Attendee invoices & online payment

For paid event and course bookings VidiReserve issues your attendees an invoice — as a PDF, in your name, from your own number range. On top of that, your guests can pay the booking online straight away: through your own PayPal, Stripe or SumUp account. Both features are switched off by default and are set up step by step below. Table reservations are not affected.

Set up your invoicing profile

Open Settings → Invoicing. The overview shows at a glance what is already set up. On the Profile & number range page you enter, once, everything German VAT law (§ 14 UStG) requires on every invoice:

• Billing address — legal company name, street and number, postcode, city and country of your business.
• Tax — either standard taxation with the applicable VAT rate and your tax number or VAT ID, or small business (§ 19 UStG); in that case the invoice shows no VAT but the corresponding note instead.
• Bank details (optional) — IBAN, BIC and bank. They appear in the booking confirmation as the transfer target and on the invoice.
• Numbering & layout — the invoice number prefix (default R, producing for example R-2026-0001), the payment term in days and a footer for details such as your commercial register or management.

At the very top sits the switch Create invoices automatically. As long as it is off or mandatory details are missing, no invoice is created — you can still mark the booking as paid as usual. What is still missing is listed on the page under Still missing. Use Preview PDF to see a sample invoice with your saved details at any time; it is for viewing only and is not stored anywhere.

When an invoice is created

The invoice is created at the exact moment an event booking is set to paid — either by you in the booking list via Mark as paid or Create invoice (where you choose the payment method, for example cash or bank transfer), or automatically by your guest paying online. The invoice number, your details and the line items are fixed at that moment.

The attendee receives the invoice by email straight away: as a PDF attachment and via a permanently valid link. If the attendee is a business customer and all required details are present, the same email also contains a link to the XRechnung as XML — the format public sector clients require. If something is missing in your profile for this, the Invoicing page tells you exactly what.

The PDF is an electronic invoice (ZUGFeRD/Factur-X, profile EN 16931): the very same file is a document for people and for accounting software — the visible part to read, the machine-readable data embedded invisibly inside it. You do not have to configure anything and do not have to send anything extra. Business customers still find the XRechnung under its own link in the email.

Very occasionally producing the file takes a moment longer. The invoice journal then shows “PDF pending”, and the invoice goes out automatically as soon as the document is ready — usually within a few minutes. “Try again now” lets you trigger that without waiting.

If the total of a booking is above €250, the attendee's billing address is mandatory (simplified invoices without an address are only allowed up to and including €250). In that case the booking form asks for street, postcode and city automatically; below that threshold guests may add them voluntarily.

A prepayment configured on the event (deposit per person or flat) is not taken into account by the invoice or the online payment: both always cover the full booking amount. If the invoice date precedes the event date, the PDF automatically states “Prepayment for the event on …”.

Cancelling an invoice & refunds

An invoice, once issued, is never changed or deleted. That is why the paid mark cannot be reversed afterwards either — the booking list then shows Paid — invoice exists. The way back is Cancel invoice in the invoice list:

1. A credit note is created with the same line items as negative amounts and a reference to the original invoice.
2. The original invoice remains and is set to Cancelled.
3. The attendee automatically receives the credit note by email.
4. In the invoice list the credit note carries the Refund pending marker until you tick Refunded there.

VidiReserve takes the same route by itself when it is not the invoice but the booking that is cancelled — by your guest through their booking link or by you: for a paid booking the credit note is created automatically, with the same consequence that the refund is left pending with you.

You send the money back one of two ways. If the booking was paid online, Refund under Payments sends it back to the guest through your payment provider — in full or as a partial refund if your cancellation terms provide for a fee. With a bank transfer or cash you transfer the money yourself and then tick Refunded in the invoice list. After the cancellation the booking can be invoiced again — so you can correct it and issue a new invoice.

It can also happen by itself: under Settings → Invoicing, the card Refunds lets you switch on that a cancellation by the guest refunds the full amount automatically. It applies only to cancellations the guest triggers themselves, and only within your cancellation deadline — after that they cannot cancel at all. If your business cancels, it stays manual. Out of the box the switch is off: businesses with staggered cancellation fees prefer to decide for themselves.

Your guest sees this too: if they cancel themselves — in their account through the cancellation dialog or via the link in their confirmation email — that dialog shows your cancellation terms, the cancellation deadline and, if they have already paid, a box Your payment with the amount and the payment method. Plus the honest sentence that you decide on the refund according to your cancellation terms and that the credit note arrives by email — or, if you switched on the automatic refund, that the amount goes back automatically. The same line appears in the cancellation confirmation sent to the guest.

Withdrawal & refund

If you chose "Right of withdrawal applies" in the booking rules, your guest sees a Withdraw from contract button in their account, on their cancellation page and in their booking confirmation. It leads to a page with all the booking details and the button Withdraw now.

