Every bond has a kind, picked with the amount when you write the contract. Manual is money you collect and refund yourself - the only kind without the Online Payments module. With the module and payouts connected, the picker offers two more.
Held on card
A pre-authorisation: the bond is reserved on the renter's card at signing and never taken. Card holds lapse after about a week, counted from signing, so this is offered only on a fixed-dates hire returning inside that window - 30 days when Stripe grants your account the vehicle-rental extended authorisation, which Fleetola asks for on every hold. The window the bank actually gave is shown on the bond, and a hire cannot be extended past it while the hold is live.
If the bank lets a hold go before the return, the bond reads Hold lapsed - nothing held: nothing was refunded, nothing is held, and you are alerted. It can be re-placed once on a card the renter kept, or the bond is settled another way.
- At signing the card box shows the bond as its own hold (not charged) line beside the rent.
- At a clean return, Release hold lets the whole reservation go - no money ever moved.
- Or Capture part of it with a reason; whatever you don't capture goes back to the card by itself.
In Settle the return, a charge taken from a hold is captured when you save, and the rest of the hold is released in the same step - a hold is captured once, so it cannot be part-kept and part-held. To keep holding it, move the charges to the bill with Adjust, and Hold for now comes back.
Charged to card
Real money, taken at signing with the rent and refundable at return. Ending the contract offers Deduct & refund rest: each deduction is a ledger entry with your reason, and the balance goes back to the renter's card. No card fee is ever added to a bond.
Tip: A failed bond never blocks signing. The agreement still signs, the renter is told you'll arrange the bond with them, and your side shows a plain manual bond owed.
The Bonds view in Payments is every bond you hold, whatever its kind: what has been deducted, what is still refundable, and the full history.
Reverse on a deduction gives that money back to the held bond. A share the Settle panel took for a return charge comes off that charge too, so the renter is never billed more by it - except the excess-distance charge, which the odometer sets: its share is billed to the renter instead. Money captured from a card at Stripe is not reversed here; refund the card.
Keeping the card
Separate from the bond kind: tick Keep their card under Card at return when you write the contract and set the ceiling. At signing the renter reads the authority in full and ticks it themselves - it is never pre-ticked - and the card they pay with is kept; with no card charge at signing they enter one. A kept card holds nothing: it can be charged for what is worked out at return, up to the ceiling, and the renter may remove it from their portal at any time.
The tax inside a kept bond
Bond money you keep is income, and it is GST-inclusive - the GST is part of what you kept, never added on top. The Bonds view does this sum for you: Captured (kept) totals every deduction and - while you are GST-registered - shows in its footer how much of that is taxable, and GST kept is the GST inside that taxable amount, across all time. The tile only appears while you are GST-registered.
Not every deduction is taxable - which categories count and which are pass-through is the Expenses, tolls and vehicle costs guide. The pass-through part is the rest pass-through in the footer. Refunded bond carries no GST: it was never your income.
Tip: At BAS time there is nothing extra to work out - kept bond money already sits inside the Tax page's figures and its BAS export.