Payments, deposits & invoices

Payments run on Stripe Connect. From Settings → Payments and payouts, start onboarding and Stripe walks you through identity and bank details on their own pages — we never see your banking information. Charges are made directly on your Stripe account: you are the merchant of record, payouts land on your schedule, and refunds and disputes are yours to control.

bnbconsole.com/payments

When a guest requests a stay, they pay at the end of the booking form — and on Pro their card is held, not charged, until you decide. How that plays out depends on your plan:

1. 1Free plan: once online payments are on, guests pay to book, the payment is taken straight away, and the booking confirms itself. There is no request to approve.
2. 2Pro plan: the card is authorised when the guest requests the stay. Approving the request charges it; declining releases it. You can also switch off Take payment when a guest books and collect later, online or by hand.
3. 3Either way, the request is announced to you only once the payment or hold has gone through, so an abandoned checkout never sends you an alert.

1. 1Choose a deposit rule: a percentage, a fixed amount, the whole stay up front, or nothing at booking.
2. 2Set when the balance is due (for example 14 days before check-in), and let it charge itself on the due date using the card the guest saved. Held cards on Pro are kept for the balance too.
3. 3A stay booked inside that window is collected in full at booking — the same way the big platforms handle a late booking — so a guest is never asked for a balance the moment their stay is confirmed. The booking widget says so before they pay.

Guests pay on a Stripe-hosted page with cards, Apple Pay and Google Pay, 3-D Secure included. Their private payment link never expires — unlike a raw checkout link, it mints a fresh session every time they open it. A payment is marked successful only when Stripe itself says so, never because a browser redirect claimed it.

A failed balance charge is retried every day until arrival or until you cancel, and what the guest has already paid stays with you. Cards expire and banks sometimes ask the guest to confirm a charge, so most failures clear on their own once the guest is told:

1. 1The guest gets an email with a link to pay at the first failure, then every three days — never a daily stream.
2. 2You are told at the first failure and again two days before arrival, by email and by push notification, which is the moment to decide whether to cancel under your policy and reopen the dates.
3. 3A bank asking the guest to confirm (3-D Secure) is not treated as a decline: the guest clears it in seconds from the same link.

A security deposit is a card kept on file, not a hold on the guest's credit. A card hold expires in about a week, long before a stay booked months ahead, so BnB Console keeps the card instead. Nothing is charged unless you make a damage claim, and the card is released automatically on your schedule after checkout.

Bill the stay or anything beyond it — a late checkout, firewood, a damage charge — with line-item invoices prefilled from the price the guest was quoted. When you create one, choose how the guest pays:

1. 1Card, online: the invoice follows your deposit rule, so the guest pays the deposit first and the balance is collected before arrival, just like the stay. Tick Different terms for this invoice to set its own deposit — a percentage or a fixed amount — and its own balance date. If the reservation is still a request on Pro, the card is held and charged when you approve.
2. 2Cash, bank transfer or in person: no Pay button anywhere; mark it paid when the money arrives (a Pro feature, because on Free the booking fee rides on the online payment).
3. 3The email asks for the amount due now, not the whole total, and a re-sent invoice asks for whatever is still owed. Your standing Payment terms from the payments settings print on every invoice.

Made a mistake? An invoice can be corrected after it is sent — the app reminds you to send it again — and any invoice nothing has been paid against can be deleted. Once money lands, its amounts lock and only the note can change.

bnbconsole.com/invoices

Refund any settled payment — fully or partially — from the reservation page. If a platform fee was collected on the charge, it is returned along with the refund, so a cancelled stay never leaves you out of pocket for revenue you didn't keep. Cancelling a reservation never refunds on its own; a refund is always your decision. See how payments fit the rest of the stay in the automated guest journey.