Payments

A single payment provider can be configured once in Bookings and made available to all events.

Free Events

If an event occurrence has a package with a price of zero, the event listing will have a price (or price range) that is marked as "Free". If a user only books free packages, their booking will immediately assign packages to them and remove the appropriate number of tickets and spaces from the bookable number. The user's "Booking Overview" will allow them to access the "Booking Details" form.

Occurrences can also be created without packages of tickets. These events are free and have unlimited places.

If a user books a package that is not free, or a combination of free and costed packages, they are taken to the payment form immediately after making their booking.

Paying for Events

The "Pay Online" button links to the configured payment provider. This provider is set in the Bookings configuration end point. Documentation is available in the end point itself and in the End Point Configuration article. All providers direct users to their own site (no card details are ever entered into Bookings) and redirect back once payment has been made.

If a user books a package that is not free, but navigates away from the payment form, the booking will be present in their "Booking Overview" with a link to the payment form.

Before a user can pay for an event they may have to accept the terms and conditions.

Payment Timeouts

It is possible for a user to book places on an event but choose not to pay immediately. These booked places will show up in a User Requests or Self Service article configured to work with Bookings.

To prevent packages from being booked but never paid for, a timeout can be set in the configuration end point using the PaymentFormDelay property. If bookings are not paid for before this time period is reached, the booking will be cancelled and the packages returned to the available pool of packages.

Payment Reconciliation

The Civica, Worldpay and Capita SCP Multi-Item payment field types support payment reconciliation. Reconciliation for these providers needs to be enabled in the Bookings Configuration End Point, plus additional setup and configuration is required as part of the Bookings installation.

Once enabled, reconciliation starts a background process when a user attempts to make a payment. This process queries the payment provider, double checking that the payment was successful. This guards against situations where a user could be redirected to the payment portal, then perhaps complete the payment but not return to your website. If the payment is found to be successful, the booking stands, if unsuccessful the tickets are released. 

Supported Providers

Bookings supports payments via:

• Adelante Smart Pay (Multi-Item)
• Capita Paye.net (Pay360)
• Capita SCP (Pay360)
• Capita SCP Multi Item (Pay360)
• Civica
• Civica eStore
• PayPal
• GOV.UK Pay
• Secure Trading Payments
• WorldPay

Offline/Cardholder Not Present Payments

Bookings can be set up to allow staff users to register payments at the final booking stage.

It is imagined these users will be staff members taking bookings alongside a till point. The staff member uses Bookings to reserve tickets for a member of the public, makes the booking, takes payment, then logs a reference number in Bookings. Clicking "Paid Offline" immediately assigns tickets and confirms the booking.

Only users in the user group set in the cashPaymentGroup property of the configuration end point are able to log offline payments. The anonymous user, even if in this group, can never make offline payments.

The reference number is an optional field, configured when the event occurrence is created.

The payment type drop-down options are set in the configuration end point. If only one type exists, the drop-down is hidden. The drop-down will always include a "card" option, which will redirect to the configured payment provider, but with the "Cardholder not present" flag set.