Adminished

Minimum numbers: reserve now, pay if it goes ahead

An away trip, a residential, a coach hired for the day — some events only make sense once enough people are actually coming, and the club carries the risk if it books the venue first and the numbers don't show up. Minimum numbers flips that around: members reserve a place with a card or Direct Debit when they book, and nobody is charged a penny until you decide it's going ahead.

Before you start

This needs your club connected for online payments under Settings → Payments — until then, the "Minimum numbers" fieldset just tells you to connect Stripe.

Setting it up

  1. Open the event's details form (a new event, or the inline editor on an existing one).
  2. In the Minimum numbers fieldset, tick Only go ahead if enough people reserve a place — nobody is charged until you confirm.
  3. Set People needed and Decide by — the date has to fall before the event's first date, and you have until the end of that day, in your club's timezone. Both can still be adjusted later while nobody has been charged. If you move the decide-by date, everyone who has reserved is emailed the new date.
  4. Save. The public booking page now offers members Reserve my place — only charged if it goes ahead instead of taking payment there and then.

Tickets need a price — a free place can't be reserved this way.

What the member sees

The event page shows a banner ("Going ahead if 20 people reserve by 15 Oct — 12 so far") alongside the normal ticket picker. Booking reserves rather than pays: they save a card or Direct Debit through a secure Stripe checkout, and the amount is only taken if you confirm — a family of four reserves four tickets' worth and counts as four toward your target. From their confirmation email, or from their own booking page if they're signed in, they can cancel their reservation at any time until you confirm or the decide-by date passes, or add a backup payment method.

Confirming — the Reservations panel

On the event page, the Reservations panel lists everyone who has reserved a place with their headcount, amount and status, against your target. Once you've decided it's happening, an owner or admin clicks Confirm and charge (you'll get a warning first if you're still below target). From there it runs on its own:

  1. It tries the payment method they reserved with.
  2. If that fails and they added a backup, it tries the backup.
  3. If that also fails, it can try a card or Direct Debit already saved with your club — but only for someone who was signed in to Adminished when they reserved, and only the one saved on that account.
  4. If every attempt fails, they're emailed a secure payment link — card only — with 72 hours to pay before their place is given up. If they don't pay in time, their place is released and they're emailed that they haven't been charged.

Anyone who started reserving but hadn't finished saving a card when you click Confirm isn't charged, and their place is released.

A Direct Debit shows as "paid (clearing)" until it settles a few days later. While a reservation is still open or being charged, you can't mark its booking paid by hand — that's to stop it being charged twice. Once every attempt has failed and someone's on the 72-hour pay link, you can record a payment they made another way — cash or bank transfer — with Mark paid, the same as any other held booking, but only when Require payment in advance is off for the event. With it on, the only way to pay is by card through the link.

Once you've confirmed, the event keeps selling its remaining places as ordinary bookings: people book and pay by card straight away, with no reservation step.

Decide it isn't happening instead, and Cancel reservations releases everyone — nobody is charged and everyone is told so. The same thing happens automatically if the decide-by date passes before you confirm.

What stays the same

Ticket types, capacity, sibling discounts and refunds all work as normal — a reservation just holds a real place with real tickets rather than a paid booking, so lowering capacity below what's already reserved is refused, the same as for any other booking. The one difference: a reservation paid by Direct Debit can't be refunded or cancelled while it's still clearing — wait for it to settle.

Plan: Events are available on every plan, including Free. Reservations use your connected Stripe account; a 1% (minimum 10p) platform fee applies on top of Stripe's own processing fee when a reservation is charged.

Related articles

  • Events and camps

    How to set up one-off events, holiday camps and trips in Adminished: tickets and capacity, the sibling discount, the public booking page and post-event reporting.

  • Reserve with a card

    Ask people on an interest list to reserve a place with a card or Direct Debit. They are only charged if you confirm by your decide-by date — never automatically, and never before then.

  • Require payment in advance

    Turn on "Require payment in advance" so an event place is only confirmed once it is paid for by card — no more holding seats for people who never pay.

  • Taking payments

    Generate monthly charges, record cash or bank-transfer payments, and see who still owes money at a glance.

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