Payments and reminders
When Travel Orbit reminds travellers, takes automatic payments and tries again after a failed one, what you see when a payment is overdue, and the Payments screen.
Explanation4 min read
Each confirmed booking has a payment schedule made from the trip's payment plan: the deposit, then the instalments up to the balance date. Travel Orbit follows every schedule for you, emailing travellers in your name and taking automatic payments through your Stripe account.
Two ways to pay
- Automatic payments: when the trip's plan has automatic payments on, the card the traveller pays with at checkout is saved in your Stripe account, and each later payment is taken from it on its due date.
- Paying themselves: without automatic payments, travellers pay each payment from the traveller portal, with any method your Stripe account offers.
Travellers can turn automatic payments on or off in the portal for their own booking. Turning them on needs a card they have paid with before. Requests you confirm and bookings your team makes start without a saved card.
What happens when
| When | With automatic payments | Without |
|---|---|---|
| Up to 5 days before the due date | One email saying how much will be taken from their card, and when. | One email saying how much is due, and when, with a button to pay. |
| On the due date | The payment is taken from the saved card, and a receipt follows. | An email saying the payment is due today. |
| If the payment fails | An email asking the traveller to pay another way. Travel Orbit tries the card again 1 day later, and then 3 days after that. | |
| After the due date | An overdue reminder every 3 days until it is paid. | An overdue reminder every 3 days until it is paid. |
Every reminder links to the traveller portal, where the traveller can pay straight away. Each payment gets at most one reminder a day, and only confirmed bookings get reminders or automatic payments. Cancelled bookings get nothing more. See Emails to travellers for what each email says.
Failed automatic payments are written in the booking's history, with the reason Stripe gave. Reminders are not, except one that waited while Travel Orbit was paused, but you can see when the next payment is due on the booking.
Overdue payments
A payment that is past its due date and unpaid shows as overdue on the booking, on Payments and on Bookings, and the Overview lists it under Needs your attention. For Editors and Admins it also appears in your tasks in Orbit, so someone follows it up. You can:
- record the payment if it arrived another way
- write to the traveller in the booking's Conversation
- cancel the booking, with a refund by the cancellation terms if you want to
The Payments screen
Payments has three tabs:
- Upcoming: every unpaid payment due in the next 60 days, with the booking, the payment, the amount and how it will be paid: automatically or by the traveller. Overdue and failed payments are marked. Totals at the top show what is due, what will be taken automatically and what is overdue.
- Received: payments and refunds in the dates you choose, card payments and those recorded by hand alike, with how each was paid. Totals show what was received, refunded and kept.
- Failed: payments that didn't go through in the dates you choose, with the reason.
Each tab can be downloaded as a CSV file. Amounts show in the currency you chose under Show money in in Booking settings, converted with the European Central Bank's daily rates, with the amount in the booking's own currency under each one. The CSV file has both: the original amount and currency, and a column with the amount in your chosen currency.
Card payments are in your Stripe account as well, described with the trip name and the booking reference, such as Lofoten ski touring week (NO-7KQ2MX), so you can find them in either place.
When Stripe isn't connected
If the Stripe key stops working, automatic payments pause and travellers get reminders to pay instead, but the portal can't take payments until you connect a working key. See Connect your Stripe account.
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