Features
Everything VenueBookr does, by the job it does.
Bookings, payments, waivers and the tools your team uses to run the day — in one system, set out in the order a visit happens.
Book a live demoA visit, end to end
Choose
Pick times
Extras
Pay
Waiver
Confirmation
Reminder
Check-in
Visit complete
Sell and book
A mobile-first booking flow on your own branded page, offering only the times your venue can genuinely run.
What VenueBookr does
- Multi-activity visits in one basket, big parties split across sessions
- A hold at checkout so two customers can't buy the same slot
- Mixed parties priced per guest type, per activity
- Spectators who don't use capacity, extras, deposit now and balance later
- Bundle two or three activities into one named experience — a package with its own page, category, member rate and cancellation terms
- A waitlist for full sessions
- Pause online bookings with a reason and the time you'll be back
- The booking widget embedded in your own website, scoped to the activities you choose
- Every activity card shows the group size and how many go in each space, and a time the group can't fit is greyed out with the reason
- Sell through GetYourGuide: their bookings land on your Day Plan like any other, marked as theirs
- A booking keeps the price it was sold at: put a price up and nobody who has already booked pays more
A group of fifteen hits “Maximum 9 people” and books somewhere else
Big parties book themselves. The page works out that your nine-person room runs twice, offers only the times where the whole group fits back to back, holds every session together and takes one payment.
Your pricing has more parts than one price per person
Guest types with their own prices, member rates, ratio rules like "max 3 children per adult", per-hour rates, group mixes — modelled, priced and enforced.
The smart booking engine
A full Saturday, booked in one go
Jess wants climbing then laser tag for her group of six, back to back, same afternoon.
- She adds the first, taps "add another activity", and is only offered second slots that genuinely work — duration and changeover buffer included.
- All six climb, four play laser tag: each activity carries its own party, priced on its own numbers.
- One basket, one payment, one confirmation, one waiver flow.
What she never sees: the clash-checking and the buffer maths. It reads as "that was easy". And if you'd rather sell that combination as a deal, make it a package — one name, one price, one tap.
Big groups
Fifteen people, a room that holds nine, booked at eleven at night
An office organiser has fifteen names and a meeting in twenty minutes. Your biggest room holds nine.
- She types 15. Instead of “Maximum 9 people”, the page works out the room can run twice, back to back, and offers only the starts where both turns are free.
- One tap: “10:00 AM & 10:45 AM · 8 + 7 people”. Both turns are held together while she pays.
- You decide which activities may run twice for one party, and how big a group you'll sell online. Anything larger is told to get in touch.
Why this one matters: a party that can't finish booking doesn't ring you in the morning. They book the venue that let them finish.
Prepare the customer
Waivers signed, reminders sent and changes made by the customer, inside your rules, before anyone reaches the desk.
What VenueBookr does
- Digital waivers with dates of birth and retention rules
- One-signature family waivers, and photo & video consent properly asked
- A QR code at the door for anyone who arrives unsigned, attached to the right seat on the booking
- Passwordless sign-in; customers reschedule, cancel and add a guest themselves
- Documents and photos on the customer's own booking page
- Confirmations and reminders by email, and SMS where enabled
- Two-way messaging on every booking, and your own email designs
- The organiser sees who in their group has signed the waiver, and can send a link again
- See who is ringing before you answer, and ring back the calls you missed
Chasing paper waivers at the front desk while the 2pm session queues up
Digital waivers signed before arrival, one family signature covering the adults and their kids — with dates of birth captured and retention handled.
"Can I move my booking to Saturday?" — twenty minutes of phone tag
Customers reschedule, cancel and add guests themselves, inside the rules and cut-offs you configure. Staff only get involved when you want them to.
No-shows that cost you the slot and the revenue
Deposits, pay-later with a recorded balance owed, reminders by email and SMS, and cancellation policies you set per venue.
Parties & groups
A kids' birthday party that polices its own rules
A parent books six children at £12, two adults at £15, and three grandparents just watching.
- The ratio rule — no more than three children per supervising adult — is enforced at booking, not at the door. Spectators take seats, not capacity, and aren't charged as players.
- The mix prices itself: 6 × £12 + 2 × £15 = £102, exactly what's shown and exactly what's charged.
- One adult signs one family waiver, each child's date of birth captured because the insurer asks.
The venue set the rules once — rates, ratios, capacity, waivers. Every booking after that defends them automatically.
Run the visit
The Day Plan is the one screen your team lives in: every booking for the day as a list, a grid or a board of your rooms and lanes — who's coming, what they've paid, one tap to check them in, a host on each activity.
