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About Transaction Categories

Transaction Categories are the types of payments you want to collect.

Examples include ... 

Reservation Deposit
Check-Out Settlement
Group Deposit
Gift Card
Lost & Found Fee

These can be anything you wish to call them.

If TransForm is interfaced to your PMS, you can configure any or all of your Transaction Categories to post to a reservation, to the master account for a group, or to a specified account in the PMS.

Accessing Transaction Categories

To create or edit Transaction Categories, log into the b4 Admin Site and select TRANSFORM in the banner menu. Transaction Categories are the first button under TRANSFORM.

Once you select the Transaction Categories button, you will see a table similar to the example below.

There is a button in the blue bar that enables you to add a new Transaction Category and each existing Transaction Category includes a pencil icon that enables you to edit its details.

Transaction Category Settings

After you select either the button to Add a New Transaction Category or the edit pencil for an existing Transaction Category, the settings page opens.

The first section of the setup page for Transaction Categories includes the following settings:

1. IS ACTIVE
   This check-box controls whether the Transaction Category is available to be selected on the payment page. Unchecking this box hides the option from use.
   

2. SORT ORDER
   Enter a number to control the order in which the Transaction Categories should be listed in the drop-down on the payment page.
   

3. FEE TYPE
   Specify a fee that should be added, if any. You can configure a flat fee per submission or a percentage of the amount as the fee.
   

4. FIELD SELECTOR
   The field selector lets you control which fields are to display on the payment page for this Transaction Category, and if each field is to be mandatory or not. (You are not yet able to control the order or position of the fields on the page.)
    

5. PMS VALIDATION AND POSTING TYPE
   This field only appears if TransForm is interfaced to your PMS. The drop-down will contain the revenue categories available to associate with your Transaction Category.
   

6. POSTS TO
   Appearing if interfaced, this field enables you to specify an account to which the revenue for this Transaction Cateogory is to be posted. Your PMS might refer to these as Posting Master accounts or as PERM accounts.
   

7. FAILURE LIMIT
   To deter fraudulent activity, set a limit to how many times a user can try to submit using invalid personal data before their payment link becomes disabled. 3, 4 or 5 are normally recommended.
   

The next section of the setup page presents Transaction Type options, described below.

Transaction Types

Each Transaction Category is assigned a type. The Transaction Type determines what type of details are asked for during the payment.

You can require payments which are processed immediately and/or authorizations for specified charges to be incurred during the stay and which the cardholder is confirming they will cover on the card they are providing.

You must assign one of four types to each Transaction Category:

1. PAYMENT/DEPOSIT only

This type presents an immediately processed payment as the only option.

2. AUTHORIZATION only

This type only asks what will be covered, for manual processing at a later time.

USAGE NOTE: This type is recommended for use ONLY where interfaced to the OPERA PMS, as a method to collect card details and confirm card validity. This transaction type authorizes the amount, which verifies the validity of the card, and then automatically voids the authorization so that the amount is not held longer than necessary to simply check the card validity. If your OPERA PMS uses tokenization, a token for the card is created. If you are not using tokenization, the masked card appears OPERA's normal card field.

Note: If you select the option to 'send credit card to OPERA', you would normally also include 'auto void'.

3. CHOICE of PAYMENT/DEPOSIT or AUTHORIZATION

This type lets the payee choose to either pay now or to specify what charge types you many process manually at a later time.

Note: If you select the option to 'send credit card to OPERA', you would normally also include 'auto void'.

4. PAYMENT/DEPOSIT with AUTHORIZATION

This type asks the payee both for an amount to be charged now as well as authorizations to be processed manually at a later time.

You can specify if the authorizations are optional or must be included, using the "require both" check-box.

You can specify if an amount limit field is to be included, and whether it is to be mandatory.

You can also specify if the option 'unlimited' is to be presented with the amount limit or not.

Charge Types

This is where you create what check-boxes are to appear for specifying the types of charges your payee can authorize you to process on the card manually at a later time.

Once you have added a Charge Type, it cannot currently be deleted - only de-activated.

These check-boxes are presented in two alternating columns. You can control the relative position of the Charge Types by manipulating the Sort Order. You can use the Active column to disable selected Charge Types.