Alternative Payment Option

Last Updated: March 2025

Overview

The Alternative Payment feature allows guests to pay using a method other than a credit card when they register, such as check, email transfer, PayPal, scholarship, or other methods.

You can enable this option for all programs or customize it per program, with different descriptions and instructions. For example, you could accept checks for one program and scholarships for another.

For registrations using Alternative Payment, you must manually update the registration record in Retreat Guru when payment is received. Guests selecting this option complete registration without providing funds immediately, instead promising to pay later via the accepted method.

Global Default Settings

If you wish to offer the Alternative Payment option for one or more programs, first enable the Global Default Settings in:
Settings > Finance > Alternative Payment

When you open the bex highlighted above, 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 Settings, you may override the default on a program-by-program basis when you Edit Program.

When configuring the alternative payment in 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 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 Settings. So when we first view the Edit Program page the Alternative Payment is set to Use Default (in Settings) with a note that 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 Settings will be used.

• Following our example above: Since we entered Personal check as the default Alternative payment label in 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 e-Transfer, you enter this new value for the Alternative payment label for this program.

• For example: You can set the specific alternate payment method for that specific program:
  Programs > Edit Program > Registration > Advanced Options > Alternative Payment

Reporting

To report on the use of alternative payments, go to:
Transactions > select Transaction Category > Payments > Other Payment, and enter the Alternative Payment label

• For example: We used Personal check in the Description field.

Please Note: 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.