With the Gratuity feature, you can collect gratuity from your customers electronically to give to your staff. This feature will allow you to configure preset gratuity amounts and have Xola send these options to your customers via link, allowing your guests to quickly and easily pay gratuity to you and your staff via credit card. You will be able to track gratuities received for staff 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 on the left-hand column.
- Locate "Gratuity" and select the App Store tile.
- Click the Install button
How to set up Gratuity
- Once the app is installed, navigate to Settings > Gratuity
- Choose your preferred method of sending Gratuity options to your customers. We currently offer the following methods:
- Show in Customer Review Email
- (This will add a Gratuity section to the Customer Review Email)
- Send SMS Text Message
- Send Email
- Show in Customer Review Email
- 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 the option to pay a custom amount. Your preset amounts can be set as a $ or % of the reservation value.
- 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 on the payment page to your customers. You can leave instructions for your customer to tell you how the experience was or even to tell you which Guide they had if you do not use our Guide Management feature.
- Applies to:
- Choose which products you want the Gratuity set up to go to; all products 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 staff want to receive them. This can be enabled on the Settings > Notifications screen.
- Gratuity request: Sent 30 minutes after the end of the event (by default)
- Gratuity received: Sent when a gratuity payment is received
- Email notifications for you and your guides are disabled by default; be sure to turn them on if you or your staff want to receive them. This can be enabled on the Settings > Notifications screen.
How Gratuity works
After an event is over, Xola will send an email to your guests to prompt a gratuity payment. 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 navigating to Settings > Notifications and using the toggle to enable SMS. You can also set this up within the Settings > Gratuity screen directly.
If you do not see a toggle option, 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 an 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 to the staff and/or the primary email:
Notifications for you and/or staff can be set up by going to Settings>Notifications> and checking the box for Gratuity under the Sent to Me or Sent to Staff section.
Gratuity Reports
The Gratuity report will give you a report of all the gratuities given during your selected time range. To access the report, go to Reports > Gratuities.
Filters:
- Date range: Filter by date range you want to see gratuity received
- Staff: All staff or specific staff
- Status: Outstanding or Reconciled
On the Report:
- Item: The experience the guest received
- Staff Name: If no staff was assigned to the event, no name will show
- Payment Date: the date on which a gratuity was 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 be highlighted in blue, and a green pay button will appear at the bottom. Here you can easily reconcile which gratuities you have paid out to your staff. Click on as many gratuities as you want, and click Pay. Once you click the Pay button, a green checkmark will 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:
When logged in, staff can only see their own gratuity, but not others. Staff managers and other admin roles can view gratuity received by all staff.
Note: Gratuity cannot be refunded back to the guest.