Mews auto settlement rules are a real game changer! We have non-refundable reservations charging at time of creation & our flexible rates charging on day of arrival. Really looking forward to the addition of multiple rules per rate group. 

Hi!

Anyone here that started off with manual settlement and made the switch to automatic while being live?

We currently have manual settlement but are thinking of switching to automatic for our non-ref rate groups.
My concern is about what actually will happen with our future reservation that is already manually charged. Will Mews try to charge these again? If yes - will VCC create errors since there is no balance on the card? Will regular CC be charged again?

Switching in a live environment feels risky, so if anyone has done this please let me know how that worked out for you!

Hey Robin,

A change of your settlement set up will only affect new reservations but not the already created ones. Thus, there won’t be any effect on the reservations that are already manually charged. 

I hope I could help you. 

Best regards,

Tom

Hi Tom,

Great to hear that, since that is not the case for other functions in Mews. E.g when adding an additional product in a already existing product rule - all reservations with this product rule are affected, even reservations created prior to the change. They get triggered when checked in.

We might use the settlement trigger “end date”. I assume, also with this trigger option only reservations made after the change to automatic settlement, are settled?
 

Hey Robin, 

Yes also in this case it would only affect the newly created reservations.

Best regards,
Tom

Automated settlement will not activate on a booking when the credit card has been entered into Mews by a team member (ie direct offline reservations) unless the guest has verified the credit card via the guest app (during the online check in) before the settlement rule executes.

We have worked super hard to achieve 70%+ direct bookings - but require full payment at time of reservation. We initially had settlement rules activate 5 mins after res creation across our 11 properties, but found approx 20% of our bookings would actually have their payment automated so we had to disable.

Has anyone else come across this and found a workaround?

@TomD 

Hey @Nick Ellis,

Please excuse my delayed reply - I have been looking into this.
What I would recommend is to reach out to your Customer Success Manager to be able to detailly discuss this as it seems to me like a larger topic that might be difficult to be solved in this thread. 

From my perspective what I would try out is to either try preauthorizations which would basically test if the card is valid or I would change the settlement rules to a bigger time frame between reservation creation and settlement trigger. 

 

The automatic payments are fine. For those customers using the credit card.

In addition to credit cards also Paypal should be deeply integrated. For us in Germany, > 30% of our the guests in Germany/Austria cannot pay per credit card. 
After they payed manually via bank transfer and we figured that out manually in mews, they are getting confused, because mews in the online check in asks again for the credit card. Mews knows at this time that the customer does not have one!!! We want to use the online check in for getting guest data, but do not want to ask again for the credit card data. This confuses more than 30 percent of our guests and looks very unprofessional…
So please look at the feedback portal. Paypal is very often asked for!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That would be a real Game Changer for us and our Guests here in Germany.

Best Regards
Kai

Hi Nick,

Not sure why have you placed 5 minutes delay. We do use the function for our NR bookings and don’t have issues with contradicting automations.

Are you aware of the window on the booking engine?

Currently all bookings enter Mews as Optional and within 15 minutes (you can change this time) the guest has to make payment on the merchant.

What seems to be happening you are delaying the guest paying directly on the Merchant webpage and instead you are only collecting their card details?

Then you are initiating scheduled payment settlement based on what you have collected.

This is not really needed if it is at time of res creation, because you want the guest to land on the Merchant page and make the payment.

With Mews’ latest update on the 15 min window and the optional bookings, you should have better security as all failed payments will result in cancelled booking. Reducing the follow up workload on failed payments and increasing the chance for you to re-sell to a better and more trustworthy customer.

And for Mews - looking forward to your multi-settlement developments and the option to charge per night basis, rather than just flat amount or %.

Hope this helps.

Igor