Set up automatic balance reminders

Learn how to set up email notifications to be sent to your customers with outstanding balance on a monthly basis.

As a sports venue manager, it's important to keep track of customer debts and ensuring that payments are received on time. However, with multiple bookings and customers to manage, it can be challenging to keep up with everything. This is where Bookteq comes in.

Bookteq offers a feature that can help you keep on top of customer debts and chase up any outstanding balances automatically. The automatic balance reminders feature can be enabled or disabled as per your requirements. If disabled, the reminders won't be sent, but you can turn them on again at a later date.

By enabling this feature, an email notification will be sent out on the 1st of every month at 09:00 to all customers who have an outstanding balance. You can also amend the day this email is sent out, for example if you'd rather this was sent a few days into the month, or towards the end of the month.

The email reminder will be divided into three sections: before today, this month, and future months. This will show the customer a clear picture of their outstanding balance based on when the booking was made. It will include the total owed for past bookings not yet paid, the amount owed for current month bookings, and the amount owed for future bookings. See the example email notification below:

You can also set how many months in advance are included in the future months' section, depending on your venue's terms and requirements. If you set one month, it will only include the current month, and if you set two months, it will include the current and next month etc.

You can set up outstanding payment balance reminders by accessing the Invoices & Payments menu item in the venue settings. In the Balance Reminders section, users can enable balance reminders and select the day and number of months in advance for reminders to be sent.

If set, outstanding balance reminders will be sent every month until all outstanding balances are paid. However, if unticked, customers won't receive any outstanding balance reminders.

In addition, the user won't receive outstanding payment balance reminders for booking orders that are voided, have a payment plan set up, are not invoiced, or for which no payment has been requested yet. The user also won't receive reminders if they've paid all their payment balance for the booking order or if they've canceled the booking order.

When customers receive an outstanding payment balance reminder email, they can see all unpaid bookings in the past and bookings for the months set in the future by following the link to the customer portal. The email will also display the total outstanding balance in the past to date, the current month balance, the next month balance, the following month balance, and a "pay outstanding balance" button. When clicked, the button will direct them to the payment page.

If the customer portal is enabled for your venue, and the user has a customer portal account, they will be directed to the payment tab on the customer portal to make the payment. However, if the user doesn't have a customer portal account, they will receive a password reset email link with a unique ID to create an account, log in, and make the payment.

If the customer portal isn't enabled for your venue, the user can add their card payment and make payment without signing up or logging in to the customer portal.

By enabling this feature, you can streamline your payment process and ensure that all outstanding balances are paid on time, without any manual intervention. This, in turn, can help you save time and improve the overall efficiency of your sports venue management.