Money & payments

Deposits, online payment, surcharges, refunds, and where the money actually goes.

Every money screen in BookMyVenue is Owner and Manager only. A Staff or Read-only user sees the operational screen without the takings on it. The server enforces that restriction; hiding the screen is only the visible half.

Where the money goes

• You do your own KYC with Stripe, on Stripe's own hosted onboarding page. BookMyVenue never sees or stores your bank details or ID documents.
• The statement descriptor is your venue's name. A guest reading their bank statement sees the name of the business they bought from. This is not cosmetic: an unfamiliar descriptor is the single largest avoidable cause of chargebacks.

Connecting Stripe

Only an Owner can connect Stripe or finish its setup. A Manager can see the status.

1. Sign in at app.bookmyvenue.com.au/login.
2. Open Payments in the left-hand navigation, under Configure. You can also get there from Settings → Payments & tax → Online payments.
3. Select Connect with Stripe. Stripe's own form opens. It asks for your business details, identity documents and a bank account.
4. When you finish, Stripe sends you back to the Payments screen. The screen checks your account with Stripe once by itself.

The Stripe account panel shows three checks: Connected, Can take payments and Can be paid out. When all three are done, the panel says Ready to take payments.

If Stripe needs more from you, the panel says Setup not finished and lists the missing items under Stripe still needs. Select Continue setup to go back to Stripe's form. Select Check again after you give Stripe what it asked for.

Until the panel says Ready to take payments, guests cannot pay online. A setup that was started but not finished is the usual reason "the payment page will not load": check this panel first.

If the Payments screen shows Online payments are not switched on yet instead of the panel, there is nothing to set up: guests pay at the venue. Email hello@bookmyvenue.com.au with questions.

Using your own payment gateway

Already have a merchant account with another payment gateway? Email hello@bookmyvenue.com.au before you set anything up, and we will tell you whether it works with BookMyVenue.

Deposits

A deposit is what stops a no-show costing you the whole slot.

Set a deposit on a service (appointments) as either a fixed amount or a percentage of the price. From then on, a guest booking that service is asked to pay before the booking is held.

How a deposit booking behaves

1. The guest picks a time. The booking is created as pending and the time is held while they are typing their card in, so nobody takes the slot out from under them.
2. If they pay, the booking becomes confirmed.
3. If they abandon the payment sheet, the hold expires and the time is released.

That third point matters. Without it, an abandoned card form would hold a slot all night and you would silently lose the business.

Deposit states you may see against a booking: requires payment → paid, or failed, cancelled, refunded.

Surcharges

Public holiday surcharge

Set a percentage in Settings → hospitality policy → Public holiday surcharge. It applies automatically on public holidays in the state you set in Settings → Regional, so you set it once and never think about it again.

Disclosure

Surcharges are disclosed to the guest before they pay, on the ordering surface and on the receipt. This is not optional and it is not configurable, because in Australia an undisclosed surcharge is a compliance problem, not a pricing decision.

Refunds

Rejecting an order that has been paid for online sends the money back.

It is automatic and recorded. The refund is not a manual chore you might forget. It is tied to the rejection, so the order rejected message tells the guest the money is coming back.

Refunds are recorded against the order, so your reports show the net position rather than gross takings you never kept.

Refunding is Owner/Manager only. Individual devices can also be granted or denied refund and void rights separately: see Devices.

What each role can see

A Staff user who opens a money screen does not get a blank page. They get an explicit refusal, so nobody mistakes "no permission" for "no takings today".

Tax invoices

Your ABN (11 digits) and legal / registered business name live in Settings → tax details. They are what appear on a tax invoice from the till.

If they are blank, what the till prints is a receipt, not a valid tax invoice. Fill them in before you trade.

Other things that take money

Next

• Reports: the numbers at end of day and end of month
• Troubleshooting: "the payment did not go through"

Still stuck? Email hello@bookmyvenue.com.au with your venue name, what you were doing and what happened instead. Please don't send passwords. We will never ask for one.