TABLE OF CONTENTS


Overview

There are several scenarios where booking fees and/or surcharges can be used to recover some of the costs involved in administering transactions for your customers: 

  • Over the counter when you are processing transactions through Point of sale.
  • On your E-Commerce website, surcharges can apply per payment type via Windcave
  • On your E-Commerce website, you can charge a booking fee for reservation products only
While surcharges can encourage customers to use payment methods that attract lower fees (for example paying into your bank account), it can also drive customers to your competitors or even other websites where your products might be available. Many OTAs (Online Travel Agents) don’t charge fees.

We encourage you to carefully consider surcharges before you enable them and to closely monitor your website traffic for any changes. 


Options available for IBIS users at Point of Sale

  1. Enable a payment surcharge at point of sale
    IBIS has a built-in surcharge feature which can be enabled on payment types and charged easily at POS. Learn more about how to configure a surcharge for your frontline transactions.

    ProsCons
    Trackable: Allows you to monitor and report on surcharge values within IBIS, offering transparency and insight.Customer Interaction: Staff must inquire about the customer's payment method before selecting the appropriate payment type which adds additional time to the checkout process.
    Clear Receipts: Surcharges are prominently displayed on sales receipts, informing customers of the additional costs.Training: Requires staff training and monitoring to ensure they correctly handle surcharges.
    Adjustable: Staff can add, remove, or modify surcharge values at their discretion, offering flexibility in managing payments.


  2. Enable a payment surcharge via your EFTPOS software
    Talk to your EFTPOS provider about what options are available. Although the surcharge will not appear on the receipt printed from IBIS, it will show on the EFTPOS receipt. You will not be able to report on surcharges from IBIS, so you will need to report via your EFTPOS system, but it does eliminate the need to ask customers each time how they wish to pay, and guarantees staff are charging the surcharges.


Options available for E-Commerce customers

  1. Enable a payment surcharge through Windcave for all transactions
    Windcave can enable a percentage or fixed amount surcharge for different payment types on your Windcave PxPay page. If you use the Windcave online payment type at POS surcharges would also be applied here. This is a good option for customers who want to apply a surcharge to cover fees for all item types in the IBIS E-Commerce site (retail, reservations, gift vouchers, admission, events and memberships).

    Because the surcharge is configured in Windcave, it will not show on the IBIS receipt or in the POS transaction when viewed in the IBIS application. By default, the customer will be charged in a separate but simultaneous transaction when they complete their payment on your E-Commerce site, however, talk to Windcave about incorporating it into a single charge.

  2. Charge a booking fee for online reservation sales only
    This article explains how booking fees work in IBIS. This option only charges a fee on reservation sales. Any retail, admission, events or gift vouchers sold online would be excluded from this charge. 


Communicating surcharges and fees to customers

Nobody likes to get sticker shock before they pull out their wallet to pay. It's important to think about how you communicate surcharges or booking fees to customers before they pay.


We recommend clear signage at your front desk advising of surcharge fees. To keep things less confusing, sometimes charging a consistent fee across all payment types is easier than having a different charge for each.


For online sales, we recommend advising customers as early as possible in the sales process by including information in your online description for your reservation products, and customising wording on your E-Commerce site by specifying these charges in the price caption on the cart page.


Managing public holiday surcharges

Charge a public holiday surcharge on reservations

Public holiday surcharges on reservations can be managed with pricing seasons. 


Follow these steps:

  1. Create a pricing season for the public holiday date. 
  2. Use the Copy season function in Seasonal pricing to easily transfer your current pricing to the public holiday price season. 
  3. Update the pricing to include your surcharge percentage. 
  4. Create another pricing season for the following day to return pricing to your normal rates. 


We recommend adding a disclaimer to your product descriptions to let customers know that a surcharge may apply on public holidays. 


Charge a public holiday surcharge at Point of Sale

You can set up a POS discount with a negative discount value to increase the cost of the sale on a public holiday by a percentage amount.

 

To set this up:
  1. Open the Discounts screen under the Point of Sale menu.
  2. Add a new discount with the type Sale (this applies the surcharge to the full sale rather than individual items)
  3. Set the discount as a negative value (for example, -10%) so it charges a surcharge instead of applying a discount.
  4. Click Save.


We recommend setting this up as its own POS button so frontline staff can apply it quickly. Find out how to add a discount button to your POS layout.


Use the Discount report to report on surcharge sales (bearing in mind they will appear as a positive value and not a discount on the same report).