Bar balance on a pass

At a party or a club dinner, almost nobody still works with cardboard tokens. A visitor puts money on their pass, drinks with it all evening, and nobody behind the bar has to count change. This article explains what such a balance is, where that money sits, and how you read afterwards what happened.

Allow ten minutes. There is nothing to set up, but cashless does have to be switched on for your organisation — otherwise the button is not on your till.

Would you like your visitors to top up online themselves as well, with the payment methods you already offer in your shop? That works with the same payment provider as your shop; see Topping up online yourself below.

What is a bar balance?

A bar balance is an amount attached to one pass. The pass is what your visitor already carries: their ticket or their season pass, on paper or in their phone. Nothing more — no extra card, no extra wristband, no separate system.

Three things happen with it:

• topping up — your visitor puts money on it, at the entrance or during the evening;
• spending — at the bar, a beer or a portion of chips comes off it;
• refunding — whatever is left afterwards can be claimed back.

A balance is therefore prepaid money belonging to your visitor, and nothing else. It is not a discount, not a gift voucher and not a subscription.

One balance per pass, per event

This is the part that surprises people most often, so it comes first.

A balance is attached to one pass within one event. Not to a person and not to an account. Someone who came to your summer party in June and returns in December therefore has two balances: what was left in June is not money in December.

That is deliberate, and there are two reasons behind it:

1. Your settlement stays right per evening. An organiser settles up per event with the bar crew, the supplier and the bookkeeper. A balance that runs across three events turns each of those three conversations into a puzzle.
2. Your visitor knows where they stand. "The money from your June ticket" is clear. "Your credit with us" is not, and that is exactly the kind of promise you will still be getting questions about years later.

If you want whatever is left to go back to your visitors, say so in advance, on your ticket and at the entrance. It is fairer and it saves you arguments at the end of the evening.

At the till

Three actions, all three on the same screen. You find them behind the + Top up balance button at the top of the till, next to the name of your venue. If that button is not there, cashless is switched off for your organisation.

Topping up

1. Tap + Top up balance.
2. Scan or type the ticket code. A handheld scanner types it itself and presses enter; typing over the code from a paper ticket by hand works too.
3. The name and the current balance appear. If it is not right, scan again — the code stays in the field, so you do not have to type everything over.
4. Fill in the Amount, or tap € 10, € 20 or € 50.
5. Choose Cash, Card (terminal) or Bancontact Pay.

Cash is done straight away. With card and QR the till waits for the terminal, just as with an ordinary sale; you can always break it off.

Tapped twice? Then it is topped up once. The till gives every top-up a key of its own, and the same key produces one entry. At a busy bar a double tap is no exception.

Paying with the pass

1. Ring up the order as always.
2. At the bottom of the basket sits Balance on the pass: scan or type the code there.
3. The balance appears. If it is less than the basket, it says "Not enough balance — top up first." and the button stays off.
4. Tap Pay with the pass.

The amount comes off the pass and the receipt is made. If there turns out to be too little along the way, the whole sale does not go through: no receipt, no tickets, and the balance stays exactly as it was. There is no such thing as half a settlement.

Refunding

If something is still on it afterwards, you can give it back:

1. Tap + Top up balance and find the pass.
2. Tap − Refund balance and confirm.
3. Hand the amount over in cash from the drawer.

It is always the whole balance, and always in cash.

Why the whole balance: a remainder that stays put is never collected by anybody, and that is your visitor's money left sitting on your balance sheet. If you do want to give part of it back, refund everything first and then top up again — that way both movements are in your books.

Why cash: a refund on a card hangs on a payment, and the balance may have been topped up in three pieces with three different payment methods. So there is no single payment to put it back on.

Topping up online yourself

Your visitor does not have to queue to put money on their pass. They can do it themselves, on their phone, and pay with the payment methods you already offer in your shop (e.g. Bancontact, card, Apple Pay). The balance is on their pass as soon as the payment is confirmed — often before they even reach the bar.

Where your visitor finds the link

In three places, and they do not have to install anything or log in:

• on their wallet pass, on the back in Apple Wallet and in the links at the bottom in Google Wallet: Top up balance;
• in their ticket email and on their ticket page, next to the wallet buttons: Top up balance;
• in your shop, at the bottom: Enter your ticket code. There they type the code printed under the QR code on their ticket and tap Continue.

