Handling monthly billing when reservation straddles 2 seasons |
Top Previous Next |
(From Newsletter #50, Jun 3, 2024)
There can be issues when you're using Monthly Billing (or Auto-rates) with monthly reservations if your reservations aren't always billed for date ranges that line up with your different seasons under different rates. For instance, you have a summer rate through 11/30, then a different rate starting 12/1 -- but the billing period for the reservation is from 11/15 to 12/14.
The problem is that Campground Master can't automatically "split" monthly rates for a monthly billing period that falls only partly in each of the rate's date ranges. Furthermore, it can't apply either one of the straddled monthly rates because it can't "fit" the whole billing month into either rate.
If you want it to charge a full month at one of the 2 rates, then you need to extend the Season Dates of the rates so they will cover a full month of any reservation *starting* in the previous season that the rate should still apply to, or *ending* in the next season, to cover the overlap. For instance to charge the 11/15 to 12/14 reservation at the summer Rate, the Season Dates of the summer rate cannot end before 12/14 so it will cover a full month (eg 30 days) period starting 11/15. (It would still not apply to any reservation or billing period *starting* after 11/15, since a full month would not fit within the season dates.) It will take some planning to decide what the latest start of a billing month should be at one rate, and when the next rate should really start.
However if you are wanting to charge the winter and summer rates proportionally, e.g half of each, then you must set up pro-rated rates, as detailed in the Rate Setup Examples:
https://campgroundmaster.com/help/ratesetupexamples.html
If neither of these methods works for you, then you would need to handle the "straddle" month manually.