Damage Fees, Late Fees & Non-return Fees (Security Authorisation)
Make an allowance for charging customer cards fees in accordance with accepted Terms & Conditions
Last updated
Make an allowance for charging customer cards fees in accordance with accepted Terms & Conditions
Last updated
Almost every rental business has a need to be able to charge customers penalty fees for breaching terms & conditions. Most commonly, this would relate to damaged items, late return or a failure to return at all.
In partnership with Downpay, PRP gives you the ability to attempt charges on to the customer's original payment method, to cover these types of fees.
We call this a Security Authorisation.
With Downpay, products can be set so that part (or none) of the price is charged at time of order, and the remainder can be charged at a later date.
To create a Security Authorisation we set things up so that an additional product is automatically added to Cart, with zero paid at checkout, and the ability to charge any balance on the order at a later date. If damage fees, late fees or non-return fees are due, the merchant can attempt a charge for this from the Shopify Order screen.
Downpay offers special pricing for rental businesses that are Product Rentals Pro customers. Just get in touch for details.
You must ensure your Terms & Conditions surrounding fees that could be charged to the customer are clear and easily found by the customer. It is recommended you get explicit consent by asking customers to tick a box confirming they accept the terms. This can be done on the Product page as a , or before Checkout, using one of many apps on the Shopify App Store, such as "R Terms & Conditions".
To set up a Security Authorisation, you can follow these steps below. It's broken up into 3 parts: Creating the Shopify Product, Configuring Downpay, and Configuring the Deposit in Product Rentals Pro.
Create a Product in Shopify to represent the Security Authorisation. You can name it whatever you like - this will be visible to the customer as it will be automatically added to their Cart. The price of the product should reflect the amount you may collect in the future. If you'll be using varying deposit amounts for different rental products, or groups of rental products, you can create different amounts using Variants.
Note: After an Order has been created with a Security Authorisation product with a purchase option applied by Downpay, extra fees can be manually added to the Order at a later date, to alter the unpaid balance and attempt a charge for it.
Ensure you have Downpay installed, with Downpay Cart App Embed enabled within your theme. Then, go to the Downpay app home/dashboard screen from within the Shopify admin.
On the Dashboard screen, click Create Purchase Option
Complete the first fields. E.g. Purchase option name: Security Authorisation Line item help text: In case of late/non-return
For the Product selection type, choose the Security Authorisation product created earlier.
For the Deposit options, choose how much of the rental fee you want to charge now, and how much later. This can be done as a percentage or an exact amount. The amount entered will be the amount captured with the inital order. You can also choose to give customers the option to pay in full.
You can leave the other settings until Deferred payment due date. Here you can just enter "365" as the Number of days after checkout. This will give you a year to attempt charges for the remainder of the balance. If you need a longer time period than this, you'll need to use On a specific date and set it to a date far into the future.
Save the Purchase Option.
Now if you return to your Product in Shopify, and scroll down to Purchase options, you'll see what you just created in Downpay applied to the Product.
Enter a Deposit Name. Enter the name Security Authorisation, or something similar (the customer never sees this).
Tick, Display info at the bottom of the PRP Rental Widget
The Text to display in PRP Rental Widget field appears. Enter a message you want customers to see on the Product page of the rental product, so they're informed why the Security Authorisation product will automatically appear in their Cart. It is a good spot to link to your terms & conditions page. E.g. A Security Authorisation will automatically be added to your Cart. No charge for this will apply at Checkout. It allows for the possibility of charges in the future for late return, damage fees or non-return fees in accordance with our .
Select the Security Authorisation Product that you created in Step 1. If you created Variants, then select the Variant that will be applied to the group of rental products you will select to be linked to this Security Authorisation.
Choose a method for selecting rental products that the Security Deposit Product/Variant selected above will be allocated to. Normally you would just apply it to All rental products, unless you want to use different Security Authorisation products/variants for different rental products. Keep in mind that the amount to charge can be adjusted (both up and down) by you from the Shopify Order screen, so it may not be imperative for the Security Authorisation price to match the exact amount that will or could be charged later.
Once complete, Save the Deposit.
If not done already, ensure the PRP Cart Manager App Embed is enabled and the cart-quantity-validation checkout function is enabled. This is what will prevent the Security Authorisation from being removed from Cart whilst the rental product is still in the Cart, and also ensure it is removed if the rental product is removed.
Now, if you go to the rental product's page on your website, then select rental dates in the calendar of the PRP Rental Widget, your message entered in Step 5 above should appear above your Add To Cart button (labelled "Rent Now" by default).
After clicking Rent Now, both the rental product and the Security Authorisation should appear in the Cart, like the example below:
Attempts to remove the Security Authorisation from Cart will be automatically blocked. If the rental product is removed from Cart, the Security Authorisation will also be removed automatically a few seconds later (if this isn't working, its likely you missed Step 8 of Configuring the Security Deposit in PRP above).
By default, Downpay will show 3 different Cart totals: the amount that will be charged today, the balance that could be charged later, and the sum of those two. The words used for the labels of these totals can be adjusted within the Downpay App Embed settings, and you could also use custom CSS, to apply custom styling, show/hide elements, or use ::after or ::before selectors to add additional content.
When arriving at Checkout, you'll notice Shopify adds some extra text blocks and labels, so that it's clear to the customer that there could be further charges, and by completing their Order, they're agreeing to that. The default text and labels aren't always the best at explaining this particular use case, so it's recommended that you change them to suit your business, your terms and the reason for the possibility of deferred charges.
For example, a block is added above the pay button:
And some labels within the order summary:
You can change these labels by modifying the theme content.
Once orders have come in with the down-payment paid, Shopify will show an unpaid "Balance" on the order. As long as the order has come through with the Downpay purchase option applied to the Security Authorisation product, the order screen will show a button to Collect Payment. You can click this, then select the customer's original payment method, and a charge will be attempted for the balance of the order.
It is probably not common that the balance (the price of the Security Authorisation product) on the Order will be the exact amount you want to charge for late fees, damage fees or other. To adjust the balance, you can take the following steps:
Enter in a name for the fee, the amount, and deselect "Item is a physical product". Then click Add Item.
The Amount to collect (the outstanding balance of the Order) will now show as the amount of the new fee you added plus the amount of the Security Authorisation product. As Downpay only allows us to charge the full remaining balance of an Order, we need to remove the Security Authorisation. Alternatively you can get in touch with Downpay to see if they can enable their beta feature for you, which allows you to charge for only a portion of the outsanding balance, rather than the full amount. On any order, click "More Actions" then "Collect partial payment", and follow the prompts.
If you've deleted the Security Authorisation, the Amount to collect will now be the amount of the newly added fee. Untick Send invoice to customer, and then Update order.
The Order is now fully paid without any outstanding balance, and the Collect Payment button is no longer visible. However, if further charges are required, you can Edit the Order and add Products or Custom Items to increase the Order total. If the Order total becomes larger than what has been paid, the Collect Payment button will appear again, so you can attempt another charge. In other words, you can repeat steps 1 through 6 again (skipping 4 as the Security Authorisation product has already been removed).
Go to Product Rentals Pro > Settings > Add-Ons > Deposits, and click Add Deposit.
Click Edit at the top of the Shopify Order screen.
If you have a standard fee, and you have a Product for it, you can add that Product to the Order, but most of the time you would just click "Add custom item".
Now you can attempt a charge on the customer's original payment method from the Collect Payment button. Click it, then select the first option, which should specify the customer's payment method.
