Prepayments - Require partial upfront payment for rentals

Benefits

When customers book far in advance, they may be reluctant to pay the full amount upfront. However, allowing 0% prepayment can be risky for rental operators, as it reserves availability without any commitment, leading to higher no-show rates.

Our prepayment feature offers a balanced solution. Merchants can require customers to pay a portion of the total price upfront, securing the booking while keeping flexibility. The remaining amount can be collected closer to the booking date, reducing cancellations and ensuring better revenue protection.

Article content

• Summary
• The customer experience
• How to set it up
• Manager day-to-day flow: A manually prepared prepayment order

Summary

1. Enable the feature by sending an email to support@sharefox.no (follow instructions in this article)
2. Your customers will get the ability to choose a prepayment option (eg. 20%) in the checkout (if the booking is made early enough in advance)
3. You can set up notifications (email / SMS) to be sent out to your customers as reminders to pay the second payment

The customer experience

Below we show you the steps in the customer journey, to make you get an overview of how this works:

• The customer visits a product page and chooses the booking dates:

  

• If the booking dates are far enough into the future (ex. more than 30 days before the event start), then the customer will see an option to pay only a part of the full amount now; and the rest closer to the event:

  

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• The first payment (in this case, 20% of the total amount) is paid

  
  

• The customer then receives a receipt by email, with these two lines at the bottom:

  

• The customer also receives (if set up by the merchant) another notification with information about the first payment has been paid, and with a link that the customer can click to pay the remaining amount:

  

• The user clicks this link (or logs in, and goes to "My orders"):

  

• The user can in "My Orders" click on "Pay Now" for the order and pay the remaining amount: 

  

• NB: The first payment is not set up to be a refundable fee. So if the order gets canceled, the company will still keep the 20%, just make sure that the terms and conditions reflect this

How to set it up

Activate the feature

Contact support@sharefox.no and ask for this feature to be enabled for your shop, with the following information:

• Number of days before the event/booking that the customer should be able to do a pre-payment.
  • If trying to make a booking for dates after this day, the customer will not see the pre-payment option in the checkout
  • E.g. 40 days
• Pre-payment %
  • How much should the customer pay in the first payment?
  • E.g. 25 %

Create email / SMS notification(s)

• Get inspiration from these notification examples (see more details below) based on what works for your business:
  • Manager Reminder: Notify yourself if full payment isn’t made (eg. 2 days before booking)
  • Customer First Payment Confirmation: Send an email after the first payment is secured
  • Customer First Payment Manual Request: Optional flow with an email titled "An order has been prepared for you and is awaiting your payment."
  • Customer Final Payment Confirmation: Email customers after the final payment is completed
  • Customer Final Warning: Send a last reminder (eg. 1 day before final payment due date) to both the customer and yourself, so you can follow up before cancellation
• Create the notifications in Admin Settings -> Notifications
  • Here is a general guide on how notifications work: https://help.sharefox.no/article/163-notifications
  • In all examples below, when using smart login links, remember the ability to guide the customer to the right correct page after the automatic login:
    • Instead of adding a simple login link to your notification: {{user_login_link}}
    • Consider using: {{user_login_link}}&redirectTo=rentals
    • So that the user will be redirected to the /rentals page after the login
    • You can also add such a URL under a <Click to pay> link: simply write "Click to pay", use the link function, and insert the URL value as: {{user_login_link}}&redirectTo=rentals

Notification examples

• Example of email to send out to yourself when someone has NOT paid the full amount (eg. 2) days before the booking starts

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• Example of email to send out after the first payment is secured

  

• Example of email to send in case of a "Manual order with prepayment" flow (see next section describing this flow in more detail):
  • Email subject: "An order has been prepared for you and is awaiting your payment"
  • Note: This is an optional flow, recommended to use only if it applies to your business

• Example of email to send out after the final payment:

  

• You could also send out a final warning notification e.g. one day before the final payment should be made.

  • This notification could be both sent to the customer and you, so you remember to e.g. call the customer to trigger this last payment before you have to cancel the order. See the Recipient field when creating a notification:

    

    

• Under Orders -> Order one can under the tab "Information" see the Activity module, and see info about all notifications sent out

  

Update your terms and conditions with information about this payment option

It could be wise to include info about what happens if the pre-payment is paid, and the customer later cancels the booking. Will the merchant then (manually) do a refund, or will it not be refunded? etc.

Manager day-to-day flow: A manually prepared prepayment order

Sometimes you may need to take an order on the phone or email, and prepare it in the name of the customer. In order to have the order secured, you may want to send it to the customer for prepayment. This is how you can achieve that:

• First, create the manual order from Admin -> Orders as you would normally do
  • Follow these instructions on how to create a manual order
  • Select the prepayment payment method as it was defined for your shop before placing the order (such as "Card - Pay 20% now, 80% closer to the event"), in the third step of creating the manual order.
• Prepare the order to be ready for payment in the webshop for the customer, by setting the order status to Reopened

  • Set the order status to Reopened

    

  • Optional: You can check how the customer will see the order by using the Login as Customer functionality
• Trigger a notification email to your customer, to let them know that they can go online, login and pay the prepayment amount for the order
  • This requires a dedicated notification to be set up (see the "How to setup" section above)
  • Simply trigger the sending of the notification from Orders ▸ Order Page ▸ Actions ▸ Send notification