What VenueBookr does
- Lanes, rooms, courts, bays or rigs, with changeover buffers
- Maintenance windows, custom statuses, a host on every session
- QR self-check-in
- Open the venue with named first-aiders and fire marshals
- An emergency register with a live roll-call, and an accident book
- Age confirmations at the age you set, child-to-adult ratios, hard capacity limits
- Insurance and risk assessments in one place
No training day. If your team can read a list, they can run the floor.
Two parties booked onto the same lane, and nobody noticed until they arrived
A double-booking guard and real resource allocation — every booking is placed onto an actual lane, room or rig, with changeover buffers respected.
Take payments
Card payments into your own Square or Stripe account — we’d pick Square. And a till that knows your bookings.
Online and on the booking
- Apple Pay and Google Pay at checkout
- Deposits, pay-later, invoices and account credit
- PayMyBit: everyone in a group pays their own share
- Refunds that unwind cleanly, VAT invoices and credit notes
- Xero and QuickBooks export
- Customers order and pay from their table by QR code, and the order arrives at the bar or kitchen already paid
At the counter
- Tabs you start, add to and settle; kitchen and bar screens
- A card machine that takes the amount straight from the sale
- Receipt printer and cash drawer, cashing up with the variance shown
- Barcodes, stock takes, suppliers and staff purchases
- Keeps taking cash when the internet does not
The till says one thing, the bookings say another, and cashing up says a third
One system takes the booking and runs the counter — the till, tabs, the card machine, the receipt printer and the cash drawer — so the day's money reconciles in one place. And it keeps taking cash when the internet drops.
Schools & corporate
A school group, booked on invoice
A school wants thirty students in for a morning. Schools raise purchase orders, not card payments at midnight.
- Staff build the booking with the school's own guest mix and take it on invoice — or a deposit now with the balance recorded as owed.
- A request for payment goes out first, and the VAT invoice after the visit — straight away for a school or company that gives its VAT number.
- Waivers are collected digitally before the visit; the morning's manifest shows who is coming and what they're doing.
Card, cash, card machine, deposit, invoice or account credit — the booking doesn't care how the money arrives; the ledger keeps it honest either way.
Manage staff
Build your own roles, then let the rota tell the day who's on.
What VenueBookr does
- Copy a built-in role and switch individual permissions on or off
- Staff PINs for shared till devices, with a full record of who did what
- The rota, with every shift showing its paid hours, and time off asked for, approved or recorded
- A time clock if you want one: the same PIN as the till on a tablet by the door, or a code people scan with their own phone
- Attendance with the reasons counted and the Bradford Factor, with no threshold set and the days behind every figure
- Training with expiry dates, personal records with rules on who may open them
- A manager bypass for the moments a wall needs a PIN
Three sick days in a row and three separate Mondays look the same on a spreadsheet.
The Bradford Factor scores them 3 and 27, because frequent short absences disrupt a venue more, and the days behind every figure sit right beside it.
Bring customers back
Everything that brings a customer back, native and stacking correctly at checkout.
What VenueBookr does
- Gift vouchers online with PDF delivery, and physical cards sold at the till
- Discount codes, and till offers like happy hour
- Paid memberships with member pricing, family plans and loyalty tiers
- Cards kept on file so memberships renew themselves
- A refer-a-friend link for every customer
Marketing, with consent tracked per customer
- Subscribed, unsubscribed or never asked, with the date and how
- Email a group from your customer list; marketing only reaches those who agreed
Understand the business
Every number you'd want at 9pm, without a spreadsheet.
What VenueBookr does
- Sales and VAT over any date range
- Utilisation by the hour: of the time each space could be booked, how much it was actually in use
- A plain-English note every Monday of what stands out: a time that's nearly always booked, a busy week coming, vouchers about to expire
- A business snapshot for today, this week, month or year
- Pre-bookings: the checkouts that didn't finish, day by day
- Targets over any period, and your own records kept for you
- Build your own report, and see which discount codes earn their keep
- Google Analytics, Tag Manager or your ad pixel, consent handled properly
End of month means spreadsheets, guesswork and a headache
Sales, VAT and utilisation reporting, a full payment ledger per booking, proper VAT invoices and credit notes — the numbers reconcile themselves.
The numbers are all there. Working out what they mean is another job.
Every night VenueBookr reads the last four weeks and writes down what stands out, in plain sentences, with one option and a button to the screen that does it.
Configure the venue
Your rules are the product: set them once, and every booking after that defends them.
