Enhanced Payment Management for Booking.com Reservations

We are pleased to bring to your attention an important update that significantly enhances the payment management process for bookings made via Booking.com in your workspace. This modification ensures a streamlined and accurate tracking of payments, making the process easier to manage, both for you and your guests.

When a booking is made through Booking.com, it will be initialised with a payment status marked as 'SUCCESS' based on the initial payment made by the guest at the time of booking. This feature enables a seamless update of payment statuses in real-time, reflecting any amendments made to the booking (such as date or rate adjustments) to include any additional payments made.

Here is what you need to know about this update:

• Payment Initialisation at Booking: The booking will commence with a payment in ‘SUCCESS’ status, reflecting the amount paid by the guest during the booking process.
• Dynamic Payment Updates: Any changes made on Booking.com will automatically update the corresponding payment details, keeping the payment status 'SUCCESS' until checkout.
• Checkout & Payment Settlement: Upon the guest's checkout, a payment receipt will be generated, aligning with the building owner's payout timeline.
• Cancellation & Payment Adjustments: In cases where a booking is cancelled and a cancellation fee is applied, the payment status will adjust accordingly. If no cancellation fee is charged, no payment record or invoice will be generated.
• Accounting Integration & Reconciliation: If your workspace is integrated with your accounting system, using an integration or our standard export which includes payments, the issued Booking.com payment receipts will now be included along with other payment receipts and invoices for easier accounting and reconciliation.

Additional information:

• Note: It's important to be aware that, due to this change, the alignment of VAT reporting in some tax regimes, might necessitate additional attention, since it technically corresponds with the guest's payment timings, even though the building owner receives the payment post-checkout. We are here to assist with adapting to this grey area and ensuring smooth VAT reporting.
• Looking Ahead: As part of our continuous improvement for booking.com bookings, we plan to introduce automatic issuance of invoices and auto-allocation of payments aligned with payment receipt generation at checkout, further facilitating payment management and reconciliation.
• Migration Note: To ensure consistency, a migration script will be executed to reprocess booking.com payments where the checkout date is on or after January 1, 2023. Workspaces with the invoicing feature enabled will receive backdated payment receipts for reporting purposes. The backdated payment receipts will not however be included in accounting interface data although will include the GL codes.

We hope this update will provide a more efficient, transparent, and simplified payment management experience. If you have any questions or need further assistance, please don’t hesitate to contact our dedicated support team at info@getlavanda.com or directly via the intercom chatbot.

All the best,

Team Lavanda