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Getting paid

Where your money goes, how refunds work, and what to do about bookings that never paid.

Payouts#

Customer payments land in your Stripe or Square account, on that provider's normal payout schedule — typically two business days. PBHQ never holds your money.

The platform booking fee is routed to PBHQ automatically at the time of the charge. Everything else — the booking price, the processing surcharge, and any sales tax — is yours.

Check payout timing and bank details in your own Stripe or Square dashboard. There are direct links in Settings → "Payment Processor".

Refunds are manual#

PBHQ never moves money back. Cancelling a booking or an event cancels the reservation and frees the gear and the play area — it does not refund the card.

To refund someone:

  1. Cancel the booking in PBHQ (or change its status to "Cancelled" on the booking edit screen).
  2. Open your Stripe or Square dashboard, find the payment, and refund it there.
  3. Set "Amount Collected" back to 0 on the booking so your records match.

Cancelling an event says so outright: "{name}" cancelled. {n} booking(s) were cancelled. Refund customers manually via your payment processor.

Bookings that never paid#

If a customer starts checkout and closes the tab, the booking is left in "Pending" status — and it still holds their gear. There's no automatic expiry.

PBHQ handles this in two ways:

It emails the customer. About ten minutes after an abandoned checkout, they get "Action needed: payment not received" telling them to call you, plus their waiver links so they can still sign.

It tells you. Your dashboard home shows a card headed "{N} bookings awaiting payment" — "Checkout never completed. Call the customer to take payment, or cancel to release the gear." — with a "Review them →" button.

Full walkthrough: Taking payment.

Free and $0 bookings#

A booking with a $0 total skips payment entirely — no card, no fees. Waivers still go out and the booking behaves normally everywhere else.

Comped groups, staff games, and free scenario days all work this way. Just make the price $0 (a $0 gear tier, a $0 event, or a discount code covering the whole thing).

Demo mode#

With no processor connected, every booking runs in demo mode: a total is quoted, a confirmation is sent, and no card is charged. Good for testing. Not good for a live field.

See Connect a payment processor.

Reconciling#

For a period-by-period view of money taken, use Sidebar → Business → Reports. The "Revenue" tab totals net revenue after discounts, and "Export CSV" gives you a row per booking with date, type, status, players, total price, discount, play area, gear tier, and party type. See Reports.

Bear in mind the reports show booking value, not what actually cleared your processor. For that, your Stripe or Square dashboard is the authority.