Hi @Hendrik Renken  Great question! I’ve been digging around for some further info on this to help you. I’m in touch with the Product team and will come back to you with an answer next week.

Hi @Hendrik Renken Apologies it’s taken a while to respond. Having checked on this, while you do have the option to close a bill if it is balanced (and no unpaid items/deposits exist), there isn’t a way to do this prior to check-out.  
There is a feature request here that is open if you wish to vote.
 

Hey @Sarah.Masterton-Brown 

Any update on being able to use the check-out close balanced bills button for $0 balance ‘unpaid items/deposit’ bills? 

This is a huge frustration in all our properties to have to manually close these £0 balance bills each morning and would love to be able to close automatically upon check-out. 

Hey @Sarah.Masterton-Brown 

Thanks for your answer! 
We do have that enabled, but the problem is that the “unpaid items/deposit bill” does not change automatically to an open bill. 

So me and Sam are facing the same challenge here, it is a huge manual effort to close them each morning.

Hi @Sam  and @Hendrik Renken, 

indeed as you mentioned, the unpaid items/deposit window is not an open bill and does not behave like one. The default window is meant to be cleared up while working with the billing screen, so that items are moved into bills (or the window is converted into a bill by creating a preview of the unpaid items/deposits) and the items are not accumulating there. 

This is however a valuable feedback that I would like to bring up to our product team to see what can be done to make the process easier for you!

Thanks Alzbeta,

But moving this ‘fake bill’ during the stay vs. on departure day is the same if the balance is $0, maybe Mews has the logic? but in our minds if the balance is $0 I would not even open the billing screen and seems unnecessary. 

Thanks, 

Hi Sam, 

I understand. For now the logic is - you’re not supposed to leave items unassigned (= in unpaid items/deposit default window). 
I do however agree that this may cause a lot of manual work. That is why we’ll look into possible solutions to see if we may make this process easier for you. 
Please bear with us in the meantime :) 

Hi @alzbeta skrabalkova, 

We are currently also experiencing this exact problem. Do you have any update on the solution?
An adjacent question is if it is possible to automatically move the unpaid items to a bill with your API?

Best,

Sander

Hi @Sander, 

the issue is currently on our roadmap for this year, so we’re hoping to dive into this topic soon enough. 

As for your second question - we currently have no automated workaround (which is due to the current functionality workflow - items are supposed to be picked from the default section and sorted into bills manually, as the system can not anticipate how you want the items sorted).

We’ll keep you updated when there’s a progress on this matter. 

Hope it helps :) 

We also have this problem: it seems the bill is closed, but because there are unpaid items/deposits with balance 0, the guest cannot be checked out. And when you close these unpaid items/deposits a second bill appears on the guest profile. So their initial bill is there and closed, and now a second one is added, just because you manually need to close the unpaid items/dpositis

We're facing the same problem every morning. I even asked support and they just closed the ticket without telling me exactly what to do.

Got an answer that items that are set to be charged automatically by the system (if you have settlement rules set up) will most likely end up being "unpaid items/deposits" even if the balance is $0…

The workaround they told me is to move the items into a bill or create a new bill and move into this bill. Then you could head back to the departure screen and they should be ready to check out (no need to close them manually)

I then asked the support how exactly we're supposed to charge the bill to not face these unpaid items again, and they just closed the ticket with no answer.…

So we're having this problem every morning since day 1 with MEWS as our PMS. Been almost 8 months now....

@alzbeta skrabalkova could you check, what the timeline is for this? 
We just opened our new location and facing the same issue here. 

Would be good also for the whole team to give them an answer as this is always a frustration to the team.

Hi @Hendrik Renken, 

apologies for a delayed answer. 
We are still in investigating stage, so we unfortunately don’t have any estimation yet. 
I’ll get back to you as soon as I know more.  

Hi @Zoheb L, 

I completely understand your frustration, and I apologies for the difficulties and confusions you were experiencing with our support team. 

There is currently no feature that could help making the process automatic. 
For now, I would recommend one of the following:

1. When charging the guest, select the items in the Unpaid items/deposits and move them to a new billing window. 
2. Convert the unpaid items/deposit window into an open bill (by creating a bill preview).

I would also recommend doing this at the time you’re collecting the payment and already working with the billing screen, as it would only take couple more clicks at the time, but would save a lot of time at check-out time. 

That beings said, we are indeed aiming to make this easier and to save you some time. I’ll be letting you know on this thread when there is some progress on the feature. 

Regards, 

Hey, 
is there already an Update regarding this? 

Hi @Hendrik Renken & everyone else invested in this :) 

in fact, there is! 
We have been working on a solution that will transform the Unpaid items/deposit window into an open bill (or at least sort of), so that you’d be able to close the bill and check the guest out easily from the guest’s profile. 

There will be some limitations, such as if you have multiple reservations in the window (especially if there are future stays that should not be closed prematurely), but either way, this solution should help you close balanced bills and check out the majority of the guests faster, easier and with much less clicks. 

This feature is currently being tested and is available in DEMO environment. If all goes well (meaning, there are no blockers found during testing), it should be available quite soon in your live production :) 

I will update you once I have a closer ETA!

Hope it helps!

Hi, me again :) 

We are now running Beta testing for this, so if you’d be interested in early access, as well as providing us with some feedback, please let me know the property where you want us to enable it :) 

we (JustStay Hotels) would love to have it enabled :)

Thank you @Sonja, 

we’ll contact you with more details :) 

we also would like to take part with our property TheLAB

Awesome, we’ll be in touch :)