A withdrawal triggers the same chain as a cancellation — with two differences: your cancellation deadline does not apply (the law overrides it), and the refund is always made in full, regardless of the switch in the Refunds card ("Automatically refund the full amount when the guest cancels"). With a bank transfer or cash you refund the money yourself; until you tick it off, the credit note carries the Refund pending marker.

Outside the 14 days or after the date, the page stays reachable — it then explains why a withdrawal is no longer possible and leads to the normal cancellation. In the booking you see, below the guest details, when the withdrawal was declared and whether your guest expressly requested that performance begin early.

The invoice list

Under Invoices you find all invoices and credit notes of your business. You can narrow the list down by period, type and status and search by number, name, company or email. Depending on the document you can open the PDF, Send again to the attendee (a few times per hour), Cancel invoice and mark it Refunded. Which of these appear depends on the document: Cancel invoice only on active invoices, Send again no longer on cancelled ones, and Refunded only on credit notes whose refund is still pending. Below the list you see the total of the whole selection.

Above the filter row you will find the Quick select: today, yesterday, this week, last week, this month, last month. One click sets the period and keeps your other filters (type, status, search, event). As soon as you enter a date in the From/To fields yourself, your input wins and the pill is deselected. Important for bookkeeping: a period chosen via a pill counts exactly like one typed in by hand — both exports pick it up the same way.

For your accounting there are two exports at the top, always covering exactly the selection you set: Journal (CSV) with all document rows — credit notes with negative amounts, so a cancelled transaction adds up to zero — and PDF archive (ZIP) with every document of the period as a PDF. You can pass both on to your tax adviser unchanged.

Connect Lexware Office

If you keep your books in Lexware Office, VidiReserve can transfer every attendee invoice and every credit note into it — as a bookkeeping voucher with the PDF attached, in your own account. The invoice numbers stay the ones from VidiReserve; Lexware does not renumber anything.

How to set it up — Settings → Invoicing → Lexware Office:

1. In Lexware Office, create an API key under Add-ons → Public API and paste it here. The key is stored encrypted and never shown again; you can replace or remove it at any time.
2. Test connection — the answer names your Lexware account and the modules enabled there. If the tax treatment (small business under § 19 UStG) differs from your invoicing profile, we say so right here.
3. Load revenue accounts and pick one — that is where the course revenue is posted. Without a choice we use the default account “Einnahmen” (income).
4. Switch the transfer on and save.

From that moment every new document reaches Lexware within about ten minutes. Older invoices are not backfilled — that would be a surprise in your books. Send individual older documents with the button in the invoice list.

If you switch the transfer off again, that cut-off date is cleared; when you switch it on again, the new moment counts. Whatever was issued during the pause in between is not picked up by itself afterwards — send those documents one by one with Send to Lexware in the invoice list.

The invoice list then shows a “Lexware” column with five possible states:

• transferred — voucher and PDF have arrived in your Lexware account.
• pending — the next run will pick it up.
• waiting for the invoice — this only appears on credit notes: the matching invoice has to reach Lexware first, otherwise there would be a credit note without the invoice it refers to. Usually that sorts itself out in the same run. If the invoice dates from before you switched the transfer on, the credit note waits until you have sent that invoice once with the Send to Lexware button — the credit note then follows by itself.
• error — something went wrong; it is retried automatically.
• needs attention — another attempt will not help. The reason is shown on the badge; once you have fixed it, send the document with the Send to Lexware button. That button works immediately and waits for Lexware, so it may take a moment before the page comes back.

What VidiReserve does not do: it never creates customer contacts in Lexware. Documents run through the collective contact; if you want, the name or company of the invoice recipient appears in the voucher header so you can find it there. With the switch off, the header stays nameless.

That does not change the attachment: the attached invoice PDF carries the name and address of the invoice recipient either way — it is the accounting document, and without those details it would not be one. So the switch decides whether the name is searchable in Lexware, not whether it gets there at all. We also never set the payment status — in Lexware that comes from your bank reconciliation.

Set up online payment

In the same Invoicing area every provider has its own page: PayPal, Stripe and SumUp. You can enable one, two or all three; your guest then picks one on the payment page. The money goes straight into your own account with that provider: VidiReserve never receives the money, never forwards it and takes no commission. You carry the provider's fees yourself, as well as the payment and cancellation terms towards your guests.

