Vouchers are the perfect way to create discounts unique for a specific group of previous and/or potential guests. Vouchers codes can be issued to a guest prior to booking, which they can use to claim the specified discount off their stay during the booking process.
Voucher Codes can also be used in higher values to issue a Credit Note for customer payments on cancelled bookings, which the guest can then redeem against a future stay, whenever they choose to re-book. When Voucher Codes are used in this manner, they still behave like discounts, and will therefore apply to discount the full rate, rather than be recorded as 'payments' in the system.
Please note:
Vouchers are intended to offer a discount on a booking as a marketing incentive, or as a means to allow a guest who wants to cancel their existing booking to apply their original deposit/balance amount to a new booking at a future date.
It is not possible to sell a voucher within SuperControl itself. Vouchers can however be generated to any value, and the voucher can then be sold via an outside platform, and so long as the code generated in SuperControl is included, the recipient can then redeem the voucher that has been purchased at time of booking.
Go to Vouchers/Offers > Generate vouchers.
A voucher code will be randomly generated when you start the voucher creation process. You can change the voucher code to whatever you like e.g. guest name & month of original booking > Bolls-6/24.
Enter the amount you want the voucher to be for.
This can be any amount you choose.
There are different option how to apply the voucher. Meaning, you can set, if the voucher is being used for the deposit or the balance first.
Application of these settings:
Deposit
- If the deposit payment due is greater than the value of the voucher, the voucher amount will be deducted from the deposit in full. Leaving any remaining amount not covered by the voucher value due as deposit.
- If the deposit payment due is less than the value of the voucher, the voucher amount will be deducted in full from the deposit, any remaining monies will be deducted from the balance
Balance
- When the value of the voucher is greater than the value of the balance, the voucher amount the balance will be set to £0.00. The remaining monies will be applied to the deposit.
- When the value of the voucher is less than the balance the balance payment will be reduced and the remainder will be collected when it is due.
You can either allocate a fixed amount to the voucher or a percentage.
When using a voucher to record an already made payment using the actual value would normally be used.
You can either set the dates for which the voucher will be valid. This would be done, if a period has been agreed during which the new booking has to be made and the voucher needs to have been used.
Or you can select the period during which the new booking needs to be made by the guest. This can be used, if you want to make sure that the new booking is received, e.g. during the current financial year.
If you want to make sure that the guest is booking the same number of nights the originally booked, you can set the number of nights here.
Otherwise you can also set any minimum, e.g. when you have a policy that no guest may book less than 3 nights.
The maximum number of nights in the drop-down menu is set to 28 nights.
These are the dates for which the voucher can be used for.
So, the dates during which the new booking must be place or the holiday needs to be taken.
You can define, if the voucher can be used for a specific property or all properties.
All properties: simply tick the box in front of Voucher applies to all Properties?
Individual properties: Click onto the word Properties and a list with all active properties will show.
To select several properties hold down the Control (Crtl) key and select them ion on Windows and Command (Cmd) on a Mac.
If you have set up discounts, you can prevent already discounted prices to be reduced even more by selecting this option.
Add the name of the guest, for whom you want to provide the voucher.
Most likely you would want to allow the guest to use the voucher only once. Especially, if the voucher was created to take into account already received funds from the guest.
As an agency you will want to decide how a voucher will impact on the payment to the owner and your own commission.
There are five options to choose from:
With this setting the guest is paying a reduced amount as the total rent is reduced by the amount stated in the voucher.
Example: £100 voucher has been issues.
The guest is only paying £900
The owner payment and commission is being calculated on the full rental amount, regardless of the voucher having been applied.
The owner payment and commission will be calculated as if no voucher has been applied to the booking.
Then in the next step the voucher value will be deducted from the owner payment.
Example: £100 are being deducted from the owner payment.
The owner payment and commission will be calculated as if no voucher has been applied to the booking.
Then in the next step the voucher value will be deducted from the commission payment.
Example: £100 are being deducted from the commission.
The owner payment and commission will be calculated as if no voucher has been applied to the booking.
Then in the next step the voucher value will be split in half and then partly deducted from the commission payment.
Example: £100 are being deducted from the commission.
The amount allocated to the booking with the voucher is deducted from the monies which will be divided between the owner payment and the commission.
If you have more than one website you are marketing your properties on, e.g. Beautiful-Highland-Cottages.co.uk and Beautiful-Cottages-York.co.uk, you will see them listed in the drop down menu.
This means you can be very specific which property the voucher can be used for.
Possible scenarios:
- applies to all properties listing on all your websites
- applies to all properties listing on a specific website
- applies to one specific property listing on one specific website
You can add notes as well to the voucher.
This is for internal use only and will not be showing to the guest.
You can select an existing file as the background for your vouchers.
This allows you to create a customer background which is incorporating e.g. your company logo.
To select the file, click the Choose file button. Navigate to the file you want to use in the windows that opens and select the image file.
Please note:
The image should be a .png file, measure 595 x 842 pixel (width x height) and have a maximum size is 1MB.
When you click onto Size guidelines you will find this information as well.
If you are trying to use an image that is too big (the size of the file is too big) you will see an error message, and the voucher will not be created.
The link Sizing guidelines gives you a pop-up with information what sizes and file types should be used.
The Sample background is a .jpg file that can be downloaded and used as a template for your own background file.
You can download it back right clicking the link and selecting Copy link address o.s.
You can select to use the template you are creating for this voucher to also apply to all other vouchers.
This provides consistency in regards to how the voucher will look for the guest.
Click this button to generate the voucher.
You will see an overview of the settings that have been used for the created voucher. This gives you the option to check, if the voucher has the correct settings.
Please note:
You can check the background image that has been chosen as the customer background by clicking onto Show (1).
To remove the background again, simply click onto Remove customer background (2).
If it hasn't the correct settings, you can go to Voucher / Offers > View vouchers and expire or delete the voucher again straight away.
Sending the created voucher to the guest
On the page where you see the voucher details overview you can send the voucher to the guest via email.
1. Amend the pre-populated Subject field, if required. Or enter your own subject text.
2. Make sure to enter the email address of the guest.
Please note:
If you have only a channel specific email address, e.g. from Booking.com, you might need to send the voucher code using the channel's guest communication system directly.
3. Select an existing email template to use, load a template and edit it or create your own letter.
Please note:
If you are sending a voucher code to one recipient from this page, the TAGS within your e-mail templates will not be replaced with the respective information.
The TAGS will only auto-populate information when you are generating a voucher code from within a booking.
Please see this help centre article How do I generate a Voucher within an existing booking?
4. Select from the drop-down menu to either use the body text only for this email, or save it as the default text to be used when sending newly created voucher codes to the guests.
5. Click Send.