Take payments

DivePilot records the money a guest pays at your desk on their bill: the card terminal, the transfer and the cash stay with you, and you note here what you received. With a Stripe account connected, guests can also pay online, and those payments land on the bill by themselves, see Payment links and the My bill page. See Bills for how a bill is built.

Take a payment

You can start a payment in three places:

• on the bill, with Take payment;
• on the customer's Bills tab, with Take payment;
• in the Arrival checklist of a booking, where the payment line says Paid, "Owes 40.00" or "In credit 10.00" and offers Take payment and Open bill. See Check in a guest.

The window says what the bill owes and asks for the Payment method, one tap on its tile, and the Amount, which starts at what the bill owes. Below the amount it says what the payment does, such as "Leaves 9,000.00 to pay" for a part payment or "Pays what is owed in full", and the button names the amount. Add a reference or note opens the Reference and the Note. For cash it also asks for the Amount given: it shows "Change: " with the difference, and after saving says "Give 10.00 change". An amount given below the payment is refused. A method you switched off is not offered. Online payment is never offered either: it belongs to the payments that arrive from Stripe. The permission is Take payments. When your dive center makes receipts automatically, a payment taken before the bill's first invoice gets a numbered receipt at once, see Receipts.

A payment can be more than the bill owes, or come before any charge, for example a guest who pays upfront. The bill then shows In credit, and later lines use it up.

If today has already been closed in cash-up, the window says "Today is closed, this payment counts for" followed by that date, see Cash-up.

Refund money

Refund gives money back on the bill, at most what was paid on it ("Refund at most"). It is not tied to one payment: you pick the method the money goes back by. It needs the refund permission, Refund. An online payment goes back to the guest's card with Refund to card in the payment's menu, see Online refunds and disputes.

Void a payment, or reverse it

Void payment cancels a payment taken by mistake and asks for a Reason. If that payment's day is already closed, the closed day stays as it was: a reversal dated today is recorded instead. A payment that has a receipt keeps it: the receipt stays in its number series and is marked "payment voided".

A closed bill is final, so a refund is refused on it. Void payment becomes Reverse (chargeback) there, for example for a card payment that is charged back after check-out: the reversal lands on the guest's current bill, which then shows the amount as owing and lists it under Owing. It needs the permission Void payments.

An online payment has neither: the money sits in Stripe. Refund it to the card instead, and a dispute the guest wins against you reverses it by itself, see Online refunds and disputes.

Settle & close

Settle & close first issues a credit note for every reduction waiting to be credited, then the invoice for every line not invoiced yet, then closes the bill and freezes its lines; later changes post on the guest's next bill. The window lists the invoice and any credit note under "Closing also issues" before you confirm, and if one step is refused nothing is issued and the bill stays open. Where your country needs business details on an invoice and one is missing, closing is refused with a link to Business & tax, see What your documents are in your country. With Email the invoice when a bill is closed switched on, the guest receives the invoice at the address on file; a failed email never undoes the close and shows in the bill's History. See Invoices and credit notes. What it asks depends on the balance:

The window starts with the bill in three figures: Total, Paid, and what it Owes, holds In credit or that it is Settled.

• Nothing owed: press Close bill.
• In credit: choose the card "Refund 40.00" (it needs the refund permission) and the method the money goes back by, or "Carry to the next bill", where it shows as "Credit brought forward"; the button names it: "Refund 40.00 and close" or "Carry 40.00 and close". A closed bill with carried credit says "Credit carried to bill 14".
• Money owing: "Take 40.00", chosen first, opens Take payment with what the bill owes, and the bill then closes at 0. "Close with money owing" asks for a Reason for closing with money owing and the permission Close with money owing; the button reads "Close with 40.00 owing". The bill stays under Closed and reads "Closed owing:" with the reason. It also shows under Owing. When the money comes in, open the bill and use Take payment on its balance card: on a closed bill the payment takes at most what the bill owes, and the bill then reads Settled.
• A payer's bill that others are billed to closes only once those bills are settled: the window lists them under "Settle the bills charged to this one first:". Bills of those guests that are already settled (balance 0) close together with it.

Closing needs the permission Settle and close.

Automatic closing

In Settings, then Bills & discounts, the Closing bills card reads "Close a settled bill once ... full days have passed since its last service", with a number of days from 1 to 365, and names the day a bill whose last service is today would close. Once a day DivePilot checks each open bill on its own: when that many full days have passed since the guest's last service and the balance is exactly zero, the bill closes, provided the bills of guests billed to it owe nothing and hold no credit either. A bill with no lines counts the days from the day it was opened. A bill that owes money or holds credit never closes by itself. The card saves on its own with Save changes. The automatic close issues the invoice too, with no person named as its issuer. A bill of a dive center whose required business details are missing stays open and is tried again the next day.