Features
Payments — deposits & balances
Request deposits and balances, let couples pay via your own handles, and track what's paid — no processor in the middle.
SpinBook tracks the money for each event without taking a cut or sitting between you and your client. You request payments; couples pay you directly via your saved handles and mark them paid.
Add your handles first
Set your Venmo / PayPal / Zelle in Settings so couples have a way to pay. Without them, payment requests show but have no pay buttons.
Your default schedule (set it once)
Most bookings run on the same terms, so SpinBook applies yours automatically. In Settings → Payment schedule you set two numbers:
- Deposit — a percent of the total, due to book. Default 50%.
- Balance — how many days before the event the rest is due. Default 15.
When you mark an event Booked, the deposit and balance requests are created for you. Nothing to type, and the dates are already right.
A few deliberate details:
- It waits for a total. No quoted total when you book? Nothing is created — the couple never sees a $0 deposit. The schedule appears the moment you enter the total.
- It runs once per event. If you delete or rewrite what was created, it stays that way; later edits to the total won't put it back.
- It never touches an event you're already managing. If the event has any payment requests already, SpinBook leaves them alone.
- The balance is never due in the past. Book an event inside your lead time (or after the date) and the balance is simply due right away.
- The maths always adds up. Any rounding goes on the balance, so the two requests total the quote exactly. Selected add-ons are included.
- 100% deposit creates a single request rather than a request plus a $0 balance.
Changing your terms affects future bookings; events that already have payments are left as they are.
Payments central — the whole business at a glance
Payments in the top navigation (staff only) is the one place to track money across every event, so you don't have to open weddings one by one to know where you stand:
- Three numbers up top — total outstanding (with how many events it's spread across), overdue requests (count and amount), and total collected.
- Outstanding balances — each event still owing, with paid-of-total and what's left. Click through to that event's payments page.
- Payment requests due — every pending request across all events, soonest due first, overdue flagged in red, each with a one-click Mark paid.
- Record a payment — add a request to any event without leaving the page: pick the event (ones with an outstanding balance are listed first, with what's left), give it a label, amount, and optional due date. Tick "Already paid" to log money you've already received — it lands directly in the collected history.
- Recently collected — the latest payments in, with method and date.
Lost or cancelled events stop counting toward what's owed, but anything they already paid stays in your collected history.
When you mark a payment paid (or record one), you can note the method and an optional confirmation number (the Venmo transaction id, a check number) — both show in your collected history and in the API export. Clicking through to an event from this page keeps a ← Back to Payments link, so review → act → back never strands you on the event.
For your books: GET /api/v1/payments returns every payment (filter status=pending for
all outstanding), and /api/v1/payments/summary gives per-month collected and
scheduled/overdue totals — see Using the API.
Request a payment by hand
You can still add one-off requests at any time. On the event's payments page, add a request with a label (e.g. "Deposit" or "Balance"), an amount, and an optional due date. The couple sees it in their portal with pay links for your handles.
Keep the words "deposit" and "balance" in your labels where you can — the matching checklist items and the contract's
deposit_amount/balance_duemerge fields find them by name.
Marking paid
When the couple pays, they (or you) mark the request paid, optionally noting the method. Staff can revert a payment to unpaid or delete a request.
Add-ons roll into the total
If a couple selects any priced add-ons, those are added on top of the quoted total (shown as an "add-ons +$X" line), so the remaining balance always reflects what's actually owed. No processor is involved — they pay the higher total with the same handles.
Ties into the checklist
Deposit and balance checklist items complete automatically when a matching payment is marked paid — see Checklists & forms.
Checklist
- Add your payment handles in Settings
- Set your default deposit % and balance lead time in Settings → Payment schedule
- Enter the quoted total so the schedule can be created
- Mark the event Booked — the deposit and balance requests appear
- Mark payments paid as they come in