Visitor attractions
Escape room booking software with no per-booking fees
Escape room booking software for the UK or the US: one group per hour, paid in pounds or dollars through Stripe, for a fixed monthly price and no fee per booking.
· 4 min read
An escape room in Leeds with two rooms. Each room runs five games a day, Wednesday to Sunday. That is fifty groups a week, around 2,500 a year. The booking system takes a percentage of every booking, so the better business gets, the more it costs. We hear the same question from Austin, Texas, only in dollars: is there escape room booking software with a flat monthly price and no per-booking fees?
There is. This article runs the numbers and shows what to set up when you sell outside the eurozone.
The bill: a percentage or a flat price
Take an invented platform that charges 5 percent per booking.
| Leeds (pounds) | Austin (dollars) | |
|---|---|---|
| Price per group | 90 pounds | 120 dollars |
| Fee per booking at 5% | 4.50 pounds | 6 dollars |
| Bookings a year | 2,500 | 2,500 |
| Fees a year | 11,250 pounds | 15,000 dollars |
With Passavo you pay a fixed monthly price, in euros, and no fee per booking. Whether you sell 1,000 games or 5,000, the price of your plan stays the same. The card fees of Stripe apply either way; those are between you and Stripe, not us.
Does the platform pass its fee on to your players? Then they pay it, and your price feels higher. Why that costs you bookings is explained in passing the booking fee on to the buyer.
Selling in pounds or dollars
Every organisation sells in one currency. An organisation in the United
Kingdom gets the pound, one in the United States gets the dollar. You find it
under Settings → Organisation, field Currency. Set the Time zone
there as well (Europe/London or America/Chicago), so that the 8 pm game in
your shop starts at 8 pm in your room.
Payments run through Stripe. Create a Stripe account in the country of your escape room: Stripe then pays you out in pounds or dollars, into your own bank account. The money goes from your player straight to your Stripe account. The full set-up is in the manual under Selling in another currency.
One group per hour, no double bookings
An escape room doesn't sell seats, it sells a room to one group. So under Sales → Products you create a product of the type Group, with Maximum per order set to 1, and time slots with 1 place each. In the generator under Sales → Time slots, set Duration in minutes to 60 for the game and Every how many minutes? to 90, which leaves half an hour to reset the room.
Each room is its own product with its own time slots. Two players trying to book the last free Saturday hour at the same moment? The slot is held for ten minutes during payment and sold only once. The full set-up is in escape room booking by the hour and in the manual under Time slots.
A group booking counts as one paid ticket, not as four or six players. For the limits of your plan, you count games, not people.
At the front desk: a card reader in your own currency
Walk-ins pay at the desk. The desk till is part of Start and up, and it sells from the same time slots as your online shop: an hour that has been sold online is refused at the till as well. You connect a Stripe Reader S700 or a BBPOS WisePOS E to the till. It takes payments in the currency of your Stripe account's country, so pounds in Leeds and dollars in Austin. How to connect it is in Connecting a payment terminal.
VAT and sales tax: check with your accountant
For the United Kingdom and the United States, Passavo does not set up a VAT set for you: new products are at 0%. In the US, sales tax differs by state and sometimes by city. Create your own set under Settings → VAT sets with the rate your accountant gives you, and make it the default for your organisation. The right rate for your room is a question for your accountant.
Gift vouchers: the escape room present
A game is a popular present. You sell gift vouchers in the same currency as your games, and the recipient redeems them when booking. They are part of Growth, together with unlimited tickets: €29.00 a month. See Gift vouchers.
What your players see
Your ticket shop works in eight languages, with amounts in pounds or dollars the way your players are used to seeing them. They pick a day, then an hour. A booked hour stays visible but can't be chosen. After paying, the ticket arrives by email and can go straight into Apple Wallet or Google Wallet.
Compare the plans on the pricing page, or see what Passavo does for escape rooms.
