Partial payments refer to the payments where you accept a certain part of it for various reasons. It could be because the payment is big, it could be because you just want the customer to pay a nominal upfront fee when they are booking, it could be so you can use that partial payment for any initial expenses that you need to incur on behalf of the customer, or it could be anything else.
There is no fixed standard for partial payments. It can be anything between 5 to 50 percent of the total amount and even higher in some cases. Or it could be a flat fee in some cases. Partial payments were introduced so that customers had the flexibility of paying a certain amount as deposit and paying the rest of the amount when the transaction/booking period was completed. This method provided security of service to both the payer and payee. In this post we are going to see how to accept partial payments with WooCommerce by using the Partial Deposits Addon for WooCommerce Booking & Appointment Plugin.
Admin Experience: How to accept Partial Payments with WooCommerce Booking & Appointment Plugin
Step 1: Create your product in WooCommerce. You can do that by going to Product -> Add Product. You will find a Product Data metabox under which you can set the regular price of your product. I have considered the most basic example of booking hotel rooms for this post.
Step 2: On the same page you will also find a Booking metabox that allows you to setup your booking options for the hotel rooms. I have enabled booking date and multiple day booking. The field Lockout Date after X orders lets you set a limit which will block the dates once it reaches that many bookings. Once a room is reserved it is not available for further booking until the customer checks out. Hence the Lockout Date after X orders is set to 1.
Step 3: Under the Bookable Time Period tab, you can set the advance booking period so that there are no last minute reservations for the product. I have set it to 24 hours so that the earliest booking can be done a day prior to the booking date.
The Number of Dates to choose lets you set the maximum number of days from today which you want to allow booking for. You can set it for a month or even a year. I have set it to 365 days which means the calendar will display dates for a year from today for booking.
Step 4: Once the Partial Deposits Addon is activated, when you go to Plugins -> Installed Plugins, you will see that Partial Deposits Addon is added to the active list of plugins as shown below:
You will also see a new tab under the Booking metabox called Partial Payments. You need to check the “Enable Partial Payment” checkbox in order to be able to accept partial payments for this product.
Below that, there is a field Payment type. Payment types can be any of the three:
1. Flat Amount: The flat price is a certain fixed amount out of the total price which acts as a deposit.
Here, the customer will have to pay a minimum of £100 for making a reservation.
2. Percentage: Certain percent of the total price which acts as a deposit.
In this case, 20% of £300 i.e. £60 will be the amount for partial payment.
3. Security Deposit: A fixed amount is added to the original price of the product as a security deposit.
The customer will have to pay £300 plus additional £100 as a security deposit.
The user can select either flat amount, percentage or security deposit. Security deposit is always a flat amount, never a percentage.
The field Allow Full Payment when Booking lets the customer choose whether he/she wants to make a partial or full payment. Next up, Only full payment within X days from today field basically means that if the booking date is less then 7 days from the current date, then the user cannot do a partial payment & they will have to pay the full amount. So a partial payment can only be done if your booking date is atleast after 7 days from current date. The field Default Payment Type when full payment is enabled is the default payment type that will appear as selected when the customer is making the booking.
Once you are done with all the required settings, save and publish the product.
User Experience: How to accept Partial Payments with WooCommerce Booking & Appointment Plugin
Once the booking and check-out dates fields are populated, the “Add to Cart” button is visible. When you click on it, the order is added to your cart and there is another button to “View your Cart”. On clicking that, you are redirected to the cart page which will show the booking details.
When on the cart page, unless you don’t want to update your cart, you can go to the checkout page by clicking on “Proceed to checkout” button.
The checkout page will show the booking dates you have chosen and the total amount for your order. You can place your order if everything seems fine. Please ensure you check everything and then click on the “Place Order” button.
After placing your order, the order details are shown on the Thank You page. Email notifications are sent to the customer and the administrator with the booking details.
Note: The plugin only deals with initial payments & security deposits. The remaining payment of the order has to be accepted manually & updated in the order by the admin. There is no automated way in the plugin to accept the remaining payment.
Conclusion:
Partial payments is one of our most popular addons because of the flexibility and security it offers to both the customers and business owners. The Partial Deposits Addon is completely integrated with WooCommerce and works seamlessly. This addon is a cherry on the cake for the WooCommerce Booking & Appointment Plugin.
It is very simple to setup and will take about 25 minutes to be completed for a first time user.
