With the Gratuity feature, you can collect gratuity from your customers electronically to give to your guides and employees. This feature will allow you to configure preset gratuity amounts making it easy for your customers to make a decision and Xola will send a payment link to your customers to pay gratuity using their credit card. You will be able to track gratuities received for guides across your events using a new reporting module.
This feature can also be used independently of Xola's guide management.
What's covered in this article:
How to Enable Gratuity
- Navigate to the Xola App Store by clicking the App Store tab in the upper right-hand corner.
- Locate "Gratuity" and select the App Store tile.
- Click the yellow "REQUEST ACCESS" button
How to set up Gratuity
- Once installed, go to the Settings tab
- Find Gratuity on the left-hand side
- Toggle on Append to Review Email (If wanted)
- This will add the tip functionality to the review email that is sent to your guests
- Toggle on Send an email to your guests about gratuity payment options (If wanted)
- Sends a separate email to your guest.
- Configure notifications in Settings > Notifications:
- Gratuity request: Sent 30 minutes after the end of the event (by default)
- Gratuity received: Sent when a gratuity payment is received
- Preset amounts:
- Makes it easy for your customers to make a quick decision. Presets are limited to 3. In addition to presets, customers will have an option to pay a custom amount. Your preset amounts can set as a $ or %.
- Custom message:
- This message is displayed in the separate email sent to your customers requesting gratuity and on the payment page.
- Guest instructions:
- This message is displayed in the payment page to your customers. You can leave instructions for your customer to tell you how the experience was, or to even tell you which guide they had if you do not use our Guide Management feature.
- Listing Preference:
- Choose which listings you want the Gratuity set up to go to. All listings will be selected as the default.
The timing in which your customer gets the email can be changed with our Custom Notification Timing Feature.
Email notifications for you and your guides are disabled by default, be sure to turn them on if you or your guides want to receive them. Go to Settings>Notifications to toggle on.
How Gratuity works
After an event is over, Xola will send an email to your guests to give a gratuity to the guide. There are a few ways a guest can receive this notification:
Separate Email:
Review Email (if toggled on):
SMS Notification with link:
SMS notifications can be set up by going to Settings>Notifications> and checking the box for SMS.
If you do not see this checkbox, you may need to turn on the SMS feature in your App Store. Contact our Support Team at support@xola.com to learn more.
Note: Emails and/or SMS will be sent to all guests. If Split Pay or Waiver features are being used it will send the email to all guests that used Split Pay and signed a Digital Waiver.
Also if you use the 'Check-In' feature > only those travelers who were 'Checked-In' will receive the Gratuity email.
Checkout for Gratuity:
Email sent the Guide and/or the primary email:
Notifications for you and/or the guide can be set up by going to Settings>Notifications> and checking the box for Gratuity under the Sent to Me or Sent to Guide section.
Gratuity Reports
The Gratuity report will give you a report of all the gratuities given during a time range you select. To access the report go to Reports>Gratuities
Filters:
- Date range: filter by date range you want to see gratuity received on.
- Guides: all guides or specific guides
- Status: Outstanding or Reconciled
On the Report:
- Guide Name: If no guide was assigned to the event, no name will show
- Payment Date: the date in which a gratuity was received
- Item: The experience the guest received
- Event Date: The date the experience was on
- Event Time: The time the experience was
- Gross: Gratuity amount
- Processing Fee: Credit Card Processing Fee
- Net: Gross amount minus the Processing Fee
- Note: Any note the guest left on the gratuity when using the payment page.
Note: No booking fee is put on a customer's gratuity.
If you click on the item icon in an individual gratuity on the report, it will take you to the purchase detail page within the Purchases tab. Here you can scroll down to the timeline and see the gratuity processed.
Reconciling Gratuities
If you click on the individual gratuity on the report, it will highlight it in blue and a green pay button will appear at the bottom of the report. Here you can reconcile easily which gratuities you have paid out to your guides. Click on as many gratuities as you want, and click Pay. Once you click the Pay button, there will be a green checkmark to represent the payout. If you hover over the green check, it will tell you who reconciled the gratuity and when.
Other Reports that Gratuity will be displayed in:
- Payout report
- Custom reports > Transaction report
When logged in Guides will be able to only see their own gratuity, but not others. Guide managers and other admin roles will be able to view gratuity received by all guides.
Note: Gratuity cannot be refunded back to the guest.