Automatic Balance Collection - Guide for Park Operators

GEMAPARK · PAYMENTS

Automatic Balance Collection

Collecting outstanding booking balances automatically through Stripe

A guide for park operators

Automatic Balance Collection lets GemaPark take the outstanding balance on a booking without anyone having to chase the guest. It is currently only available to Stripe customers using a GemaPark Connect Stripe account.

When a guest pays their deposit online, their card is securely retained by Stripe. On the date the balance is due, GemaPark charges that card for whatever is still owed, posts the payment to the customer ledger, and emails the guest to tell them what has happened.

No card details are stored in GemaPark itself — the card stays with Stripe, and GemaPark only holds a reference to it.

In short

A guest books online and pays a deposit → their card is retained by Stripe.

On the balance due date, GemaPark charges the balance to that card.

The payment is added to the ledger and the guest gets an email.

Anything that does not go through appears in Tasks → Automatic Balance Failures for you to action.

How it works

There are four stages, and only the first involves the guest doing anything.

1. The guest books and pays a deposit

The guest completes a booking on your secure booking pages and pays the deposit by card. Because your park is connected to Stripe, Stripe retains the card against that booking for future use. The guest is told this on the payment page before they pay — see What the guest agrees to below.

2. GemaPark works out when the balance is due

The balance due date comes from your existing deposit settings, so it follows whatever rule you already use —on arrival, or a set number of days before arrival.

3. On the due date, GemaPark takes the balance

A job runs once a day and looks for confirmed bookings whose balance due date has arrived or passed and which still have money outstanding. For each one it charges the retained card for the full remaining balance, then posts the payment to the customer ledger with the note Auto payment.

4. Everyone is told what happened

The guest receives an email confirming the payment — or, if it did not go through, an email letting them know it failed. A task is raised in GemaPark for failed payment attempts.

Which bookings balances are collected automatically

A booking balance is collected automatically only when all of the following are true.

Condition	What it means in practice
Automatic Balance Collection is switched on for your account	Enabled once by our support team. It applies across all your parks.
The card was retained when the deposit was paid	This happens automatically for deposits paid online. For phone and in-person payments a member of your team must tick a box at the time — see below.
The booking is confirmed	Provisional, cancelled and enquiry bookings are ignored.
The balance due date has arrived	Bookings whose balance is not yet due are skipped and picked up on the day they fall due.
There is still a balance outstanding	If the guest has already paid in full by other means, nothing is charged. The balance is recalculated at the moment of collection, not in advance.
The balance has not already been collected	A booking balance is only ever collected once automatically. Any value added after this should be collected manually.
There is no unresolved failure on the booking	If a previous attempt failed, no further attempt is made until your team clears that task. This is deliberate – if for example the guest lacks funds in their account, you can talk to them and clear the fail task once they have said the funds are there, the system will then retry once on the next payment run.

Bookings taken over the phone or at reception

When your team takes a booking over the phone via the full booking form rather than Quick Booking, they need to tick ‘Auto Take Balance’ on the booking form in addition to saving the card for future use for the balance to be taken automatically. Using Quick Booking instead will set ‘Auto Take Balance’ automatically if the company setting is on.

When your team takes a card payment through Take Payment in GemaPark, the card is only retained if they tick Save Card for Future Use at the time. If that box is left unticked, the balance cannot be collected automatically, and the balance will need chasing in the usual way.

It is worth making this part of your booking script, so telephone bookings get the same benefit as online ones. Your team should tell the guest that the balance will be taken from the same card on the due date before ticking the box.

What gets taken, and when

The amount

GemaPark charges the full outstanding balance on the booking as it stands at the moment of collection. There is no minimum and no maximum, and the balance is never collected in instalments — it is one payment for whatever is owed.

Because the figure is recalculated at the point of collection, any part payments, discounts, extras or credits applied since the booking was made are all taken into account. If a guest has settled the balance in the meantime, the booking is skipped entirely.

The timing

The collection job runs once a day at 10:15 am. A balance is collected on the first run on or after its balance due date, so a balance due today is collected on today's run. If a booking becomes eligible late — for example a provisional booking is confirmed after its balance due date has already passed — it is picked up on the next run rather than being missed.

One attempt per booking

Each booking gets one collection attempt. GemaPark does not automatically retry a declined card the following day. If a payment fails, the booking appears in Tasks → Automatic Balance Failures and stays there until someone deals with it. Clearing that task makes the booking eligible again, so the next run will try once more.

What the guest sees and agrees to

Guests are told, on the payment page and before they pay, that their card will be retained and the balance charged to it. The wording appears immediately above the payment buttons and names both the payment provider and the date the balance will be taken:

“By making this booking, you authorise us to securely store your card with Stripe and charge the balance payment to it on [balance due date].”

If your park also holds a pre-authorisation for a refundable damage deposit, the wording covers both in a single sentence. The date shown is the booking's own balance due date, so the guest knows exactly when to expect the charge.

This notice appears only when automatic collection actually applies to the booking in front of them — a guest paying in full at the point of booking, for instance, will not see it.

The emails your guests receive

Two emails are available, and both use your own document templates, so they carry your branding and your wording. They are configured per park, and can be set up separately for each language you sell in.

Email	When it is sent	Typically includes
Balance collected	Immediately after a successful collection	The amount taken, the booking reference, and the remaining balance (normally nil). Acts as the guest's receipt.
Balance collection failed	Immediately after a failed attempt	That the payment did not go through, the amount still owed, and how the guest should pay instead.

