Payment terms

What are payment terms?

Payment terms in Tide define how and when payments must be made or received for each party involved in a travel booking. They help standardize financial agreements, automate payment timelines, and support cash flow forecasting.

Key concepts

This article will help you:

• Understand what payment terms are 

• 3 types of payment terms
• Set up payment terms in Administration

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Basic payment terms concepts

Basic introduction

Best practices

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Basic payment terms

There are three main categories of payment terms in Tide:

1. Customer payment terms which can be subdivided into
   1.a.   Customer payment terms
   1.b.   Agency payment terms
2. Supplier payment terms

Customer Payment Terms

These define when customers must pay for their bookings, typically split into:

• Advance Payment (e.g., 30% immediately after booking)

• Balance Payment (e.g., 70% 30 days before departure)

Tide calculates these amounts based on:

• The price types in each service line (e.g., hotel base price, taxes)

• Whether the booking is last-minute (e.g., full payment required if booked close to departure)

You can configure customer payment terms at multiple levels:

• Globally (Account level) – Default for all customers

• Per Business Unit – For specific brands or regions

Payment Terms Customer settings affect:

• Order forms

• Travel confirmations

• Invoices

They depend on price types linked to each price line in the file.

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Agent Payment Terms

When working with travel agents, you can define separate payment terms that reflect how agents manage payment collections:

• Agents can receive commission-based pricing, which affects how advance and balance amounts are calculated.

• Terms can be inherited from a travel agency chain's head office, or customized per individual agency.

Tide allows you to:

• Set different schedules for agent types (e.g., upfront vs. deferred payments)

• Manage agent-specific rules for collecting balances from travelers

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3. Supplier Payment Terms

These terms determine when you need to pay your suppliers, such as hotels, transfer companies, or local agents. These are often defined in contract negotiations and used for internal cash flow planning.

Each supplier can have one or more payment rules based on:

• Trigger moments (e.g., after booking, before departure, after return)

• Timeframes (e.g., 30 days before departure)

• End-of-month logic (e.g., EOM + 14 days)

You can assign supplier terms:

• Per supplier address in the CRM

• Per product type (e.g., different terms for hotel vs flight services)

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Basic introduction

Setup Customer payment terms

Example: Setup B2C payment terms

Example: Setup B2B payment terms

Setup supplier payment terms

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Setup customer payment terms

• Navigate to Administration and click on Payment Terms
  
• On the Customer Payment Conditions tab, in the right bottom corner, click the New customer payment term button.
   
• In the Payment terms panel, you will see that you can
  • set default payment terms applicable on all file types
  • set default payment terms and exceptions for certain file types.
  • set payment terms individually for each file type
    
    
  • In this tutorial, we will focus on the Default tab; however, please note that the configurations are consistent across all tabs.

• Field	Description
  Name	Internal label (e.g. Default B2C Terms, Default B2B Terms)
  Deposit - Days after creation of Booking	When the advance is due. Where 0 means same day as invoice creation.
  Balance - Days before departure	How long before departure the balance must be paid
  Last minute from	Bookings made within this many days before departure are treated as last-minute
  Deposit includes commission	Should commission be included in the advance invoice? (Y/N)

  
  With a fixed deposit rate of 30% applied across all price types, there are two potential outcomes depending on whether the Deposit includes commission option is selected:
  

  Deposit includes commission	Total amount	Commission (10%)	Deposit base amount	Deposit amount
  N	2000	200	1800	540
  Y	2000	200	2000	600

• You can specify varying percentages for different price types; for instance, you might set a 30% advance for most services while requiring a full 100% for insurance. The system will automatically calculate 100% for the insurance and apply the 30% rate to all other applicable amounts.
  

  Field	Description
  Price Type	The price type e.g., HOTEL, TAX, INSURANCE, ...
  After Booking (%)	% of this price to include in advance invoice
  Last Minute (%)	% to include for last-minute bookings (usually 100%)
  Extra Value	Fixed amount to be added
  Type	Whether the extra is applied per: booking, unit or participant

Example: setup B2C payment terms

Considering the following scenario:

For B2C customers, we require a 30% deposit per participant to be paid at the time of booking. The remaining balance must be settled 60 days prior to departure. In cases where the booking is made less than 60 days before departure, the customer is expected to pay the full amount immediately.

This is how we would go about setting it up as a single payment term:

Example: Setup B2B payment terms

Considering the following scenario:

For B2B booking, we require a 30% deposit per booking to be paid at the time of booking.The deposit should include commission. The remaining balance must be settled 40 days prior to departure. In cases where the booking is made less than 60 days before departure, the customer is expected to pay the full amount immediately.

This is how we would go about setting it up as a single payment term:

Setup supplier payment terms

• Navigate to Administration and click on Payment Terms
  
• On the Supplier Payment Conditions tab, in the right bottom corner, click the New supplier payment term button.
  

Field	Description
Name	Internal label (e.g. insurance, hotels Greece)
Price type	Select the applicable price type
When - Days	Specify the relevant number of days that apply to this payment term.
When - Moment	After booking After return Before departure
When - After the end of the month?	When this field is ticked, then the number of days will only be counted from the end of the applicable month.

• Use 100% for all price types in last-minute scenarios if you want a single total payment.

• Define standard values that apply when no price-type-specific rule is given.

• Use per-unit or per-participant extras sparingly for clarity in customer communication.

Use Case	Recommended Setup
Small organisation	One payment terms config linked to your Account
Large organisation	Separate payment terms per Business Unit
Travel Agents with unique terms	One config per agent or chain. These payment terms can be linked via CRM