Adding a security deposit

A security deposit is an amount you hold to cover costs for cases when your property is damaged during a guest's stay. With a deposit in place, guests are often more mindful of causing damage.

You can make the security deposit fee visible to guests on booking channels by adding it to the listing in Guesty. However, you are responsible for collecting the funds - not the channel. If you want to charge the deposit through Guesty, add a security deposit hold to the reservation. 

A security deposit can only be held for 7 days (5 days for Visa cards), so we recommend setting the hold date to up to 6 days before check-out (4 days for Visa cards), leaving you at least 1 day after check-out to charge if needed.

If you are connected to any of these channels, the security deposit will be visible on them.

• Agoda
• Airbnb
  The security deposit must be between $100 USD and $5,000 USD (or the equivalent of this amount in the listing's currency). For Airbnb reservations, the security deposit is considered an offline fee. The guest will be notified about the deposit requirements/amount when they book their reservation. If you want to display a security deposit in the guest invoice, manually add the security deposit as an additional fee to the reservation. Learn more about security deposits with Airbnb's Help Center article.
• For listings published from Guesty to Booking.com, set up a security deposit in Guesty and it will sync to Booking.com. For linked listings, set up the security deposit directly on Booking.com.
• Expedia
• Vrbo
  The security deposit will display as a "refundable damage deposit". It can take up to 1 hour for the security deposit fee to appear on Vrbo.
• Homes & Villas by Marriott Bonvoy (HVMB)

It is not possible to select or deselect certain channels. If you only want to add a security deposit for specific channels, create an additional fee, select "Deposit" as the fee type, and toggle on the "Add fee to reservations from specific sources" feature to select the relevant channels.

Displaying a security deposit in channels

Add a security deposit to your property setup to make it visible to guests on supporting channels. You are responsible for charging the security deposit as the channel will not charge it.

Step by step:

1. Sign in to your Guesty account.
2. In the top navigation bar, click the mode selector and select Financials mode.
3. Click Properties.
4. Select the relevant listing. For a multi-unit, edit the main settings and the change will update in the sub-units automatically.
5. In the left-side menu, click Pricing & policies and select Pricing.
6. To the right of the "Additional fees and charges" section, click Edit.
7. Under "Security deposit fee", enter the relevant amount. Once this amount is set, it cannot be edited further. 
8. Click Save.

Add a security deposit to a reservation

To be able to charge a security deposit, first add it to the reservation.

Step by step:

1. Sign in to your Guesty account.
2. In the top navigation bar, click the mode selector and select Operations mode.
3. Click Reservations.
4. In the banner at the top of the page, click Balance due/Payout.
5. In the "Payments" section, click Payment actions and select Add security deposit.
6. In the pop-up, enter the necessary information.
7. Click Hold now or Save, depending on whether you set the hold for the current or future date.