What VenueBookr does
- Cancellation terms, cut-offs and policies you set per venue
- Several sites in one organisation, each with its own products, settings and branding
- A product built once and shared across every site, each keeping its own price and availability
- A read-only key so your website pulls your activities and availability
- GDPR export and erasure
Questions venues actually ask
Straight answers. If yours isn't here, ask us directly and a person replies.
What is VenueBookr?
A complete booking platform for leisure venues: online bookings, payments, digital waivers, gift vouchers, memberships, resource management and reporting in one system — configured around your venue's own rules.
What kinds of venues is it for?
Session-based leisure venues — family entertainment centres, trampoline parks, soft play, escape rooms, laser tag, mini golf, climbing, karting, axe throwing, rage rooms and multi-activity centres. Basically anywhere that sells tickets, activities or fun. If you run bookable sessions with real capacity and safety rules, it fits — if it's bookable, it's VenueBookrable.
Do you work outside the UK?
Yes — the UK, Canada and the United States. Your account is set to your country once, and everything follows it: the currency, the date and the clock, the words for an address and a phone number (postcode or ZIP code, county, province or state), the tax's own name, the paper your documents print on (A4 or Letter), the age a guest signs their own waiver, and the gift-voucher expiry rules — never in Canada, at least five years in the US, twelve months by default in the UK.
How do we get set up?
Personally. Every venue is onboarded by us — we configure your products, pricing, waivers and policies around how you actually run, together. You also get a dedicated account manager — a real person you can actually speak to, who knows your venue and your setup, guides you through it and is there when you need them.
Do we need new hardware?
No. VenueBookr runs in a browser — your existing computers, tablets and phones are fine. Shared front-desk devices can use staff PINs so everyone works under their own identity on one till. If you have a receipt printer, a cash drawer and a Square card machine, the counter uses them; if you don't, it works without.
How do customers book?
On your own branded booking page, built mobile-first because that's where most bookings happen — with passwordless sign-in, so there's no password to forget between visits. You can also embed the booking widget straight into your existing website, and the builder makes the one you actually want: scope it to a category or a hand-picked set of activities (so a "Groups" page sells only your group activities), set the party size it opens on, bake in a discount code, or build a single-purpose one that sells only gift vouchers or memberships. Customers book inside the panel — no redirect, your branding intact.
Can customers book more than one activity in a visit?
Yes — that's a signature feature. Customers build a multi-activity visit in one basket, and the system only offers time slots that genuinely work back to back, including your changeover buffers, and each activity can carry its own party ("six throw, four rage"). If you'd rather sell a set combination as a deal, make it a package: one name, one price you set, one booking fee, booked in a single tap. One payment, one confirmation, one reference.
How do payments work?
Card payments run through Square or Stripe — your choice — connected to your own account, so your money settles directly to you. Staff can also record cash, card-machine, deposit and invoice payments against a booking.
We’d pick Square. It runs your online bookings and your counter card machine from one account, so a day’s takings reconcile in one place. Stripe does the online half just as well, and you can connect both. How Square works with VenueBookr.
PayMyBit lets one organiser book while each guest pays their own named share, so nobody is chasing eleven friends for £14 — and the card machine takes the amount straight from the sale, instead of keying it into a terminal and then into the system a second time.
We’d pick Square. It runs your online bookings and your counter card machine from one account, so a day’s takings reconcile in one place. Stripe does the online half just as well, and you can connect both. How Square works with VenueBookr.
PayMyBit lets one organiser book while each guest pays their own named share, so nobody is chasing eleven friends for £14 — and the card machine takes the amount straight from the sale, instead of keying it into a terminal and then into the system a second time.
Can we take deposits, or invoice groups?
Both. Take a deposit with the balance tracked as owed, hold a reservation to pay later, or run the booking on invoice — with a proper request-for-payment document first and the VAT invoice after the visit (as soon as they pay, for a business that gives its VAT number). Built for schools and corporate groups.
Does it handle VAT, GST and sales tax?
Yes — the tax follows the country your account is set to: VAT in the UK, GST/HST in Canada (with PST or QST where your province charges it) and sales tax in the US, named that way on every screen, receipt and invoice. Prices are tax-inclusive at the rate you set; adding sales tax on top at checkout, the way most US venues show it, is still to come. VAT invoices are numbered in sequence and raised after the visit, or as soon as a business that gives its VAT number pays, and credit notes reverse the tax correctly on refunds.
In the UK it also works with the VAT accounting scheme you're actually on — standard (accrual), cash accounting or flat rate (with your HMRC sector percentage) — so what you hand your accountant matches how you're registered, rather than needing to be re-worked.
