The maths on commission
A venue taking 200 bookings a week at £25 through a platform charging 5% is handing over roughly £13,000 a year. That is before the monthly licence. A bespoke booking system is a one off build cost and a hosting bill, and for a lot of the venues we work with it has paid for itself inside two seasons.
The other thing you get back is the customer. When somebody books through a marketplace, the marketplace owns that relationship and can market a competitor to them next week. When they book on your own site, the booking, the email address and the repeat visit are yours.
01
Live availability
Real time slots across bays, lanes, tables or rooms.
02
Payments
Deposits or payment in full, taken through Stripe.
03
Your rules
Peak pricing, minimum durations, buffers and cut-off times.
04
Confirmations
Automatic emails, reminders and calendar invites.
05
Staff admin
A back office your team can use on a busy Saturday.
06
Reporting
Occupancy, revenue and no-shows you can actually act on.
Laganview Golf Centre
Bay booking for Northern Ireland's largest golf venue
Laganview needed customers to be able to book an entertainment bay online without a member of staff on the phone, and they needed it to hold up on a Friday night when everything is full. We built the whole thing in Laravel: live availability across every bay, deposits taken up front, and a set of rules for peak times and session lengths that the team can change themselves.
Staff get a single screen showing the whole day, and can move, extend or refund a booking without ringing anyone. The admin overhead of managing bookings by hand has gone.
What it does
- Live bay availability
- Deposits via Stripe
- Peak and off-peak pricing
- Automated confirmations
- Full staff back office
Ballr
When the booking is a person, not a slot
Not every booking problem is a calendar. Ballr is club management software we built for grassroots football, where the question is not which bay is free but which players have confirmed they are available for Saturday. Same underlying idea, very different shape.
That is the argument for building rather than buying. Off-the-shelf booking software assumes a model, and if your business does not match it you end up working around the software forever.
Also built this way
- Class and course booking
- Appointment scheduling
- Table reservations
- Membership and access
- Event ticketing
What our clients say
Our focus is on delivering top quality work to our clients, and making sure their experience is smooth & stress-free.
Join our happy clients"Kyle, Luke and the team at Element Seven have been extremely helpful with the set up and maintenance of our new site. With a quick, efficient and proactive turn around from initial concept to implementation, the team provided us with a functional and aesthetic website that has performed extremely well for us."
James Joyce
Business Development & Operations Manager, Haymarket
"In a market where many of our competitors overlook the importance of their websites, trusting Element Seven to bring our brand to life through a beautifully crafted website has helped Campbell Financial stand out. It reflects our values perfectly and positions us strongly in a space where first impressions really matter. I'd highly recommend Element Seven to anyone looking for a professional, detail-driven web partner."
Sheena Campbell
Owner, Campbell Financial
"I personally cannot recommend Element Seven enough, as their attention to user experience and the support they offer has been such a driving force to what we have been able to accomplish! As someone that is not tech savvy they are a pleasure to work with and I never feel awkward about asking any questions if I don't personally understand something which is a big deal to me! No matter what we have as an idea, we know they will have the best ways to do it to hand and always give us realistic timelines and expectations."
Tom Morrison
Founder, Tom Morrison Ltd.
Watch how you work
We start with how bookings happen today, including the parts that live in someone's head. Every venue has exceptions, and the exceptions are what off-the-shelf software gets wrong.
Model the rules
Opening hours, session lengths, turnaround time between bookings, peak pricing, deposits, cancellations. We write these down and agree them with you before anything gets built.
Design the journey
The customer side has to be quick on a phone, because that is where most bookings come from. We design and prototype it before development so you can click through it and tell us what is wrong.
Build
Built in Laravel, with payments through Stripe. We build the staff back office alongside the customer side rather than bolting it on afterwards, because your team will use it far more often than any customer does.
Test against a busy day
We test double bookings, dropped payments, refunds and the awkward cases that only show up when the place is full. Better to find them on staging than on a Saturday night.
Launch and look after it
We train your staff, watch the first busy weekend closely, and stay on to add things as the business changes. See our maintenance packages.
Booking platform or your own system?
A booking platform is the right answer for a small operation taking a handful of bookings a week. Once the volume is there, the commission starts to look like a salary. Here is how the two compare on the things venues tell us matter.
| Booking platform | Your own system | |
|---|---|---|
| Live online availability | ||
| Card payments | ||
| No commission per booking | ||
| You keep the customer data | ||
| Booking rules that match your venue | ||
| Your branding end to end | ||
| Ties into your other systems | ||
| Nobody can change the terms on you |
Related services
A booking system is usually part of something bigger. These pages cover the rest of it.
Web applications
The wider category. Member portals, internal tools and platforms built around your business.
Laravel development
The framework we build booking systems in, and what that means for cost and upkeep.
E-commerce
If you are selling products or gift vouchers alongside the bookings.
Booking systems