How your visitor tops up

1. They open the link. They see the event and what is Now on your pass.
2. They choose an amount — € 10, € 20 or € 50 — or type another amount under Or another amount.
3. If they want a confirmation, they fill in their email address. If they leave it empty, the confirmation goes to the address the ticket was bought with.
4. They tap Top up and pay and pay, exactly as in your shop. If you work with Bancontact Pro, a QR code appears for them to scan with their banking app; on their phone they tap Open your banking app.
5. Back on the page they see "Done, your balance has been topped up." and their new balance. Their wallet pass shows the new amount as soon as their phone refreshes it.

Online they can top up at least € 5 and at most € 250 at a time.

The link is a key. Whoever has it can put money on the pass and see the balance — nothing more. There is no name, no email address and no order on that page. The link cannot be used to pay at the bar either: that takes the QR code on the ticket.

What you need to set up

1. Connect a payment provider under Settings → Payments: Mollie, Stripe or Bancontact Pro. It is the same connection as for your shop; if you already have one, there is nothing to do. See Connecting your payment provider.
2. Switch on the payment methods you want to offer, at your provider itself. With Mollie and Stripe you do that in their dashboard (e.g. Bancontact, card, Apple Pay); your visitor sees exactly what is switched on there. With Bancontact Pro they pay with their banking app.
3. Make sure you sell bar items. The link only appears once you have at least one active product of the type Bar item — otherwise there is nothing at the bar to spend the balance on.

That is all. If one of those three is not in place, the link appears nowhere and the top-up page does not exist.

Online top-ups always use the payment provider that is active in your shop. If you switch to another provider, online top-ups move with it; a payment that was already under way at that moment is still completed with the provider where it started.

A wallet pass that is already in a phone gets the link at the next change to that pass, for example when it is topped up or used to pay.

Seeing online top-ups

In Point of sale → Bar balance, under Topped up, you see how that amount came in:

• At the till: … — what your volunteers topped up at your top-up point;
• Online by guests: … — what visitors topped up online themselves.

Per event it says of which online as soon as someone has topped up online.

Money topped up online comes in through your payment provider, into your own account, and not into a cash drawer. That is why it is not on any Z report, and you will not find it when you count your drawers after the night. That is correct: not a cent went through a drawer.

There is no VAT on an online top-up, just like at the till. The confirmation your visitor receives is a receipt with the amount, the pass, the event and the date — without a VAT line.

In test mode

If your payment provider is in test mode (a Mollie account that has not been approved yet, Stripe with test keys or Bancontact Pro in the test environment), an online top-up puts no balance on the pass. After all, no money was received, and balance is spent at the bar like real money. The top-up page says so beforehand, and after paying your visitor sees Test payment: no balance was topped up. As soon as your connection is live, top-ups work as usual.

And a blocked pass?

• If the pass is already blocked, your visitor sees "This pass is blocked." on the top-up page and cannot pay. Nothing is charged.
• If you block the pass just after they paid, the money does not go onto the pass. It is refunded automatically through the same payment provider, to the card or account they paid with, and your visitor sees that on the page. In your payment provider's dashboard it shows as a refund on that payment, and Passavo records it with the amount and the reference, so the difference between that overview and your settlement can always be explained.

What your Z report says about it

Topped-up balance sits on your Z report next to your turnover, not in it. That is not sloppiness but the only thing that is right: the money becomes turnover at the moment a beer is paid for with it, not at the moment it is topped up. Anyone who adds those two together counts the same money twice.

Money topped up in cash does count towards what should be in your drawer. The drawer does not know that difference — there is money in it.

And the VAT?

There is no VAT on topping up. Nothing is supplied at that moment; your visitor is handing you money they will come and spend later.

On the beer sits the VAT that belongs on that beer, exactly as with a cash sale. The way it is paid for changes nothing about that.

That way the VAT sits once on the same money. A system that books a top-up as a sale declares double — and you only find that out when you file your return.

Where does that money sit?

With you. From the very first moment.

When a visitor puts fifty euros on their pass, those fifty euros come in through your payment provider, into your account. It passes Passavo nowhere and it stays nowhere with us.

So what you see here is not an account with money on it: it is a set of books recording what your visitor has to their credit with you for that one event. The money itself is already with you.

That distinction sounds technical, but it matters to you. The moment a platform holds visitors' money and pays it out later, a heavy set of European rules applies — and those cost money that ends up on your invoice. By letting the money go straight to you, this stays an ordinary bar sale with a credit attached.

Reading your settlement

You will find it in the back office under Point of sale → Bar balance. At the top are four figures, and together those four tell the whole story.

	What it means
Topped up	What your visitors put on their passes in total
Spent	What came off those passes at the bar
Refunded	What you gave back to visitors afterwards
Remaining	What is still sitting on passes

They should always add up like this:

topped up − spent − refunded = remaining

If that does not add up, something is badly wrong and you should let us know. In normal use it cannot happen: all four figures are counted from the same list of movements.