• PayPal — you create your own REST app in your PayPal business account and enter the client ID, secret and webhook ID here; the webhook address you need for this is shown on the page ready to copy. The mode separates sandbox (test) from live (real money). Without a webhook ID the status stays Limited: payments work, but if a guest closes the page too early, the booking stays open even though they paid.
• Stripe — nothing to type in here: you click Connect with Stripe, go through Stripe's onboarding with your company and bank details and come back. Until Stripe has enabled your account for payments the status is Limited; after that it turns Active by itself — provided the switch Offer Stripe to guests is on. Without it the status stays Not set up. The full Stripe dashboard stays yours.
• SumUp — you store an API key and your merchant code from your SumUp profile. Please create a dedicated key for online payment rather than reusing the one from your card terminal. If you already run a SumUp terminal, a button copies the merchant code over from the card terminal setup — deliberately not the key. You do not need to enter a webhook address at SumUp. No SumUp account yet? The SumUp page in your settings carries an affiliate link you can sign up through; VidiReserve may receive a commission for it, and it changes nothing about your terms with SumUp.

Every provider has a check button — Test the PayPal connection, Test the Stripe connection and Test the SumUp connection — so you can check immediately whether your credentials are accepted. Only the switch Offer … to guests makes the provider appear on your guests' payment page.

What that switch does not do: it has no retroactive effect on bookings whose payment is already under way — a payment that has been collected is still matched even if you switch the provider off in the meantime. And it forces nobody: your guests can still pay by bank transfer or cash if you describe it that way in the event.

How your guest pays

1. If the event costs money, “online” is ticked as a payment method and at least one provider is set up, the booking form button reads Continue to payment. The guest then lands on the payment page straight away — the booking itself has already been received.
2. After booking, the guest sees the Pay now button on the confirmation page and in the confirmation email.
3. They land on a payment page in the language of their booking, see the amount, the event and you as the payee, and choose the provider.
4. They pay at the provider and return with the result: Payment received, Payment is being checked or Payment cancelled.
5. On Payment received the booking is paid immediately and the invoice — if set up — goes out automatically.

If it says Payment is being checked, that is not an error: the provider has not reported the final outcome yet. The confirmation follows automatically as soon as it does; you do not have to do anything, and the guest should not pay a second time in the meantime.

Below the provider buttons the payment page shows your terms and conditions, your cancellation terms (expandable) and your privacy policy, as far as you have stored those addresses in your profile — plus the note that card and account details are entered exclusively at the payment provider. Anyone who does not want to pay right now gets back via Pay later; the payment link is in the confirmation email anyway.

In their own account your guest finds every document under Invoices — invoice and credit note, with PDF and, for business customers, XRechnung. The Events tab shows the amount, the payment status (“Paid on …” or “Payment pending”) and, while it is open, the Pay now button.

The payments overview

Under Payments every online payment is listed with date, booking, provider, amount, status and the provider's reference — with it you find the transaction again in your provider's dashboard, for example to issue a refund. You can filter by period, provider and status; below the list you see the total received.

You will find the same Quick select in the payments overview. It works with calendar days in your time zone; weeks run Monday to Sunday.

Rows you should look at are highlighted as Needs attention:

• If the booking had already been paid: a second amount was collected. Refund it in your provider's account.
• If the amount or the currency differs: something other than the booked amount was collected. Check the transaction in the provider account and refund it if needed.
• If the money arrived but the booking could not be switched to paid (because it had been cancelled in the meantime, for instance): look at the booking and decide by hand; the guest must not pay again.

There are two buttons for the money in this list, and they do different things: Refund really triggers the repayment — you confirm the amount and your cancellation terms, then the money goes back through your provider, and that cannot be undone. Mark as refunded moves no money: the tick is for refunds you have already triggered in your provider's account.

If your provider reports the refund as started but not yet completed, we treat it as done — a second attempt would be a second payout. You see the final state in your provider's account. If a refund does not go through, the payment stays in the list as Needs attention with the reason next to it; you can then try again, or refund in the provider account and note it here.

Who sees what

By default only the owner sees the Invoices and Payments menu items — the names, addresses and amounts of all attendees sit behind them. You can hand billing over deliberately, though: under Staff → Roles & Permissions, grant the Invoices & payments permission in the Extras group. View only opens the invoice list, the invoice PDFs and the payment overview; Edit additionally allows cancelling, sending again, marking as refunded, the exports as well as mark as paid and create invoice in the booking list. Without the edit permission, staff only see the payment status in the booking list, with no button. Existing roles do not have the permission at first — you grant it once, deliberately. See the chapter Staff & permissions for details.

The invoicing profile and the payment providers stay reserved for the owner in every case: tax, bank and access details live there. That is why the menu entry Settings → Invoicing only appears for the owner.

For event providers

These features are built precisely for you: courses, workshops and events are paid up front, and your attendees need a proper invoice for it. You find everything in three places in the menu — the Settings → Invoicing area with its overview, Profile & number range and one page each for PayPal, Stripe and SumUp, the documents under Invoices and the incoming payments under Payments. Restaurants that run events alongside their table business can use both in exactly the same way; nothing changes for ordinary table reservations.