Booking and payments
How free, paid and pay-at-venue bookings behave, how holds prevent overselling, and what each order state means.
What a buyer does
The buyer opens the public event page, chooses an occurrence and ticket quantities, and enters the details the event requires. Boni places a hold on the inventory, creates a pending order, and then follows one of three payment paths.
| Event type | What happens |
|---|---|
| Free | The order confirms immediately and tickets are issued at once |
| Paid | The buyer is sent to a Boni-hosted payment page; tickets are issued only after payment is confirmed |
| Pay at venue | Where enabled for the organizer, the order confirms with payment due at the door, and staff can mark it paid later |
No ticket exists before its order is confirmed. A paid order that is abandoned never produces a ticket.
Online-only bookings
For an organizer using online payment with venue payment disabled, the selected ticket amount is due in full at checkout. A spot is confirmed after successful payment; there is no deposit or balance schedule in this flow. Free and explicitly enabled venue-payment events keep their configured behavior.
A published event can still be preparing to accept paid bookings. The public page explains pending organizer setup instead of treating it as a sold-out tour. Financial review and available inventory remain service-owned gates.
Registration details
Complete the event’s required questions and explicitly choose any declarations. Answers go privately to the organizer’s scoped order details. Optional future updates are separate from necessary booking communication. Customer details do not appear in the public event, QR or webhook summary.
Holds stop overselling
A hold reserves the requested quantity while the buyer completes checkout, and it expires on its own. Expired holds are released before the next availability check, so an abandoned checkout returns its seats to the pool without anyone intervening.
Repeated submissions with the same booking key are de-duplicated. After an unclear network result, an unchanged retry keeps that key; changing the package, contact details or answers starts a different request. Integrations must preserve the key while reconciling an ambiguous result.
The order access link
Every confirmed order gets a signed private link showing order state and one QR code per ticket. The link is the attendee's ticket wallet: it is not indexed, it is scoped to that order, and it is safe to forward to the people attending on that booking.
The same link is sent by the confirmation email, which arrives from Bino Orders as soon as a free or paid order is confirmed. If a buyer loses the email, an organizer can resend the confirmation from the panel.
Order states
| State | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Pending | Created, awaiting payment; inventory is held, not sold |
| Confirmed | Tickets issued and valid for entry |
| Cancelled | Cancelled by the organizer or after payment failure; tickets are void |
| Expired | The hold lapsed before payment completed; inventory returned to the pool |
Cancelling an order voids its tickets, and a voided ticket is rejected at the gate rather than silently accepted.
Integrations
Per-organizer API keys and signed outbound webhooks for order confirmation, order cancellation and ticket claim are available as part of onboarding, so an organizer's own systems can react to ticketing events.
Next: Gate entry.
Seller, tax and settlement
The event editor records the seller of record, organizer legal name and GST status, the reviewed rate, platform fee, settlement treatment and supporting evidence. New organizers can require this review before any paid booking. Missing GST details never silently select a zero rate. The policy is copied into each order so later edits do not rewrite its financial history.
An eligible unregistered organizer generally does not collect GST on ordinary admission. Eligibility depends on aggregate turnover, registration obligations, the actual supply and the platform's role. Boni's own fee can have separate GST; restaurant services sold through an e-commerce operator can have operator GST liability even when the restaurant is unregistered. Goods or bundled products and income-tax withholding need their own review. Buying food from a vendor for an event is a different question from selling restaurant service through the platform.
These are setup distinctions, not a blanket tax exemption. Record the facts and applicable decision before enabling paid checkout. Primary sources: service-supplier registration exemption, restaurant ECO clarification and current income-tax withholding.