A prepayment is enabled per service and can be configured by amount, whether it's charged per reservation or per guest, and how long a guest has to cancel for a free refund.

Each prepayment is linked to a single reservation. For the prepayment to be processed correctly, the guest must be checked in or marked as a no-show when their reservation time comes.

When you create a reservation manually in the Back Office, you can send a prepayment request directly to the guest. Pick a service that has prepayments enabled, then set a payment deadline. The guest receives an email with a payment link and must complete the payment before the deadline.

A few things to keep in mind:

An unconfirmed reservation (waiting for payment) stays in the agenda for 1 hour. During this hold, the selected table is blocked and not available to other guests. If the payment isn't completed within the hour, the reservation is removed and the slot becomes available again.

This hold time is fixed and cannot be adjusted. The countdown shown to the guest reflects the remaining time — for example, if the reservation was created 11 minutes ago, the guest sees 49 minutes remaining.

When you check in a reservation that has a prepayment, a new sale opens automatically with the prepayment amount already deducted from the bill. If you don't use table seating, the sale opens under Direct Sales instead. As you add products to the sale, the total levels out.

For workshops or events, create a product with the workshop name and amount, add it to your sales grid, and add this product to each reservation. The sale total returns to 0, and you can keep adding extras or close the sale.

Recommendation: To avoid issues merging prepayments across tables, turn off Allow dragging and merging sales in the Tebi App.

A gift card cannot be used to pay for a reservation prepayment. If a guest wants to use a gift card, settle that on the day of the reservation at the payment screen instead.

At the time of prepayment, no products or VAT have been assigned yet, so no receipt or invoice can be generated. An official receipt is issued after the reservation takes place and the bill is settled.

If you take deposits or prepayments but don't use Tebi Reservations, you can still record these payments on a sale in the Tebi App.

The prepayment is shown at the bottom of the sale and is automatically deducted from the total at payment. Keep adding products until you're ready to close the sale.

Prepayments are paid out together with the rest of your sales on the day the prepayment is received. However, the prepayment is not counted toward your revenue in Tebi until the day of the reservation, when the guest is checked in or the payment is processed via a no-show or cancellation.

Important: Always mark each reservation as checked-in or no-show — otherwise the prepayment is registered as extra income rather than against the relevant sale.

Prepayments must be linked to a product with VAT (e.g. food or drink products, "4 Course Menu", "Workshop") in order to be registered correctly in your accounting. Prepayments retained for no-shows or cancellations are registered as extra income.

Costs: reservation prepayments are processed as ECom / iDEAL payments. For full pricing, see tebi.com/pricing.

What happens to a prepayment when a reservation is cancelled depends on your cancellation policy.

If a guest cancels within the cancellation window (for example, more than 24 hours before the reservation when the policy requires 8 hours' notice), the prepayment is refunded automatically. No action needed from you.

If a guest cancels outside the cancellation window — or doesn't show up — the prepayment is kept. The amount is registered as extra income in your reports.

Cancellation rules are set per service:

When setting up prepayments, we recommend using a deposit rather than a credit card guarantee. Credit card guarantees can result in chargebacks, where a guest disputes the charge with their bank. A deposit is collected upfront and gives you more certainty.

No. A prepayment applies to all guests who book within a service. There is no setting to limit the prepayment requirement to a specific guest segment.

Prepayment refunds follow the original payment method — usually iDEAL. Refunds typically arrive within 1–3 business days. Tip: If a guest asks for proof that a refund has been initiated, look up the payment in Adyen Essentials using the PSP reference from the reservation.