Checkout Charges

When a guest pays for an experience or a venue seat, the amount they see isn’t only the ticket price. You can stack a few optional charges on top — a service fee, a tip, a card-processing surcharge — and sales tax can be added automatically. This page explains what each one is, how the buyer’s total is built, and the one setup step that trips people up: sales tax collects nothing until you register your tax jurisdictions in Stripe.

These charges apply to the two consumer checkouts: experiences and venue seat sales. They do not apply to what you pay VendorStreet (see Billing) or to vendor market invoices — those are a different direction of money entirely.

The short version

• Service fee — a fixed dollar amount you add to each checkout. Off unless you set it. Flows to you.
• Tipping — off by default. Turn it on for experiences or venues; either optional presets or a compulsory floor the buyer can add to. Flows to you.
• Card processing surcharge — passes Stripe’s card cost to the buyer as a line item. Off by default.
• Sales tax — computed by Stripe Tax against your tax registrations. On by default at the setting level, but it charges $0 until you register in Stripe.
• You are the merchant of record on these sales — your name is on the buyer’s statement, you bear Stripe’s fee, and you collect and remit the tax. See Payments & Payouts.

How the buyer’s total is built

The charges stack in a fixed order:

ticket / seat price + add-ons   ← the subtotal
      + service fee
      + tip
      + card processing surcharge
      + sales tax                ← Stripe computes this last, on top
      ────────────────────────
      = what the card is charged

A worked example — a $20.00 experience ticket, a $1.00 service fee, tipping on with a $2.00 tip the guest chose, and the operator registered for 8% sales tax:

Line	Amount
Ticket	$20.00
Service fee	$1.00
Gratuity	$2.00
Sales tax (8%, on the taxable lines)	$1.68
Total charged	$24.68

Tax is calculated on the taxable lines (ticket, add-ons, service fee, surcharge) — not on the tip. Tips are always non-taxable. In the example above tax is 8% of $21.00, not of the whole $23.00.

Every amount is computed server-side from your configuration. A guest can’t tamper with the fee or talk the tip down below a compulsory floor — the client value is only ever treated as the buyer’s additional amount.

Service fee

A fixed amount in dollars — usually $1–$2 — added as its own “Service fee” line on the checkout. It’s a flat charge, never a percentage, and the money goes to you.

You set it two ways:

• A per-model default under Settings → Organization (the “Service fees” section): one default for market/venue checkouts, one for experiences. The suggested starting points are $2.00 for markets/venues and $1.00 for experiences, but you choose.
• A per-journey override on an individual experience or venue, in its “Checkout charges” card. Leave it blank to use the model default; set it to $0 to explicitly turn the fee off for that one journey.

Resolution is simply: the journey override if set, otherwise your model default, otherwise nothing. When the resolved fee is zero, no line item appears and the total is unchanged — the guest sees exactly the ticket price.

Tipping

Off by default. Turn it on per experience (its “Checkout charges” card) or per venue (Market → Edit → Basics, “Checkout charges”). Tips flow to you.

Two modes:

• Optional — the buyer picks from your preset percentages (say 10/15/20%), enters a custom amount, or tips nothing.
• Compulsory — a set percentage (e.g. 15%) is applied as a floor. It’s shown and can’t be removed, but the buyer can always add more on top. It is a minimum, not a fixed amount.

You can also add a note shown by the tip picker — for example, “100% of gratuities are paid to service staff.”

The gratuity appears as its own “Gratuity” line and, as noted above, is never taxed.

Card processing surcharge

Optional. When enabled on an experience or venue, it adds a “Card processing fee” line computed as a percentage (default around 3%) of the running pre-tax total, passing Stripe’s card-processing cost to the buyer. Because you’re the merchant of record on these sales — you bear Stripe’s fee — this offsets that cost.

Off by default. One honest caveat worth knowing: some US states regulate or limit card surcharging. Check your local rules before turning it on. It’s disclosed to the buyer as a line item either way.

Sales tax — the setup that actually matters

Sales tax is handled by Stripe Tax, and this is the part to get right.

You are the merchant of record for experience and venue-seat sales. That means Stripe computes tax against your own tax registrations, your business bears the remittance obligation, and it’s your name on the buyer’s card statement. VendorStreet does not calculate, hold, or remit this tax for you.

The consequence is blunt:

Until you register your tax jurisdictions in your Stripe dashboard, every checkout adds $0.00 in tax. The setting can be “on” and buyers can still be charged no tax — because Stripe has nothing to compute against.

What you have to do

1. Log in to your Stripe dashboard.
2. Go to Settings → Tax → Registrations.
3. Add each state, province, or country where you’re registered to collect sales tax.

Once a registration exists, Stripe automatically calculates and adds the correct tax on checkouts for buyers in that jurisdiction — and it’s then your responsibility to remit what’s collected. Nothing changes inside VendorStreet; the registration lives entirely in Stripe.

The controls inside VendorStreet

• Tax is on by default per experience and per venue. You can switch it off on a specific journey in its “Checkout charges” card if you never want tax added there.
• An account-level tax-exempt toggle (in the “Service fees” section of organization settings) hard-overrides everything — no tax on any checkout, regardless of the per-journey setting.

Neither of these is a substitute for registering. With tax “on” but no Stripe registrations, the result is the same $0.00 tax — it just means Stripe will start charging the moment you register.

Where the money lands

The service fee, tip, and surcharge all flow to you (your connected Stripe account) as operator revenue. Sales tax is collected into your account for you to remit. The VendorStreet platform fee is unaffected by any of this — it’s a separate per-booking amount, unchanged. See Payments & Payouts for who’s the merchant of record and how funds move.

Common gotchas

• No Stripe tax registration = $0 tax. The single most important thing on this page. “Tax on” is not enough; register in Stripe → Settings → Tax → Registrations.
• You own the remittance. VendorStreet doesn’t file or pay your sales tax. You’re the merchant of record.
• Tips are never taxed. Tax applies to the ticket, add-ons, service fee, and surcharge only.
• A compulsory tip is a floor, not a cap. Buyers can add more; they can’t go below it.
• Service fee is a fixed dollar amount, not a percentage. Set a per-model default, override or zero it per journey.
• Surcharging is regulated in some states. Check before enabling the card processing fee.
• These charges are consumer-side only. They don’t touch your VendorStreet billing or vendor market invoices.
• Everything is computed server-side. Client-supplied fees and tips below a floor are ignored.

Next steps

• Payments & Payouts — merchant of record, fund flow, and the tax-registration requirement
• Experiences — the guest checkout these charges ride on
• Venues & Seating — paid seat checkout with fees and tips
• Billing — what you pay VendorStreet, kept separate from all of this