ROLLER POS supports card pre-authorization for tabs.
Card pre-authorization enables your venue staff to place a hold on funds required by your guests to settle their tab at the end of their visit, without adding friction during the ordering experience. Later, the pre-authorization can be used to quickly settle the tab, improving staff efficiency and reducing payment risks.
This guide walks through card pre-authorization frequently asked questions.
If your venue is using ROLLER Payments, then you can enable card pre-authorization at POS. When creating a tab, your staff can choose to capture a pre-authorization from a card provided by your guests.
When a pre-authorization is made against a guest’s card, the funds captured will be held by the bank.
When settling a tab at POS, one of the following scenarios will typically occur:
- If the total tab amount exceeds the held funds (eg if a tip has been added at the end of the guest’s visit or more items have been added to the booking) then ROLLER will update and charge the total amount. When the tab is settled pre-authorized card will be charged the total and the held funds will be spent.
- If the total tab amount is lower than the amount of held funds, then once the booking has been paid the excess funds will be released back to the guest’s bank account (eg if the initial hold was $100 and the tab totalled $40, then $60 will be released back to the guests).
You’ll need to enable this feature within Venue Manager.
If you can't see the card pre-authorization option when you create a new tab, it means you haven't configured this yet in Venue Manager. From Venue Manager, go to Apps > Point of Sale > Settings and check the box for Enable card pre-auth.
This feature is available on all ROLLER subscription plans. But, you do need to be using ROLLER Payments in order to access this feature.
For venues with food and beverage operations, card pre-authorization is a key requirement, especially in the adult social space. Card pre-authorization will allow you to effectively manage your open tabs and secure payment, as well as accurately and seamlessly process tips.
Yes, using card pre-authorizations will incur fees.
Fees are accrued when funds are initially held from a card (when a card pre-authorization is added to a tab) or when making an adjustment to the hold amount (if the tab exceeds the initial hold and the amount is adjusted to reflect the new tab amount). These fees will appear in your transactional invoices under Network fees.
During beta and early access for this feature, service fees will not be available to use for tabs with card pre-authorizations.
When this features goes into general access, flat fees will be added to the tab as soon as the pre-authorization is added to the tab. For percentage fees, they’ll be added as the pre-authorization is created and adjusted.
This depends on your venue and the average spend. It's recommended a a venue sets a default pre-authorized amount for a tab in the POS, using the setting: Minimum card pre-authorization amount. Learn more.
Card pre-authorizations only last for 24 hours before expiring and the funds are released.
When funds are expired and released, they can no longer be used to take payment. So it’s important that you close out tabs at the end of each trading day.
Yes, there are no role permissions or limitations around which staff can charge a pre-authorization.
If a card pre-authorization fails when you're creating a new tab, then your guest can provide an alternative card and staff can attempt to pre-authorize again. If staff don’t have a valid card to pre-authorize, then they can still create a tab, they’ll just have to take manual payment from the guest at the end of their visit.
Although card pre-authorizations rarely fail, there are a few reasons why this could happen:
- The card has insufficient funds: The guest will not be able to settle the tab if this is their only payment method.
- The card does not support pre-authorization: Although most cards can be pre-authorized, rarely, a card will not support this functionality. A different card should be used for the pre-authorization.
ROLLER will always provide you with useful notifications to understand and navigate errors when attempting to pre-authorize a card.
Most cards support pre-authorization. But, some cards do not. When this happens, ROLLER will provide POS staff with useful notifications to understand and navigate any issues.
Most cards support pre-authorizations. These cards include:
- Visa
- Mastercard
- American Express
- Discover
But, if a card is not supported or if there are issues pre-authorizing funds on one of the above cards, ROLLER will provide POS staff with useful notifications to understand and navigate issues.
A pre-authorisation hold on a credit card will appear as an adjustment to the available limit on the guest’s card (eg their credit card limit is reduced by the amount that’s held by the pre-authorization).
A pre-authorisation hold on a debit card will appear as an adjustment of the available balance on the account for the duration of the pre-authorization.
No, bookings can only have one active pre-authorized card.
In this situation, the pre-authorized funds would be released back to the guest.
No, not for now. The pre-authorized amount can only be manually adjusted when the tab is initially created and a card attached.
No, you must set a minimum value greater than $0 for the pre-authorized amount.
When adjusting the amount of funds held (eg the tab exceeds the initial pre-authorization amount) and the guest does not have enough funds to cover this new total, your staff will be notified. If this happens, we recommend you replace the authorized card with a new card at POS.
No, to pre-authorize a card, it must be swiped/tapped against a card reader.
No, there are no POS device settings to block specific POS devices from taking a card pre-authorization.
Once card pre-authorization is enabled, All pos devices can be used to accept a pre-authorization against a tab.
You don’t need to pay for the tab with the pre-authorized card. Once the tab has been paid (using any payment method or updating the authorized card) and there are excess held funds (which in this case, will be all of the held funds) then those funds will be released back to the guest’s bank account.
Card pre-authorizations will appear in your daily summary report.
Once the tab has been paid, funds paid by pre-authorized cards will appear as regular card payments. These will appear in the payments tab on the booking.
You can’t pre-authorize a card when POS is offline.
The 'there was an issue capturing card' error happens when the payment cannot be processed. Most of the time, this is because there's insufficient funds on the authorized card.