can choose to include the surcharge or not. This should cover things like pool heat or linen service.

This will be coming very soon in the release schedule.

Thanks for the quick response Michelle.

It turns out this is essential for me to be able to use the system. Also you need to be able to specify if individual are taxable or not. Depending on the local code some items are taxable and some are not.

I hope you get this implemented soon, I like the site, but can not use (with a lot of manual intervention) as it is.

Hi David,

You're right that without this ability it would be manual work to use the system. You'd have to ask the individual, first, if they want a particular optional feature and then manually add that to the quote.

Fortunately, it is very easy to manually tweak quotes. You can add or remove a line item very fast.

Custom/optional/taxable surcharges is high on the development roadmap. It will be worked on within the next 3 development sprints.

One thing that confuses my renters and myself is what the payment processing fee of 3% is calculated on. Is it based on the net rental alone (daly or weekly rates), the rental plus cleaning, or the rental plus cleaning plus deposit?

Hi Gotomike,

We use the 'running total' invoicing method to calculate all fees. There's no special formula or secret way that the fees are added on, it's just based on a running total of what comes before it, excluding taxes.

For instance, if you had the following items on your invoice:

Rent $500
Cleaning Fee $50
Processing Fee 3% (would be $16.50)

The Processing Fee is calculated on all of the line items that came before it, excluding any tax line items. In the above example, that means that the 3% is calculated against $550.

When we do our surcharge overhaul, one of the features we are planning to add is an option per surcharge for:

* Calculate on all preceding rent line items
* Calculate on all preceding surcharge line items
* Calculate on all preceding tax line items

And you can pick any combination of the three.

Does this make sense?

Hi,

New to your site, and have yet to process a booking, but have a couple questions. The processing fee appears to be a manual input in the Surcharges section. Is this fee then set by the owner? Or, does the payment processing company you guys use set the fee?

Also, a clarification of this statement: "We support several processing options. Our software is completely free if you select the first one." Does this mean you cover any payment processing charges if Option 1 is selected?

Thank you

Hi Pawel,

Thanks for trying out our software. Some answers...

That processing fee input is completely manual and it's something that you, the owner, wants to charge the guest to cover your own merchant processing fees.

We integrate with different gateways. Whether you use our merchant account or your own (through Authorize.Net or PayPal Pro) every merchant account has fees, which usually end up being around 3% of the transaction by the time you add up the "discount rate", the AVS fees, per transaction fees and "special card" fees.

So if you want to pass that fee through to the guest on their booking charges, you can specify it here and it will automatically be added to their invoice when the line items are initially generated. All quote and booking charges can be manually overwritten of course. These are just the line items that you may want to appear by default so you don't have to manually add them every time you generate a quote.

We are in the process of changing these Surcharge options (processing fee, cleaning fee, etc) so that you can call them anything you want instead of having a list of a specific few. So you'll have a grid where you "Add Surcharge" and then select the description and rate (flat amount or percentage) and the order it should appear on the invoice.

Again, to be clear, the Surcharge options on the property allow you to add extra charge line items to the guest's quote so that you can recoup processing fees or cleaning fees that you pay. This is completely up to you.

No, we don't cover your merchant processing fees. That sentence means exactly what it says: **our software** is free. When you create a merchant account with us, you have to agree to pay the standard merchant account fees that all merchant accounts charge.

That being said, our merchant account - provided and underwritten by Cornerstone Payments - is very competitive. The per month fee is $30 and the MC, Visa and Discover transaction rate is 2.25% + $0.30 per transaction. There is no extra gateway fee, setup fee or annual fee of any kind. Cornerstone also offers a match policy on the transaction rate so that if you find better deals elsewhere, they'll match it.

The reason we say that **our software** is free if you use our merchant account is because we make money off of our partnership with Cornerstone Payments. In 2011 we will be removing the "beta" rubric and pushing our software to the public in full. When that happens, the price for our software will be a certain amount per month or per booking. However, those that use our merchant account will have their software fee fully discounted to $0. We believe that this pricing structure is a real win/win for both us and the user.