How to Handle Credit Card Transactions

General Credit Card rules – Credit Card Tokens – Refund Rules – Over  the Phone Reservations – Seasonal Slips – Online Reservations – Store Sales

General Credit Card Rules

Lodgical doesn’t take payments. Lodgical makes a request to the payment gateway system and receives a success or fail response. Never change the financial line for a credit card. This doesn’t affect the actual charge on the credit card.

The payment gateway is what actually handles the payment. This is where the card hits the bank and sends a response of success or fail to Lodgical. A refund or payment request needs to hit the payment gateway in order to actually be a refund or payment. Always go through the Payment button to handle payments and refunds with a credit card.

Credit Card Tokens

Credit Card tokens are an embedded code created to safely store a credit card to be used for future purchases. All online reservations come in with a tokenized credit card.

There are two tokens. Lodgical Vault or Payment Gateway tokens.

Lodgical Vault tokens start with an LV before the number. These tokens never expire.

Payment gateway tokens are created when a payment is taken. They are only numerical. It is associated with the exact amount of money paid on that transaction. A refund cannot be made more than the transaction on the token. These tokens may expire after 6 months.

Refund Rules

Refund: Always use the line item that has a monetary value. If you need to give back $300, but there are two different charges that add up to that such as $100 + $200, you need to do two separate refunds (one for 100 and the other for 200). If there is one transaction with $500, you can give back that $300 without needing to do two transactions.

Same-Day Refund: Due to the original payment charge not batching out, do a complete refund of that payment to create a Void on the Payment Gateway side. Only after refunding the full amount should you do another payment.

If you do a refund and you get an error, check to see what the error is. After “Error with Lodgical Vault Token:” there is a description of the error. If the error is “Token not found”, try the refund again, but choose the LV token on file. If there is no LV token on file, you will need to call the guest to get their card to do a refund.

Over the phone refunds: If there is no good credit card token on file, call the guest for the card information. Go to the Payment button, choose Refund. Add amount to refund. Choose Credit Card. On the token screen, choose “New Card”. Add the card from the guest. Process transaction

Over the Phone Reservations

Always hit “Get Card” and add the credit card to the Lodgical Vault system. Charge through the Payment button and use the LV token.

If the refund fails and says that the token doesn’t exist—use the LV token to do the refund.

Accounts for Group Reservations, or Seasonal Slips

At the beginning of the season, get their card into the Lodgical Vault system. This is under “Guarantee” in the Account. Their account will be charged via the LV token throughout the season.

To pay their bill, Click the Service Payment button, add amount to charge, choose “Credit Card”, and choose that LV token. This will charge the credit card. This pays any store sale items they’ve charged to their account instead of paying direct.

Online Reservations

When a new reservation comes into Pending, it will come in with a guest’s credit card tokenized as an LV token. Click the Payment button, add amount to charge, click “Credit Card”, and choose that LV token. This will charge the credit card.

To refund, go to Payment button, choose Refund, add amount that is being refunded, choose Credit Card. Click the transaction line that has the original financial payment on it. See refund rules if you get an error.

Store Sales

Direct payment

Add quantity and item to the transaction
If credit card, send request to payment device and chip card.
For refund, add a negative quantity to the item.
Refund to card directly through the device.

Reservation/Slip charge

Instead of going into Store Sales, go into the guest’s reservation and add the add-on from the Service button. Then you can use the card on file to charge later. To do a refund, delete the service and refund the difference via the tokens. See refund rules if you get an error.

Account charge

Find the Account and add the add-on to the account services. Then you can use the card on file to charge later. To do a refund, delete the service and refund the difference via the tokens on file. See refund rules if you get an error.