Payments & Settlements
Charges build up on a folio throughout a stay, but the folio is not settled until those charges are paid. This guide covers recording payments on a folio, handling payments in other currencies, and using the Payment Journal to reconcile at the end of a shift or day.
Out of the box, a folio offers three built-in methods: Cash, Card, and Bank Transfer.
If you define your own payment methods under Property Settings > Taxes (for example "Visa/Mastercard" or a specific bank account), those replace the built-in list, and the payment dialog shows your named methods instead. Each owner-defined method can carry a processing cost, the merchant fee the bank or processor deducts from you. That cost is frozen onto the payment when you record it, so it reflects the property's expense at the time and never a surcharge added to the guest. See Payment methods and processing costs below.
A payment is a record of money received. Veridien logs the amount, method, optional reference, and who recorded it; it does not run the card itself.
- Open the folio from Front Desk > Folios (or from the guest's reservation).
- Click Record Payment in the folio toolbar.
- Enter the Amount. You can record the full balance or a partial amount.
- Choose the Payment Method. This is either the built-in Cash / Card / Bank Transfer set or your own configured methods, if you have set any up.
- Optionally add a Reference (for example a card transaction ID or receipt number) so the payment can be traced later.
- Click Record Payment.
The payment is added to the Payments table on the folio and the balance updates immediately. If the guest has an email on file, Veridien automatically sends them a payment receipt.
Partial payments are fine
You can record as many payments as you need. Recording a partial payment leaves the folio Open with a smaller outstanding balance. Recording the full balance moves the folio to Settled.
If your property accepts multiple currencies (configured under Property Settings > Currencies), the payment dialog includes a Currency selector.
- Select the currency the guest is paying in. The base currency is marked (Base).
- For a foreign currency, an Exchange Rate field appears, pre-filled from the rate configured for that currency. Adjust it if needed.
- Veridien shows the equivalent amount in your base currency so you can confirm before saving.
The folio stores both the original foreign amount and the base-currency equivalent, and the balance is always tracked in base currency.
A deposit is a payment recorded before the stay. Record it with Record Payment in the usual way. Room charges are already on the folio, one line per night, from the moment the reservation is created, so a deposit reduces the outstanding balance immediately rather than sitting as a credit waiting for charges to appear. Overpay and the folio shows a credit balance until the rest of the stay's charges are added.
If a charge was posted in error, void it on the folio rather than recording a negative payment (see Folios). Voiding creates a credit that removes the charge from the balance while preserving the history.
Returning money to a guest
Voiding a charge adjusts the folio balance but does not move money back to the guest. When a guest has overpaid and is owed a refund, process the refund through your card terminal or cash drawer per your property's procedure, then make sure the folio and the Payment Journal reflect the corrected position.
Owner-defined payment methods live under Property Settings > Taxes, below the charge stack. Each method maps to a settlement type (cash, card, or bank transfer) and can carry a single processing cost: the merchant fee a bank or card processor deducts from what you collect, such as a card MDR percentage.
This is a cost to the property, not a charge to the guest. It never appears as a line on the folio or invoice and never changes the amount the guest pays. When you record a payment against a method, Veridien freezes that method's name and its effective rate onto the payment, so later edits to the method never rewrite past payments. This keeps your merchant costs reconcilable against your processor statements.
The Payment Journal (Finance > Payment Journal) is the property-wide log of every payment recorded across all folios. Use it to reconcile.
Each entry shows the date, amount (and currency), method, reference, guest, the staff member who recorded it, and the folio it belongs to. You can:
- Search by guest, reference, or other details.
- Filter by method, date range, staff member, and currency.
- Sort by amount.
- Export the filtered results to CSV for accounting.
At the end of a shift, filter the Payment Journal to your date range (and yourself, using the staff filter) and compare the totals against your cash drawer and card terminal settlement. Because every payment carries the staff member and a reference, discrepancies are easy to trace back to a specific transaction.
Most payments are recorded directly on the folio with Record Payment. Restaurant bills settled at the point of sale and routed to a room also flow into the guest's folio.
Recording a payment requires the billing.recordPayment permission. Viewing folios and the Payment Journal requires billing.view. See Users & Roles.