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Billing

Your $50/year membership that gates launching journeys, promo and comp codes, subscriptions, and where to find receipts.

Billing is where you handle what you owe VendorStreet — your membership, any subscriptions, and reviewing what you’ve paid. It’s separate from the money your vendors and guests pay you, which is covered in Payments & Payouts.

Billing is organization-wide, not per market. Find it under Billing in the user menu.

What does it cost to run on VendorStreet?

One membership, charged to your organization. A $50/year VendorStreet membership is required to launch anything — a market, a venue, an experience, an event, or an appointments practice. It’s per operator account, not per journey: one membership covers everything you run, no matter how many markets or experiences you add.

Some accounts also carry a plan subscription on top — a configurable monthly or annual amount agreed with VendorStreet. That’s a separate charge from the membership and it’s described under Plan subscriptions below.

This replaces the old per-market activation fee. You no longer pay to switch on each market individually — you hold one annual membership and launch as many journeys as you like under it.

The membership is billed by VendorStreet (through Stripe) and renews yearly. It’s entirely separate from the money your vendors and guests pay you, and from the per-booking platform fee.

Why won’t my market, venue, experience, or service go live?

Almost always because your organization doesn’t have an active membership.

Creating and editing stays free. You can build a market, draw a venue, author an experience, configure an appointments practice, set schedules and pricing — all in draft, no membership needed. The gate is only at the moment you try to make something public / go live. Attempt to launch without an active membership and VendorStreet blocks it and prompts you to activate.

Until you activate your membership:

  • Nothing can be published or made publicly bookable. That covers markets, venues, experiences, events, and publishing an appointment service.
  • Market report pages are locked. That’s enforced by the server, not just hidden in the page.
  • A market that hasn’t been published can’t take bookings at all — a draft market is genuinely draft, not a quietly live one.

Appointments behaves differently in one respect, and it’s the one worth knowing. For every other journey the gate fires only at the moment you publish, so anything already live stays live if your membership lapses. For an appointments practice the gate is also on the public booking page: while your billing isn’t in good standing, /book/your-slug stops taking new bookings.

It does not go blank or broken. Clients see your practice name and a short note saying online booking isn’t available right now and to contact you directly — nothing about your billing. Your services are not unpublished: nothing is switched off behind the scenes, and everything serves again the moment you’re paid up, with nothing for you to re-enable.

Existing clients are never stranded. Anyone with a booking can still view, cancel, or reschedule it, and your own schedule keeps working normally. Only new bookings stop.

The membership card on the Billing page shows your status and an Activate membership button. Activating sends you to Stripe to set up the yearly subscription; once it’s active, your launch actions unblock across the whole organization.

What is a plan subscription?

Some accounts — appointments practices in particular — are on a plan rather than per-booking fees. The two arrangements are alternatives, not extras:

  • Per-booking. Each booking carries a platform fee, taken out of your proceeds. Nothing recurring to pay.
  • Plan (flat). You pay a set amount monthly or annually and the per-booking fee is zero.

The amount and the interval are agreed with VendorStreet and set on your account; there’s no self-serve price list. Once they’re set, a Plan subscription card appears on your Billing page with a Subscribe button, and you manage the subscription from the same card afterwards.

An annual membership still applies on top. They’re separate charges for separate things: the membership is what lets you launch, the plan is what you pay for running appointments.

If a plan subscription lapses, VendorStreet doesn’t simply stop earning. By default we fall back to charging per-booking fees until the subscription is active again — your practice keeps taking bookings and nothing goes dark over a failed card. Accounts can instead be configured to block new bookings while a plan is unpaid; if yours is, that’s a deliberate setting rather than the default.

What about promo codes and comps?

VendorStreet platform administrators can issue promo codes — a percentage off, a fixed amount off, or a full 100%-off comp. If you’ve been given a code, enter it in the promo field on the card for whatever it applies to, then activate or subscribe.

Every code is issued for one thing: your operator membership, your appointments plan subscription, or both. A membership code typed into the plan field is refused, and the other way round — that’s deliberate, so a code minted for an appointments signup campaign can’t quietly be spent on something else. If a code you were given is rejected, check which card you’re entering it on before assuming it’s expired.

A comp (100%-off) code activates for free — no Stripe charge, no card needed. On the membership that’s a year; on a plan it’s one billing period, monthly or annual to match your plan. A partial-discount code applies at Stripe checkout and covers the first invoice: on an annual charge that’s the first year, on a monthly one it’s the first month.

A code can be redeemed once per organization. A code marked as applying to both the membership and the plan can be spent on either one — not on both.

Codes are created and managed by the platform, not by operators; if you think you should have one, ask your VendorStreet contact.

What are active billing agreements?

The Active billing agreements card shows your live subscriptions and recurring charges — the ongoing commitments attached to your organization, as opposed to one-off activations.

Which plan you’re on changes how per-booking fees work. On a flat subscription plan, the per-booking platform fee is zeroed and covered by the subscription. On a per-booking plan, each booking carries the fee. See Payments & Payouts for how the fee is applied and who bears it.

If a flat plan lapses, the platform falls back to per-booking fees or blocks new bookings, depending on how your account is configured. Keep an eye on this card at renewal time.

Where do I find receipts?

The Payment history card lists past payments and receipts — what you need for bookkeeping, reconciliation, or an accountant asking what a line on your card statement was.

When a payment goes through, you’ll also see a Payment confirmed panel acknowledging it immediately.

Who can manage billing?

Billing is organization-scoped and restricted to owners and admins. Vendors and market-level staff don’t see it.

Vendors have their own separate view of their invoices — what they owe you for booking your market — under their Invoices area. That’s a different thing entirely from the billing described here.

Common gotchas

  • Membership is per organization, not per journey. One $50/year membership covers every market, venue, and experience you run. Adding a tenth market doesn’t cost another activation.
  • The gate is at go-live, not at creation. A fully configured market or experience that “won’t take bookings” is usually waiting on an active membership — building and editing never needed one.
  • Reports are gated on going live too. Empty report pages on a new market usually mean it isn’t live yet, not missing data.
  • A comp code activates without a card. A 100%-off promo skips Stripe entirely and turns your membership active for a year; partial codes still run through Stripe checkout and discount the first invoice only.
  • Promo codes aren’t interchangeable. Each one is issued for the membership, for the plan subscription, or for both. Rejected codes are often just being typed into the wrong card.
  • An appointments practice stops taking new bookings if billing lapses. Every other journey stays live. Existing clients can still manage their bookings either way, and nothing is unpublished.
  • Membership ≠ payouts. Your membership lets you launch; connecting Stripe under Payments & Payouts is what lets you collect. They’re different setups and you need both to sell.
  • Billing and payouts are different directions of money. Billing is what you pay VendorStreet (your membership). Payouts are what your customers pay you.

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