How Can You Use the Payment Transaction Logs?
Disputes
Accountants
For Creators
Which Information Can Be Found Within the Logs?
The payment transaction logs are accessible for Admins, Reservation Managers, and Accountants for accounts subscribed to Apaleo Pay.
Specific information about a payment transaction, including details on transaction security and disputes, is shown to your staff in the context of the folio. Additionally, your Front Desk Agents and Reservation Managers will have direct access to the refund letter in case a guest requests proof.
The payment transaction logs can be found at the Account and Property level under Payment > Transactions:
When opening a transaction, you can find several sections with different information about the transaction. In the default overview, you will see the following:
- Status of the transaction, e.g., Authorised, Settled, Refunded
- Amount (Original amount of transaction)
- Balance (Current balance, e.g., after a partial refund)
- Creation Date
- Payment method, e.g., Mastercard, Visa, PayPal
- Payer interaction, e.g., E-Commerce (e.g., payment on your website or payment link), Moto (e.g., credit card entered manually as payment account in the reservation)
- Account holder name
- Property
- Liability Shift -> When the 3DSecure step is requested from your guests during payment processing, you will not be liable for chargebacks. See the following guide for more information on 3DS: 3DSecure or click on the info icon directly in Apaleo.
How Can You Use the Payment Transaction Logs?
Find reservations and bookings by payment transaction info
If you need to find a payment based on the cardholder's name, PSP, or other payment processor-specific information for a guest who requests help reconciling a payment found on their card statement, you can find it in the payment transaction logs, from where you can easily navigate into the reservation or booking context.
Keep in mind that the displayed Merchant Reference only shows the original folio, where the transaction was authorised or captured from. If a payment has been moved to another folio, you can see the changes on the folio itself.
By clicking on the transaction itself, you can find further details, such as the Apaleo reservation ID or the property in the 'References' field:
Disputes
If a payment transaction has a dispute, you will be able to find those with announced or open disputes that require you to act and upload documentation to defend the dispute.
When a dispute is just announced, you still have the opportunity to:
- Proactively refund to protect the reputation and reduce the chargeback rate
- Reach out to the guest to avoid a chargeback and the respective fees
- Cancel a prepaid non-refundable reservation before arrival to re-sell the room to a non-fraudster
All of this can be done before the dispute finally escalates into a chargeback. If you act quickly, you can save money and improve your reputation with fraud victims.
We have collected further information about handling and defending chargebacks here: Handling Chargebacks and Defending Fraud Chargebacks
Accountants
Accountants will find the payment transaction fees and the breakdown per fee category. They can export payment transactions easily with the payment fees and the dispute fees shown separately, using filters that allow them to show only specific information in the export:
They will also be able to easily find which batch the payment was settled, refunded, or a chargeback was processed, and directly download the respective settlement batch:
For Creators
All payment lifecycle and money flow events are available as Apaleo webhooks, also known as triggers, in make.com, and can be used to automate payment and reconciliation processes.
Additionally, the dispute lifecycle and dispute money flow events are available as webhooks, also known as triggers, in make.com and can be used to notify the right people in your organization or to automate some of the dispute defense processes. Never miss an announced or opened dispute anymore; reach out to your guests before the dispute escalates to a chargeback, avoid chargeback fees, and improve your reputation by showing that you care about your guests and fraud victims alike.