In addition, your Booking confirmation and balance reminder and overdue emails are amended to state when a balance is being collected automatically, or the guest is expected to follow a link to pay.

The balance reminder is usually still sent to remind the guest that the payment will be taken automatically. The balance overdue is still sent if the balance is outstanding, as this will be due to a collection failure and it acts as a further chase for the customer to pay another way.

When a collection does not happen

Most of the time a balance is not collected for a perfectly ordinary reason. The list below covers what your team is likely to see and what it means.

What you see	What it usually means
The balance is not taken and no failure task is raised	The booking was not eligible — most often because the card was not retained (a phone payment where the box was not ticked, or a deposit paid by cash, cheque or bank transfer), or because the balance was already settled by other means.
A failure with the reason No repeatable transaction found	There is no retained card on the booking to charge. The deposit was not paid by card through a route that retains it. Collect the balance manually.
A failure with the reason No payment provider found	The card is on file but the Stripe connection that took the original payment is no longer available for that park. This one is worth raising with support rather than treating as a guest problem.
A failure with no reason shown	The card was charged but the payment was declined by the bank — expired card, insufficient funds, a card that has since been cancelled or replaced, or a bank asking for the cardholder to confirm the payment in person. Contact the guest for a new payment.
Nothing collected for a whole park	Usually a configuration matter rather than a guest one. Contact support.

Cards held for more than a year

Stripe allows a retained card to be charged without the guest confirming again for up to a year from the original payment. Bookings made a long way in advance — more than twelve months between the deposit and the balance due date — may therefore need the balance collecting manually.

Switching it on

Automatic Balance Collection is enabled by our support team. Once it is on, it applies to new bookings that pay a deposit by card — it is not applied retrospectively to bookings already on the system.

What we need from you

Confirm you are connected to Stripe. Automatic collection depends on your Stripe connection. If you take card payments through a different provider, this feature is not available to you today — talk to us about what is possible.
Decide your balance due rule, if you have not already. Automatic collection uses your existing deposit settings, so whatever rule you use now is the rule it will follow. If you want to change it — say, to fourteen days before arrival rather than seven — do that first.
Prepare the two emails. Draft your “balance collected” and “balance collection failed” templates, or tell us to base them on your existing balance reminder wording. Remember these are per park and per language.
Tell your reservations team about the settings in GemaPark. Anyone taking bookings by phone needs to know about Auto Take Balance on the booking form and Save Card for Future Use on the card payment page, and to mention the balance collection to the guest before ticking them.
Check your terms and conditions. See below.

Your responsibilities

GemaPark shows the guest an authorisation notice on the payment page, and Stripe handles the card securely. There are still a few things that sit with you as the merchant:

Your booking terms should say that the balance will be taken automatically, from which card, and on what date. The on-screen notice is there to inform the guest at the point of payment; your terms are what they agree to. Most operators add a short clause to the payment section of their terms.
Telephone and in-person bookings need the same disclosure. The on-screen notice only appears on the online booking pages. When your team retains a card over the phone, they need to say so.
Refunds and cancellations work exactly as they do now. Automatic collection changes how a balance arrives, not your cancellation policy or your obligations under it.
Failed collections still need chasing. The feature removes the routine work; it does not remove the exceptions. Someone needs to own the failures list.

A note on card payment rules

Taking a payment from a stored card without the cardholder present is a well-established and legitimate practice, and Stripe handles the technical side of it. The commercial and contractual side — telling your guests clearly, and having it in your terms — is yours. If you are unsure whether your current terms cover it, it is worth a short conversation with whoever advises you on them. Nothing in this document is legal advice.

Common questions

Does GemaPark store our guests' card details?

No. The card is retained by Stripe against the original payment. GemaPark holds only a reference to it and can ask Stripe to charge it again — it never sees or stores the card number.

Can we choose which bookings are collected automatically?

Not booking by booking. The feature is on or off for your whole account, and within that it collects every booking that qualifies. What you do control is whether the card is retained in the first place, which for phone bookings is a decision your team makes at the time of payment.

Can we exclude a particular guest or booking?

Not directly. In practice, if you take a part payment that clears the balance before the due date, or the booking is not confirmed, it will not be collected. If you need a genuine exclusion, speak to support.

What if the guest wants to pay by a different card?

They pay it however they like before the due date, and there is nothing left to collect — the balance is recalculated at the moment of collection, so a booking settled another way is skipped.

Will a guest ever be charged twice?

No. A booking that has been collected successfully is never collected again, and the amount charged is the balance as it stands at that moment. A failed booking is not retried until your team clears the task.

What happens if the balance is only partly paid?

The remaining amount is collected. If a guest has paid £200 of a £500 balance, £300 is taken.

Can we see it working before we rely on it?

Yes, and we would recommend it. Support can walk a test booking through the whole process with you so you can see the emails, the ledger entry and the task before it goes live on real bookings.

Does it work for group or agent bookings?

Only where the deposit was paid by card through a route that retains the card. Bookings that arrive from an agent or channel, or are paid by invoice, are not collected automatically.

What happens to the refundable damage deposit?

That is a separate feature with its own settings. It can run alongside automatic balance collection, and where both apply the guest sees a single notice covering both.

Who do we contact if something looks wrong?

Our support team. It helps enormously if you have the booking reference and, where relevant, the reason shown on the failure task.

If anything in this guide does not match what you are seeing, or you would like help preparing your emails and terms wording, please get in touch with our support team.