Use cases: Bookability settings for booking requests

If you prefer to manually review and approve or decline all booking requests and want to find out more about the scenarios for different setups, take a look at the use cases. This article will explain how the booking process works with booking requests, depending on your configured payment method and settings.

💡 Note: If you are connected to an OTA such as Booking.com or Airbnb, the bookability settings set in Lodgify will only apply to your website and will not affect the one selected for your OTA.

Read about:

Recommended setup for Payyo, Paypal, and manual payments

🔎 Case: You only want to accept bookings after you manually review and approve them. Once approved, you want to manually send the guest a payment request email to collect the payment.

Setup: Set the Bookability Settings of your rental to Booking Request.

Booking Process: This is how the process will work for you and your guest.

1. On the last page of the checkout, no payment method or details are requested.
2. A booking with the status Open and a quote with the status Pending for Owner are generated and both, you and the guest receive a booking submission notification.
   💡 Note: Your calendar is not yet blocked.
3. To accept the booking, click on Pending for Owner. 

   If you...	then...
   Agree after Payment 💡 Note: The Accept button in the blue box at the top acts the same way.	A messaging slider would appear with a preset email notification to request payment. Depending on your payment settings, the email would contain a link to pay via Payyo, Paypal, or your bank details with payment instructions. Once the email is successfully sent, the Quote status would appear as Pending for payment, and the Booking status as Tentative.  💡 Note: Your calendar will be blocked for the amount of time that you set in the Quote Expiry of your Policy. If the guest clicks on the link in the email and makes the payment, the booking gets updated directly to a Booked Booking status, and the first scheduled down payment will be marked as Paid. In case of manual payment, you would need to mark the payment manually as Paid.
   Agree without Payment	The Booking Status will change to Booked, and the Quote Status is Agreed. Depending on your payment schedule settings, the first scheduled down payment might show as Overdue or Scheduled.

Recommended setup for credit card payments

🔎 Case: You only want to accept bookings after you manually review and approve them. As soon as you approve them, you want to instantly charge the guest's credit card.

💡 Note: This setting is currently not available for the Payyo gateway.

Setup:

1. Set the Bookability Settings of your rental to Booking Request.
2. Go to the credit card configuration slider in Payment Settings and tick the checkbox Perform credit card verification prior to booking.
   

Booking Process: This is how the process will work for you and your guest.

1. On the last page of the checkout, the guest will need to fill in their credit card details.
   💡 Note: The guest will not be charged until the booking gets confirmed. The moment the guest submits the booking request, we neither charge nor authorize (i.e. block) the credit card. Instead, we simply verify the card details and retain the data in a vault.
   
2. A booking with the status Open and a quote with the status Pending for Owner are generated and both, you and the guest receive a booking submission notification.
   💡 Note: Your calendar is not yet blocked.
3. To accept the booking, click on Pending for Owner. 

   If you...	then...
   Agree & Charge	The system already calculates correctly the amount of the first down payment. The moment you click Agree & Charge, it will try to take the payment from the stored credit card details.  Once charged successfully, the Booking status will appear as Booked, Quote status as Agreed, and the first scheduled down payment is Paid. An automatic email with the payment receipt will be sent automatically.  💡 Note: If the payment fails for whatever reason, i.e. insufficient funds, the Quote status will remain Pending for Payment and an email will be sent automatically to the guest requesting payment with a link to the checkout page.
   Agree without Payment	The Booking Status will change to Booked and the Quote Status is Agreed. Depending on your payment schedule settings, the first scheduled down payment might show as Overdue or Scheduled.