An example you can retell

Your club dinner on Saturday:

Topped up	€ 4,250.00
Spent at the bar	− € 3,480.00
Refunded afterwards	− € 310.00
Remaining	€ 460.00

Your bar turnover is 3,480 euros. That is the figure that belongs in your books as a bar sale, with your VAT on it.

The 460 euros remaining is something else: that is visitors' money still sitting on their passes. It is already in your account, but it has not been sold yet. Book it separately until you know what you are doing with it. Many associations agree that after a month it goes to the till or to a good cause — whatever you choose, put it in writing beforehand.

Per event

Below the four figures you will find the same four per event, newest at the top. Click Show passes to see which passes still have money on them, from most to least. Handy when you organise a refund: the top five are usually the bulk of the amount.

There is a mistake. Now what?

A wrongly rung-up round happens to everyone on a busy evening. Important to know: an entry never disappears.

A mistake is put right with a reversal: a new line with the same amount in the other direction. The wrong line stays, the reversal is added, and the balance is right again.

That feels more roundabout than "just removing it", but it is exactly what you need at the moment a visitor is standing at your bar saying they paid twice. You can then show line by line what happened, with the time and the reason. With a figure that is simply edited, you cannot.

In your settlement you hardly notice it: a reversal counts towards the figure it corrects. A corrected spend therefore simply lowers "spent".

Charged twice? That cannot happen

A till at a bar hangs on wifi that almost works. It sends an entry, gets no answer, and sends it again. Sometimes three times.

Every entry therefore carries its own reference. If the same entry arrives again, it is recognised and not counted a second time. Your visitor pays once, even when the network sends the same thing three times.

For the same reason your bar can never take off more than a pass holds. If the amount is too high, the volunteer gets a clear message with what is left on the pass. It is not quietly deducted down to zero: that would give you a visitor who thinks they have paid, and a till that does not add up.

Lost a pass? Block it

The balance hangs on the code of the ticket, not on a person. Whoever has that code — on paper, in a forwarded email, on a phone somebody found — can pay with it. Just like cardboard tokens: whoever finds them can spend them.

When a visitor tells you they have lost their ticket, you block their pass. From that moment on it does nothing at the till. The money simply stays where it is.

How to block a pass

1. In the back office, go to Point of sale → Block a pass.
2. In the search field, type something the visitor knows: their name, the email address they bought with, their order reference or the code of their ticket.
3. Their pass appears, with the event and what is left on it.
4. Tap Block, fill in a short reason (for example "ticket lost, reported at the info desk") and confirm.

The pass now shows Blocked, with the time and who did it.

What happens next

• At the till, the cashier immediately sees "This pass is blocked." when scanning. Topping up, paying and refunding no longer work. That way nobody else can come and collect the remainder in cash either.
• On the wallet pass in the phone, the balance line shows Blocked instead of an amount.
• The balance stays untouched. In your settlement it simply counts towards Remaining.

Correcting a mistake with a reversal still works. That should never depend on who is holding the pass.

Refunding the owner

Do you recognise the owner — their name, their order or their email address matches — then give them their money back:

1. Look up the pass as above.
2. Tap Refund what is left and confirm.
3. Give them the amount shown on screen, in cash or by bank transfer.

It is always the whole balance, just as at the till. In your settlement it appears under Refunded, and the ledger records who did it.

Not sure you have the owner in front of you? Then do not refund yet. A blocked pass costs nobody anything; the money stays put until you are sure.

Found it after all?

If the visitor finds their ticket again, tap Unblock. The pass works again straight away and the balance is still there. Anyone who has the code can then pay with it again too — so only do this when the ticket really is back with its owner.

Who may do what?

• Looking up and blocking: anyone who may view orders, including someone with the Desk role. Blocking only protects; it cannot make money disappear.
• Refunding and unblocking: only those who may issue refunds — the Owner and the Administrator. Both release money again.

Frequently asked questions

Do I have to set anything up? No. As long as you do not sell bar items, this screen stays empty.

Can a visitor carry their balance over to another event? No, and that is a choice. See "One balance per pass, per event" above.

Can a balance go below zero? In normal use, no. Only when your till loses the network can a limited margin be allowed so the queue at your bar does not come to a halt. How far that may go is fixed in advance.

Can I export the list of movements for my bookkeeper? Not yet from this screen. Ask via support; we will pull the list out for you.

Does a balance expire? That is your decision, not ours. Put your rule in your terms of sale and on your ticket, and stick to it.