PayPal Payment Option - FAQ and Troubleshooting

Find the answers to the most frequently asked questions about PayPal in this article. To learn how to set up PayPal as a payment option in your property, visit How to Add and Use PayPal As a Payment Option

How is a booking made on Booking Engine when paying with PayPal?

When reservation is created with PayPal in Booking Engine (the guest clicks on "Confirm reservation” in Booking Engine), the guest is redirected to PayPal payment page. Although at this moment the guest hasn’t yet confirmed or canceled the payment, Cloudbeds PMS creates a booking immediately and keeps it in backlog (the booking is not visible yet to the Cloudbeds PMS user until the guest confirms or denies the purchase).

  • If the guest confirms the payment in PayPal > the booking appears in Cloudbeds PMS with status 'Confirmed'
  • If the guest denies/cancels the payment in PayPal (on PayPal modal window) > the booking appears in Cloudbeds PMS but with status 'Canceled'. In this case you will see a log in Reservation Change Log (in Cloudbeds PMS) “Status Modified from to Cancelled” (because the booking was not confirmed before it became cancelled/it's imported as cancelled immediately).
Can guests book using PayPal but without having PayPal account?

With PayPal Express, the default is set to ask customers to log in to PayPal (or create a PayPal Account). From your PayPal Business account, you can allow customers to pay with their credit card even if they don't have their own PayPal account. To enable this feature, you need to:

  1. Go to your Website payment preferences on PayPal and enable PayPal account optional
  2. You must have your own credit card linked to your PayPal account.

Your guests will then see the option to Pay with a credit or debit card

 

You must have a business account to use this feature. Also, in some countries, PayPal requires that customers pay by using a PayPal account. To confirm whether this applies to the country where your business is located, contact the PayPal support team. Cloudbeds has no influence in how this feature behaves.

If your guest don't see the option to pay with a credit card, they can still choose to Create an Account and enter the credit card details in the next step.

Why the booking made on Booking Engine with payment method "PayPal" was imported as "Cancelled"?

It means that when making a booking on Booking Engine on the payment step the guest cancelled the purchase (decided not to pay for the reservation).

For detailed information see section How booking is made on Booking Engine when paying with PayPal above

Why is the Paypal Token not required?

The Paypal token is actually not a required field if "Payment Data Transfer" is not enabled in the Paypal backend. Having this enabled simply allows us to get more details about the transaction.

In order to have the Paypal Token I need to activate "Auto Return for Website Payments" and use a URL, what one should I use for Cloudbeds?

The return URL refers to the confirmation page that we show after the reservation was successfully completed. 

This is the one you'll want to use:

Alternatively, you can also use the following URL if the first URL is not successful: 

The "NNNN" should be replaced by your Cloudbed account's unique Property ID. This is the unique number attached to your account and can be found in the URL of every page on your platform. It will most likely be a four-digit number, but might be shorter for older accounts.

I have PayPal Payflow Pro, how do I connect?

PayPal Payflow Pro needs to be setup through our payment processing gateway.

Please check this article for further information: Payment Processing Setup

What happens to the reservation from Booking Engine when PayPal payment was not completed?

If the guest does not complete the payment, meaning they abandon Paypal modal window while booking, the reservation will not be created in the system. Cloudbeds PMS activity log will record the attempted reservation but no actual reservation will be found when the user clicks on the reservation number.

If I deactivate Paypal as a payment option, will the payments added using this option disappear from the reservations/reports?

No. All the records of added payments will still appear on the reservations and also reports. Deactivating a payment method will no longer allow you to add that payment type going forward.

Troubleshooting

PayPal is configured but it does not appear on my booking engine

You must set up a Deposit policy in order to activate PayPal on Booking Engine. If you have it set up to not collect a deposit, then there's no need for PayPal to be active, since a payment will not be made at that point.

Why the system is posting the payment again even though the reservation is checked out already?

It could happen if you are manually accepting the payment inside PayPal. Once the payment is accepted, the payment will be posted automatically to the guest's folio on Cloudbeds PMS independently of the booking status.

There could be a double posting of the payment if before the payment gets actually accepted inside PayPal, the user manually posted the same payment on myfrotdesk. See explanation below.

  1. Your PayPal account is configured in a way that you need to review a payment before accepting it.

There can be many reasons why a property choose this setting. For example, they would like to check the currency before receiving a payment, if the currency is the one desired, they would accept the payment manually in their PayPal account.

  1. In your Cloudbeds PMS Policies, you have the setting For online reservations, require confirmation of the deposit payment before reservation is confirmed enabled. It means any reservation made on the booking engine will come with status Pending Confirmation until you verify the deposit payment and manually change the booking status to Confirmed.
  2. By accepting the payment on PayPal, the payment will be posted automatically on the guest's folio and the status will also be automatically updated to Confirmed on Cloudbeds PMS.
  3. One of the users manually record a payment using the payment method PayPal before the payment actually gets accepted in PayPal extranet causing the payment to be posted twice on Cloudbeds PMS.

Solution:

If your PayPal account requires you to review every payment, then, when a reservation is made on Booking Engine using PayPal, you need to go to PayPal and approve the deposit payment there. The payment will be automatically posted to Cloudbeds PMS and the reservation status will be updated to Confirmed. You do not need to manually add the payments using PayPal payment method on Cloudbeds PMS to avoid double posting.

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