Request advance/deposit payments when guests book a table

Do you have a very crowded restaurant? Guests at your restaurant that require a prepaid reservation? Or maybe you often find out that guests don’t show up at the table reservation. Pretending a prepaid reservation deposit could be the answer to these issues. Therefore, we at Manager BookdiaFork have made it possible to charge a deposit for prepaid bookings. The deposit can be modified according to your wishes and the needs of the restaurant.

Add a deposit to your opening hours

The deposit function can be applied to your opening hours, but not necessarily to everyone. This means you can add a deposit to some of your opening hours. This could be, for example, if you want to charge a deposit only for evening bookings, but not at lunch. You must manually activate the deposit function for each opening time if you want to charge a deposit on all portions. Go to "Settings" - "Opening Hours".

Food served in a restaurant

Choose a deposit per guest or by reservation.

After activating the payment function in "opening hours", you can define the criteria for prepaid bookings. You can decide to charge a guest deposit, which can be especially useful when making a reservation for a larger group of guests. For example, if the guest deposit is set to €10 and there are 5 people in the booking, the total deposit charged for that booking will be €50. You can also choose to charge a deposit per booking and not for guest. Then the total deposit charged for prepaid bookings will be the same regardless of the number of guests in a booking.

Set the minimum number of guests required for prepaid bookings

You can decide to charge a deposit only for a certain number of guests per booking. This way, you can choose that bookings with only a few guests do not have to pay a deposit. For example, if the setting is set to a minimum of 4 guests, a deposit will only be charged for bookings with 4 or more guests.

How far in advance can a guest cancel a reservation and get a deposit refund?

It depends entirely on you how early a reservation can be cancelled and the deposit refunded. Later you set the time, the less time you have to receive a new booking. On the contrary, you will give guests more freedom if you leave them more time to cancel. It’s a matter of judgment, but you can always change the settings on your computer, tablet or in our app.

Deposit for reservations from a guest's point of view

Guests will always know how much they will be charged to them when there is a deposit. So it won't be an unpleasant surprise later. Subsequently they will be asked to fill in the information as a normal booking and will then be directed to the payment portal.

BookdiaFork booking form

Request deposit from a phone or physical booking

Deposit settings for reservations

You can still request a deposit when making reservations from a telephone or physical meeting. When creating a reservation, remember to activate the advance payment and set the amount you want to request. Afterwards, remember to check email or SMS, because that’s how the guest will receive the payment link.

Reservation Deposit Settings Payment pending deposit

After creating a reservation, you can check if the guest paid the deposit or not. The credit card symbol will be highlighted if not paid and white if paid.

Take a look at our feature on reducing the missed presentations in your restaurant.

Do you have any questions about a deposit for reservations?

Do not hesitate to contact us. Our support team is always ready to help you set everything up.