(GS-7) Managing Payments
Now we have added a range of bookings to the Yoga Retreat activity, let’s dive into managing the payments.
When our three bookings were made, different payment relates messages were sent to Percy, Petra and Norbert. Let’s take a look at these.
- Go to Messages - Sent Messages
- If you just completed the last lesson, then messages entitled Payment Received and Payment Due to these attendees will be listed on the left hand side.
- If they are not listed here, the use the search function to find messages relating to the Yoga Retreat.
- Click on each message listed on the left to see what wording was sent.
You will see that the Payment Due messages explain the amount to be paid, gives details of how to pay by bank transfer, and has a link to a page where payment can be made by card.
Let’s assume that the day after making her booking, Petra makes her payment by bank transfer.
In order to show the full flexibility of Workshop Angel, we are assuming here that your own business operates in British pounds. The Yoga Retreat is being held in Spain, and is priced in Euros. Hence we will deal with the two different currencies in this example. There will be an amount due in euros which we will assume the attendee paid, and also the actual amount that arrived in our bank account in pounds.
In most cases you will probably be dealing in your own currency where these two amounts are the same.
- Go to Bookings - Payments section.
- Note how much Petra needs to pay for her deposit in the "Next Payment" column.
- On Petra’s booking, click on [+ Payment] (not [+ Card Payment])
The window which pops up is the main window for managing payments. It has been pre-populated with Petra’s contact record, a payment method of Bank Transfer and today's date.
Since in our example here, the currency of the activity (€) and the currency of our business (£) are different, there are two amounts to fill in - one for the amount paid in €, and one for the amount received in £.
(Note that if you set your country to be one which uses the euro, there would be just one "Amount" box to fill in here)
Fill in the following fields:
- Amount paid (€): the amount that Petra owes as a deposit right now (You can close this window and re-open it again if you've forgotten how much it is!)
- Amount received (£): a fictional amount a bit less than the amount paid. (This field will not be visible if the payment currency and the currency of your business are the same)
- Click on [Create Payment]
The payment window should look something like this:
So in the above example, once the payment has been created, it is listed as being "fully allocated to invoices". Workshop Angel has the idea of a payment being associated with, or "allocated to" a booking, which is effectively an invoice to the client. In this case, it is allocated to Petra's booking on the Yoga Retreat for her and Penelope.
- Click on [Close Window]
In the Bookings - Payments section, Petra's status has been updated to "Okay", and her next payment is now listed as being out in the future, a short while before the activity starts. Her payment has also been listed in the Payments column with today's date:
A Payment Received message has also been created which you can view:
- Click on Messages - Messages Sent
- Click on the "Payment Received" message at the top of the list to see the message content:
So we have seen in this chapter how to record the receipt of a non card payment, and been introduced to the idea that a payment is allocated to a specific booking, which we can also consider to be an invoice to the attendee.
There are many more possibilities for managing payments within Workshop Angel. This is probably the part of using the app which requires the most understanding, and if used well can lead to the most benefits when it comes to running your business.
There are lots more details of all the ways you can work with Payments and Invoices described in Chapter 8 of the documentation.
Now you have an overview of how to work with payments, let's take a dive into what is involved in sending different types of messages to your attendees.