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Pay part now - Plugixa Car Rental
Pay part now PRO lets a customer who pays online pay a share of the booking now, by Stripe or PayPal, and the rest at pickup. You choose the share as a percentage. The customer chooses whether to pay that share or everything.
Set it under Plugixa Car Rental -> Settings -> Pay part now. It is an app, on by default in Pro, but it does nothing until you enter a percentage. If the section is missing, switch on Pay part now in the App manager.
The setting
The card reads: “Let customers paying online pay a share of the total now and the rest at pickup. 0 turns it off.”
| Field | Default | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Share paid now (%) | 0 | A whole number from 0 to 99. 0 turns the option off. Saved with the page’s Save button. |
There is one percentage for the whole site. It is not set per location or per vehicle.
What the customer sees
On the details step of the booking form, after the customer picks an online payment method, a question appears: How much would you like to pay now? with two choices and their amounts:
| Choice | Amount |
|---|---|
| Pay everything now | The whole total |
| Pay 30% now, the rest at pickup | 30% of the total (with the share set to 30) |
The first choice is selected by default. The question is not shown when the customer chooses a method that is not paid online, such as paying at the desk, or when the share is 0.
After paying the share, the customer’s booking is Confirmed like any other paid booking, and its payment status is Partially paid. In the customer portal the booking says “Paid so far: €120,00 of €400,00. The rest is due at pickup.”
How the share is worked out
share = booking total x percentage / 100, rounded to the currency’s decimals
- It is a share of the total: rental, rule lines, fees, extras, tax, less any coupon. The security deposit held at the desk is not part of the total and is not included.
- With Currencies PRO charging in the customer’s currency, the share is of the total in that currency.
- The choice is offered only if the share is more than 0 and less than what is owed. On a very small booking where the share rounds to 0, only “Pay everything now” is shown.
- It is offered only on a booking that nothing has been paid on yet. A part payment is how a booking starts; once something is paid, the customer can only pay what is still owed.
The customer only ever chooses the kind of payment, never an amount. The amount is worked out on your server from the booking as stored, so nothing typed in the browser can change what is charged.
The rest at pickup
The share is recorded in the payments ledger as a payment of type part. The balance is collected at the desk. Record it on the booking’s payments panel as a desk payment (cash, card terminal or bank transfer), as described in Payments. When the payments add up to the total, the payment status becomes Paid.
Refunds and cancellations
Refunding a part payment works like any other online payment: from the booking’s payments panel, back through Stripe or PayPal.
When a customer cancels their own booking in the customer portal, what the cancellation policy says is refundable is given back at once, through the online payment it came from. When you cancel a booking from the admin, nothing is refunded on its own; refund it from the payments panel if you want to.