Pre-Payment Handling
Index
Clearing the Diary Actions Once the Payment Has Been Applied
Adding a Pop Message to a Diary Action for More Urgent Alert
Adding an Email Reminder to a Diary Action for More Urgent Alert
Overview
Bookings can be taken where a payment must be received before the passenger can travel. Traditionally, a payment that is to be taken on the day of travel is a POB (Pay On Board) payment. Standard bus manifests, for example, are designed to show any outstanding amounts not yet collected by showing the amounts in the POB/On Account payment types in the booking.
Where money is to be collected a number of days prior to travel a special payment type Pre-Payment is available. It is advisable to use this payment type in conjunction with the collect by POB so that, regardless of the efficiency of the staff, mistakes in the booking, or non payment by the parties, the POB mechanism that alerts an unpaid booking will always remain in place.
The payment type POB/Pre-payment can be used very effectively as follows.
Adding a POB/Prepayment to a Booking
Take the booking in the normal manner up to the entering of payments.
In the example below the booking from an agent who is a deposit only agent who has mistakenly taken the full amount. Due to previous credit issues this agent does not have an acceptable credit rating and must therefore pre-pay the balance (excepting his commission) 7 days prior to travel of the passenger will be asked to pay the balance on board.
This booking payment will look like this by default .. Agent/On Account payment line for the commission amount and POB/On Account for the balance to be paid on board by the passenger.
Edit the POB/On Account payment line to be POB/Pre-payment...
Then Save Changes at which point a prompt will appear for a reminder...
Set the number of days prior to travel for the reminder to action and then click Add Reminder...
This has saved the POB Pre-Payment line and has also added an automatic Diary Action into the booking – note the RED CORNER on the Diary button indicating a note exists for the booking.
NOTE: The Diary Note cannot be edited at this point until the booking has been committed. If the booking gets cancelled or is never committed the pre-payment diary action will not be saved.
In order to view the Diary note the booking is committed and then edited. The booking in the example below has been committed and being edited again in order that the details in the automatic pre-payment diary note can be viewed.
Click on the Diary button...
Double click on the Diary Note to view the details...
Note that this is a Diary Action because the Action tick box has been ticked and a By action date has been filled in. Note that the date is 7 days prior to travel (in this example the travel date was 01 September 2007 making 25 August the action date). The action has by default been ticked to Assign To Anyone.
These details can be edited if a specific process is required or if a particular user group or user is required to actions these (for example the account department may be responsible for chasing the money once the action date is passed).
Managing Diary Actions in the Diary Screen
There is a Diary feature in Respax in the Reservations Tab from where Diary notes generally and Diary Actions can be managed.
Click on the Diary icon in the Reservations tab. This will open the Diary screen...
Click on the directories under the Diary Action directory to view diary actions Overdue, Due Today, Due Tomorrow, Due Next 7 days, Assigned To Me or Assigned To My Group ..
Overdue … shows up in red
Due Today .. shows in the screen in black
Each ‘Due’ directory contains the Diary Actions filtered according to the directory label.
Diary Actions can be opened an manipulated from the Dairy screen as well as from within the booking. Process can be defined to suit specific business needs and staff can be trained either to edit the diary from within the Diary screen, or edit it within the booking.
To edit a Diary Action from the Diary screen double click on the diary action...
Receiving the prepayment Before Travel (As Expected)
When money is received from the agent (as hoped) prior to travel date the money can be applied to the booking as normal.
To apply the payment, edit the appropriate POB/Pre-Payment line in the booking...
... and change it to collected by Reservations and payment type as per the receipt (cash/credit card/cheque/direct deposit etc) .. make sure the Paid date is the correct receipt date (automatically <today> if tabbed through but may be the tour date if using the mouse to jump over the Paid date).
Save the payment changes...
NOTE: The Diary Action DOES NOT AUTOMATICALLY ACTION .. this is a deliberate feature to ensure that diary action cannot be removed from the booking without personal intervention. The user who actions the payment is RESPONSIBLE FOR DEALING WITH THE DIARY ACTION.
Clearing the Diary Actions Once the Payment Has Been Applied
One the payment has been applied to the booking the diary action should be ‘Actioned’ as part of the same process to ensure that other users are no longer alerted to an overdue action.
Click on the Diary button in the booking...
Double click on the PREPAYMENT diary action in the diary screen...
Tick Action Completed and add an Action Comment if appropriate...
This will clear the Diary Action from the Diary Action screen...
Adding a Pop Message to a Diary Action for More Urgent Alert
An added urgency alert can be added to Diary Actions causing the diary actions to pop into the user screens every 15 minutes. This feature is appropriate where the Diary Action is something unusual and not part of the daily checking process in the action screens.
It is advisable to make checking Diary Actions part of the normal daily process so that the staff responsible for actioning the Diary Actions do not miss any prepayments that are due. Where accepting pre-payments is part of daily business the users do not want to have hundreds of overdue diary action messages popping into their screens every 15 minutes.
However, if accepting of pre-payment is not part of the normal daily business process and therefore having an active reminder on the few prepayments that are accepted then it may be acceptable and appropriate to add the extra alert to pre-payment diary actions as part of the process.
To add a pop message alert to a diary action it must be edited. (If this was an automatic prepayment diary note then the booking must be committed first to save the diary action.)
Click on the Diary button in the booking and double click on the diary action to edit...
Click on the Set Reminder box to set the PopUp reminder..
This will set a pop up reminder to come into the user screens every 15 minutes until the Diary Action has been set to Action Completed.
Adding an Email Reminder to a Diary Action for More Urgent Alert
A Diary Action can be set to send an email reminder once the action date has been reached.
To add an Email alert to a diary action it must be edited. (If this was an automatic prepayment diary note then the booking must be committed first to save the diary action.)
Click on the Diary button in the booking and double click on the diary action to edit...
Click on the Set Reminder box and click on the Email button to choose to send an email reminder...
NOTE: The Email reminder automatically sets the Diary Action to Action Completed once the email has been sent. The system DOES NOT CONTINUE TO SEND EMAILS waiting for a user to action the diary action.