In the UK it also works with the VAT accounting scheme you're actually on — standard (accrual), cash accounting or flat rate (with your HMRC sector percentage) — so what you hand your accountant matches how you're registered, rather than needing to be re-worked.
Can we run a strict no-refund policy — and still look reasonable?
Yes, and you can make money from it. Set your terms to no cancellations and no refunds if that's how your venue works, then offer a Cancellation Policy Waiver as a paid add-on at checkout: for a small fee the customer buys the right to cancel under terms you set (it isn't offered on anything you've marked as cannot be refunded). The customer gets the flexibility they wanted, you keep the certainty you needed — and it is additional revenue on bookings you were taking anyway. You set the price (fixed or a percentage), the notice period and how much it refunds; it's taxed and refundable in its own right. Every booking shows whether it was bought.
What happens on refunds?
Refunds unwind the way the booking was paid — card money back to the card, voucher-paid portions back to a voucher, and where enabled, amounts can be returned as account credit. Every movement lands in the booking's ledger.
How do waivers work?
Digitally, before arrival. One adult can sign a single family waiver covering themselves and their children. Dates of birth are captured so age rules are real, the age a guest signs for themselves is yours to set (18 by default — 19 in British Columbia, 21 in Mississippi), and retention periods are computed automatically to match insurance requirements. Write each activity's clause once on its category and every product in it picks it up. Anyone who turns up unsigned can scan a QR code at the door and sign on their own phone, and it attaches itself to the right seat on the booking. You can also collect photo & video consent properly — a separate, never-pre-ticked opt-in in your own words, so "not asked" is never mistaken for "agreed" when you're deciding what you can post.
Can it enforce our safety rules?
Yes — and at booking time, not at the door. Age confirmation for age-restricted activities, at the age you set, child-to-adult ratio rules, hard capacity limits per session, and an emergency register with a live roll-call for who's in the building.
Do you support gift vouchers?
Fully: sold online from your branded gift page, delivered by email with a PDF, schedulable for a future date (birthdays), redeemable at checkout with partial balances tracked, and usable across a mixed-party booking. Customers can also buy activity-based vouchers — "an Ultimate Rage Room for two" rather than a cash amount — and if your price has gone up by the time it's redeemed, the experience is honoured at the price on the day it was bought.
Memberships and loyalty?
Both, natively. Paid membership plans with member pricing and benefits, family/household plans sharing one allowance, and loyalty tiers customers earn automatically from real visits and spend — all applied correctly at checkout. Plans can be sold online or at the counter, and can renew themselves on a saved card, with notice given beforehand and the customer able to stop it. Memberships also cover passes: terms measured in hours or days as well as months, an allowance that doesn't reset each period, and credits — so "any 3 activities" can't hand over a £40 room at £15 prices.
Can customers change their own bookings?
Yes — from a secure manage-booking page: reschedule, cancel, add a guest, pay a balance. All of it inside the cut-offs and policies you set, so self-service never breaks your rules.
Does it send reminders?
Yes — booking confirmations and pre-visit reminders by email, and SMS where enabled. Every template is editable, so the words are yours. Beyond that it's a rules engine, not a fixed list: you decide what sends, to whom and when — a reminder the day before, a review request after the visit, a come-back nudge months later, and alerts to your own team (a new booking, a cancellation) routed to the right people rather than everybody. Customers can also message you back, and the reply lands against their booking instead of in a shared inbox nobody owns.
We already have bookings and customers. Can we bring them across?
Yes — send us the export from your current system and we bring it across for you: customers, products, future bookings and outstanding gift vouchers, whose codes keep working. A person reads the file before anything lands in your account. And if you ever leave, Settings → Data export gives it all back as CSV files.
Can we see the bookings we're losing — not just the ones we take?
Yes. Every other number tells you what sold; the pre-bookings report is the record of what was attempted. Every checkout session is grouped with one of four outcomes — live now · became a booking · ran out of time · left (or released by the venue, kept out of every percentage because the customer didn't do it) — and a finished-and-booked rate that ignores sessions still in progress, so the figure isn't flattered.
Each row names what they were holding (the actual activity or package, not just a time), the party size, and when they were on the site — which is a different question from the date they were trying to book, so you can filter on either. There's also the internet address, badged when it appears more than once: one person who tried four times is a completely different problem from four people who each gave up, and until you can see that you're guessing.
Alongside it, live visitor counts: who is on your booking page right now, and how many came today, this week and this month. It's counted by a first-party beacon that stores nothing on the visitor's device, so it needs no cookie banner of its own. When you change your prices or your booking page, you can see what it did — instead of waiting a month and guessing.
