Step-by-step guides

You can find below practical step-by-step guides to help you manage YITH WooCommerce Deposits / Down Payments:

• How to enable the deposit options in all products
• How to enable the deposit options in specific products
• How to use the deposit rules
• How to configure the balance options
• How to automatically charge the balance on the customers’ credit card
• How to set the deposit options for bookable products (Booking integration)

After installing YITH Deposits / Down Payments, you will have the option to enable and configure the ‘Deposit’ feature for all products in a few simple steps. Let’s review in detail how to manage this option: 

1. Go to YITH > Deposits / Down Payments > Deposit Options > General Options and enable the first option to activate the deposits feature on all products:

2. After enabling it, three additional options appear to further configure the deposit. First, you can choose whether to set the deposit as optional and let users decide or force the option:

3. Second, you have the choice to show the deposit option selected by default or not:

4. Third, you can enter the amount to charge as a deposit. Here, you can enter either a percentage rate or a fixed amount:

5. Next, you can manage the shipping costs. In this case, it is possible to decide in which order to apply the shipping costs (to the deposit order or the balance order):

6. Finally, to enhance the single product page loading speed, you can enable this specific option to load the deposit data dynamically:

7. As an example, let’s set an optional deposit on all products for a fixed value of $10. This is what the users will see on the frontend:

With YITH Deposits / Down Payments, it is possible to configure the deposit options globally for all products or override these settings individually at the product level. Let’s focus on how to override the deposit options for specific products: 

1. After opening the specific product edit page, go to Product data > Deposit & Balance:

2. Inside the Deposit & Balance Options, you can enable the ‘Override deposit options’ and, below, you can decide whether to enable or not the deposit feature for the specific product:

3. If you enable the previous option, you can then decide how to show the deposit option for this product (optional or forced). If optional, you can also choose whether to show the deposit option selected by default or not:

4. Additionally, you can set a custom notice to inform users about the deposit option:

5. Below, you can find an example of a forced deposit option with a custom notice:

YITH Deposits / Down payments includes a feature to create ‘Deposit rules’ which allow overriding the default deposit amount (defined in General Options) for specific user roles, product categories, or products. Let’s review in detail how to create these rules: 

1. Go to YITH > Deposits / Down Payments > Deposit options > Deposit rules and click on the ‘Add rule’ button:

2. This will open a modal window with the following fields:

3. First, you can set the rule type that will determine where the rule will be applied to, either products, product categories, or user roles:

4. After selecting the type, you can proceed to enter the specific terms: 

5. Finally, you must define the deposit type (percentage rate or fixed amount), enter the value, and click on ‘Add rule’: 

6. As an example, let’s create a deposit rule for a specific product which will require a 50% deposit: 

7. Below, you can find the 50% deposit option available on the specific ‘Custom Pet Portrait’ product:

Once you’re done enabling and configuring the deposits in YITH > Deposits / Down Payments > Deposit Option, you should move on to the following section, Balance Options, to configure the balance options. 

First, you need to decide how you want to manage balance orders; you can create them with the “Pending payment” status and let users pay the balance later on online, you can create the orders with the “On hold” status and process the payments manually (in that case, you would have to change the order status manually), or simply do not create a balance order at all:

By choosing either of the two options for the balance order creation, you’ll find an option below to decide how you want to handle orders with multiple deposits, that is, with two or more products that have deposit payments. You can create a single balance order for all of those products, or create an order for each one of them. You will also find an option to request the balance payment to customers:

If you enable the option to request the balance payment, you’ll be able to decide when the balance has to be paid for and what actions to take in case it’s not. You can request the balance payment on a specific date or a specific number of days after the deposit was paid. For example, let’s set a global rule to request the payment 7 days after the deposit was paid for. This way, an email will be sent to customers reminding them that the balance due date is approaching:

Then, you can decide the actions to take if the balance is not paid for when the due date is reached; you will configure these actions and the plugin will automatically process them whenever the conditions apply. For example, a reminder can be automatically sent if the balance order is not paid for and if the user still doesn’t pay 5 days after that, the order will be automatically canceled: 

YITH Deposits / Down Payments has the integration with YITH Stripe to allow the automatic charge of the balance payments on the customers’ credit cards. Let’s review in detail how to configure this integration: 

1. To start using these combined features, just make sure you have installed, activated, and configured both plugins. Then, you will find a new ‘Stripe Options’ section inside YITH > Deposits / Down Payments > Balance Options > Stripe Options: 

2. First, enable the option to ‘Automatically charge balance on customer’s credit card’: 

3. Next, you can decide how to manage the automatic charge, either apply it only if the customers paid the deposit with a credit card or Force it for all customers, regardless of the deposit’s payment method: 

4. Finally, you can set a custom message to inform your customers that their credit cards will be used to process the automatic payment for the balance on the due date: 

Thanks to the integration with YITH Booking and Appointment for WooCommerce, you can now configure deposit options specifically for bookable products. Let’s see those options… 

1 – By going over to YITH > Deposits / Down Payments > Balance Options, you’ll find two new deadlines for the balance payment, on the booking start date and on a specific time range before the booking start date:

Both options are really popular among booking platforms since they allow customers to pay the balance the day their booking begins or a specific number of days before that. Let’s say we have an apartment for rent and customers can rent it with a deposit. The standard options to pay for the balance on a specific date or a range of days after paying the deposit are not good enough here as customers might be renting the apartment for the following week or three months from today. This is where we need those useful deadlines that are much more specific to bookable products.

2 – We can request the balance payment, for example, seven days before the booking start date just like Airbnb does:

And so, the balance payment deadline would change according to each booking start date: 

Of course, you’ll find the same options inside each bookable product’s edit page, by going over to Product Data > Deposit & Balance > Override balance options. This way, you’ll be able to override the global settings and set different deadlines for each bookable product you offer: 

Finally, in YITH > Booking and Appointment > Settings > Cart & Orders, you’ll find a helpful option to decide when to mark the bookings as paid, either when the deposit is paid or when the balance is: