Set up Smart Policies

Smart Policies allow your property to define clear financial rules for guaranteeing reservations, collecting payments, and applying cancellation fees. Once configured, Cloudbeds automatically follows these rules for eligible reservations, reducing manual work and improving consistency across your operations. Learn in this guide how to configure your Smart Policies.

Before Getting Started

• Smart Policies must be enabled for your account. 
  • Reach out to our support if you're interested in this feature.
• Smart Policies apply to direct reservations created through:
  • The Cloudbeds Booking Engine, and
  • Manual reservations entered in the PMS.
• Reservations received from OTAs continue to use your existing Channel Deposit rules. Smart Policies do not replace OTA deposit settings. 

Set up your Smart Policies

Step 1 - Access the Policies Configuration

1. Go to the Property page in Settings menu
2. Access the Policies tab
3. Open the Payment & Cancellation tab

Step 2 - Create a Custom Policy or Edit Policies Templates

In the Payment and Cancellation page, choose if you want to:

4. Create a custom policy from scratch by clicking at
5. Edit a pre-configured policy template as you prefer in the menu

In the Payment tab, configure:

6. Fill out the Policy internal name
7. The Guarantee Method: how the booking is secured (charge amount, authorize only, capture the credit-card details, or don't collect guarantee).
8. The Remaining Balance Payment Plan: how and when the rest of the balance (if any) is collected (charge amount, authorize or collect manually).

All scheduled automations are processed at 12:00 AM (midnight) in the property’s local time zone.

In the Cancellation Policy tab, 

9. Configure the rules defining refunds or penalties when a booking is canceled:
10. Select the cancellation type and their conditions ( amount of days and amount to charge)
    • Non-refundable: guests are charged 100% regardless of when they cancel;
    • Partially refundable: guests are charged based on when they cancel;
    • Fully refundable: guests can cancel for free within a certain period to be configured in the policy fileds below. 
11. Fill out the additional policy information: you can customize policy details that are shown to your guests. This text appears on the booking engine and in confirmation emails. 
    • Any custom information that you provide that does not match the your selected policy settings will need to be handled manually and will not override the defined policy settings.
12. Save the changes.

When a cancellation occurs, Cloudbeds automatically:

• Refunds the guest if they are owed money, or

• Charges any remaining amount needed to meet the penalty defined in the policy.

  

• No-show fees follow the same rules as the last stage of the cancellation policy. You cannot set a different no-show fee from the final cancellation rule.
• You can configure up to three cancelation tiers in one policy (for example, Free until 7 days before arrival, 50% between 7 and 3 days, 100% within 3 days).
• All cancelation deadlines are based on 12:00 AM local property time on the day the cancelation window closes.

Step 3 - Set your Default Smart Policy

Your default Smart Policy will be applied automatically to:

• Your Base Rate, and
• Any rate plan that does not have another policy assigned.

Best Practice: It is recommended that you choose the policy that is the most commonly used at your property. 

• You can change your default policy at any time.

To set the default policy:

1. Locate the policy you want to set as your default in the Policies Payment & Cancellation tab
2. Open the menu next to the policy
3. Select Make default.

Step 4 - Assign Policies to your Rate Plans

If you have multiple rate plans, you can assign different Smart Policies to each one.

1. Access the Rate Plans & Packages page in the main Cloudbeds menu
2. Search for the rate plan you want to update and click to edit it in the side menu .
3. Scroll down to the Cancellation field (Which cancellation policy do you want to set for this rate plan?) and select the the Policy you want to assign from the Policies dropdown
4. Click to Save.

Repeat the same steps for any additional rate plans requiring a different policy.

Step 5 – Viewing Policies in Reservations and on the Booking Engine

For your staff (PMS)

• When creating a reservation, the policy name is displayed on each room/rate plan.
• Staff can hover over the policy name to view a simple summary of:
  • Guarantee rules
  • Remaining balance schedule
  • Cancellation details

For your guests (Booking Engine)

Guests will see:

• A policy label such as Non-refundable or Fully refundable;
• A full breakdown of the payment schedule;
• Cancellation rules and any additional information you added.

In confirmation emails:

Cloudbeds automatically includes the Smart Policy information using the standard policy merge tag. No updates to your email templates are required.

Step 6 - Review the Channel Deposit configuration (optional)

After enabling the Smart Policies feature, your channel deposit settings will be split from the policies applied to direct reservations. 

• You can view and set them up in the new Channel Deposit tab available in the Policies page. 
• If you had previously defined channel deposit settings, no changes are required in this page, and your existing payment processing configurations for OTAs will remain unchanged.

Your Smart Policies are set and ready to use.