Applying Cancellation Penalties In Stayntouch PMS & CRS/IBE Auto-Posting Of Fee

When a hotel creates cancellation rules and applies these to rate codes, the handling of the cancellation is different when done by an authorized user in Stayntouch PMS versus when cancelled online through a CRS or IBE.

Depending on your hotel’s deposit policies, you may need to process a payment or refund to balance the guest folio and avoid open balances on your guest ledger. To monitor cancellations received where a payment or refund needs to be processed, we suggest regularly reviewing the Cancellation and No-Show Report from Reports > New Report with the cancellation date set to a recent date range and the arrival date parameter cleared. Additionally or alternatively, we advise monitoring all open balances (including for cancelled reservations) on the Guest Balance Report from Reports > New Report.

CANCELLATION IN PMS BY USER

Cancellations in the PMS, where a cancellation rule applies, will look slightly different based on whether or not a deposit has already been taken for the reservation.

Cancellation Without A Deposit

When selecting CANCEL RESERVATION, the PMS will first verify if a rule should be enforced. When a cancellation is outside of the allowed period (cancellation applies), the system will prompt the user as to whether or not this should be enforced. This allows for handling circumstances where a cancellation is waived (PROCEED WITHOUT PENALTY).

When choosing to APPLY PENALTY, the first step the PMS will take is to ensure you are able to collect payment.

If the payment is unsuccessful, the user will need to select an alternate form of payment to proceed, or they may choose to not post the fee at all, knowing they will likely be unable to collect the funds.

When payment is successful, the PMS will post the payment followed by the relevant charge to the guest's bill as shown here:

Cancellation With A Deposit

If the reservation being cancelled has a deposit in place, the PMS will instead ask the user if they should PROCEED WITHOUT REFUND (AND POST THE CANCELLATION CHARGE), or if the user does not intend to charge the cancellation fee, they can select to REFUND DEPOSIT.

It is important to note that sometimes deposits may be greater or lesser than the fee to be charged (depending on both your deposit and cancellation rules), so we do advise always verifying that the bill has a zero balance once complete.

ONLINE CANCELLATION RECEIVED THROUGH CENTRAL RESERVATION SYSTEM (CRS) OR INTERNET BOOKING ENGINE (IBE)

To ensure cancellation fees are assessed when a reservation is cancelled online, the PMS is designed to post the charge immediately, using the charge code included in the cancellation rule. If you wish to prevent the PMS from charging this automatically, you can remove the charge code from the rule itself.

HELPFUL REFERENCES