Alternative Payment Option

The Alternative Payment feature provides an option for your guests to make a payment using a method other than a credit card when they register. For example, you might offer the option to pay by check, email money transfer, PayPal, or via scholarship.

When you configure this option, you can choose whether to enable this alternative payment feature on all programs, or on a program-by-program basis. You can change the description and instructions on each program - meaning you could accept checks on one program and scholarships on another.

For registrations that are completed using the Alternative Payment method, you will need to manually indicate on their registration record in Retreat Guru when the actual payment has been received.

When a guest selects the Alternative Payment method during their registration, they are able to complete that registration without actually providing funds to your center - they are only promising to provide the funds later via check or email money transfer or any other method that you will accept.

Global Default Settings

If you wish to offer the Alternative Payment option for one or more programs, first enable the option in Reg Settings > General > Payment > Alternative payment:

When you check the box adjacent to Enable alternative payment method, the options to configure your default settings will appear.

Indicate whether or not you'd like alternative payment to be Disabled by default or Enabled. Regardless of the default in Reg Settings, you may override the default on a program-by-program basis when you Edit Program.

When configuring the alternative payment in Reg Settings, it's best practice to include a Default alternative payment label and Default instructions for alternative payment. You can override this default label and instructions on a program-by-program basis when you Edit Program.

Program-level Settings

You can override the default settings that you configured in Reg Settings on a program-by-program basis at Programs > Edit Program > Registration > Advanced Options > Alternative Payment.

In the above example, we configured the default status for Alternative Payment to be Disabled in Reg Settings. So when we first view the Edit Program page the Alternative Payment is set to Use Default (in Reg Settings) with a note that Reg Settings default current set to 'disable'.

To override the default settings - in this case, to enable Alternative Payment - for this program, choose Enable for this program from the drop-down list. Additional configuration options will appear.

If these additional configuration option fields are left blank, the default text for Alternative payment label and Instructions for alternative payment that you configured in Reg Settings will be used.

Following our example above, since we entered Personal check as the default Alternative payment label in Reg Settings, Personal check will appear by default for this program. 

If you do not want to use Personal check as the alternative payment for this program, and instead wish to use eTransfer, you enter this new value for the Alternative payment label for this program.

For example, at Programs > Edit Program > Registration > Advanced Options > Alternative Payment you can enter:

Reporting

To report on the use of alternative payments, view Transactions, select Transaction Category > Payments > Other Payment, and enter the Alternative Payment label - for example, Personal check, in the Description field.

This Description field is an open text field - only exact matches will be found. It's important that you select consistent labels when configuring. For example, if you use Check as the Alternative Payment label for your programs offered in the United States, and Cheque for your Canadian programs, you won't be able to easily include Checks and Cheques in one report.