Each row names what they were holding (the actual activity or package, not just a time), the party size, and when they were on the site — which is a different question from the date they were trying to book, so you can filter on either. There's also the internet address, badged when it appears more than once: one person who tried four times is a completely different problem from four people who each gave up, and until you can see that you're guessing.
Alongside it, live visitor counts: who is on your booking page right now, and how many came today, this week and this month. It's counted by a first-party beacon that stores nothing on the visitor's device, so it needs no cookie banner of its own. When you change your prices or your booking page, you can see what it did — instead of waiting a month and guessing.
Can we sell food, drinks and merchandise too?
Today you can sell extras alongside a booking — drinks, snacks, merchandise — priced and taxed with the rest of the basket, with optional stock control.
And there is a full point of sale: a proper till for over-the-counter selling with stock, suppliers and stock takes across food, drinks, snacks and merchandise, tabs, a card machine, a receipt printer and a cash drawer — and orders sent straight to the kitchen and bar screens, so the bar and the booking system stop being two separate businesses that happen to share a building.
And there is a full point of sale: a proper till for over-the-counter selling with stock, suppliers and stock takes across food, drinks, snacks and merchandise, tabs, a card machine, a receipt printer and a cash drawer — and orders sent straight to the kitchen and bar screens, so the bar and the booking system stop being two separate businesses that happen to share a building.
We have more than one site.
Multi-location is native: one organisation, multiple locations, each with its own products, settings and branding — and your subscription is priced per location. You can also build a product once and share it across every site: the name, description, photos, duration, capacity, waiver and content are managed centrally and published to each location, while each site keeps its own price, availability, spaces and cancellation terms. Change the description once and it updates everywhere; the things that genuinely differ site to site stay local.
What about staff permissions?
A proper role ladder (owner → manager → staff) with per-action permission toggles, location-scoped access, and an audit trail of who did what. You can also build your own roles — copy a built-in one, switch individual permissions on or off, name it whatever your venue calls that job — so "Duty Manager" means what it means to you rather than what it meant to us. Sensitive actions (refunds, financials, personal data) can be restricted to the people you choose, and it's enforced on the server.
What about data protection and privacy law?
Data protection is designed in, with the tools the UK GDPR, Canada's PIPEDA and Québec's Law 25, and the US states' privacy laws expect: a customer's data exported or erased on request, marketing consent recorded with when and how it was given, waiver records kept only as long as each one needs, and access controls throughout. Formal policy documents are part of onboarding.
Is there AI in it?
Yes, if you want it. Ged Ai is an assistant built into VenueBookr. It drafts emails, replies and campaigns in your own house style, learned from your sent mail; answers how-to questions from the help centre; explains whatever is on the screen; and suggests changes, such as shifts on the rota, that only happen when someone presses Confirm. You don't have to have it switched on, you choose what it may read, and it is locked by role: only the team members whose role includes it can use it, and it can only see and do what their own role allows.
Do staff get a rota?
Yes — a rota with hours that never need typing twice, time off asked for and approved in the system, training with expiry dates, and personal records with rules about who may open them. The rota also tells the Day Plan who's hosting.
What if VenueBookr goes down?
We aim for 99.9% availability each month — about 43 minutes of downtime — measured on our status page. We reply within one working day, and within 2 hours between 9am and 9pm UK time when you can't take bookings. They are targets rather than guarantees, and we publish how we do against them.
Is there help inside the product?
Yes — a knowledge base written for a new starter with no venue jargon, help in context on every screen, and a Getting Started guide. A person still replies when you ask us directly.
What does it cost?
£299 per month per venue — every feature included, no per-feature add-ons and no commission on your bookings. Text messages are the one extra: they are pay-as-you-go at 7p a text (a long message counts as two). Each extra site is £209.30 a month, 30% off. There's a one-off onboarding fee of £195, and two weeks of onboarding with us before your first bill. We're new, and our first venues are taking a chance on us — so sign up by 31 December 2026 and it's half price until the end of 2027. The first three pay nothing at all.
What if we need something it doesn't do?
VenueBookr's founding principle is that the software bends to the venue. A "strange request" is usually already a setting; when it isn't, we scope it with you and build it as a configurable feature — not a one-off hack.
Show us how your venue works. We'll show you how VenueBookr would run it.
Book a 30-minute live demo. We'll use your activities, pricing and operational rules so you can see how the system would work in your venue.
We'll only use these details to answer your enquiry.