Markets

A market is a recurring event you run — a Saturday farmers market, a monthly craft fair, a seasonal night market. It holds everything that makes that event work: the dates vendors can book, the categories of vendor you accept, what a spot costs, and the paperwork you require before someone sets up.

If you run several events, each one is its own market. They share your organization’s vendors, add-on catalog, and billing, but their dates, prices, and rules are independent.

How do I create a market?

From the dashboard, go to Markets → Create Market.

• Name — what vendors and the public see.
• Slug — the URL-safe short name used in public links (riverside-saturday). It appears in your application link and public map, so choose something durable.
• Description — optional, shown to vendors browsing your market.
• Location name and address — optional, but worth filling in; it’s what vendors check when deciding whether to apply.
• Booking mode — Capacity or Spaces. See below.
• Timezone — all your dates and booking cutoffs are interpreted in this zone.

New markets are created in draft status. Nothing is visible to vendors until you change that.

Capacity mode or Spaces mode: which should I pick?

This is the most consequential setting on a market, because it changes what a vendor is actually buying.

Capacity mode limits bookings by count. You say “24 vendors on October 4th” and the 25th vendor is turned away. Nobody is assigned a particular location — you sort that out on the day. This suits markets where the layout shifts week to week, or where you assign spots by hand at load-in.

Spaces mode limits bookings by named booths. You build an inventory of spaces — A1, A2, B1 — each with its own size, price, and optional position on a map image. Vendors book a specific one. This suits markets with a fixed footprint, and it’s also the mode that unlocks the seating tools for indoor venues.

The in-app help says it plainly: “Capacity mode limits bookings by count; Spaces mode limits by named booths.”

You can switch modes later, but VendorStreet will warn you first — changing the mode affects existing bookings and space assignments, and there’s no clean automatic migration between the two. Decide before you take real bookings.

If you pick Spaces, head to Venues & Seating next to build your booth inventory, upload a map, and lay out seats or tables.

What do the market statuses mean?

Set these under the Status & visibility tab.

• Draft — invisible to vendors. Your workspace while you set things up.
• Active — live. Vendors can find the market and book open dates.
• Paused — still visible, but not bookable. Use this when you’re full, between seasons, or pausing for weather without hiding your market entirely.
• Archived — read-only. History is preserved; nothing new can be booked.

Moving a market to Active is the go-live moment. Make sure your dates, prices, and compliance rules are in place first — vendors will see whatever state they’re in.

What are the market tabs for?

Open a market and click Edit to reach the configuration tabs:

Tab	What it’s for
Basics	Name, slug, description, location, timezone, booking mode
Spaces & Map	Booth inventory, regions, map image, seating layout — see Venues & Seating
Scheduling	Market dates, schedule defaults, weekly series, capacity tiers — see Scheduling
Vendor Types	Your vendor categories — see Vendor Types
Vendor Compliance	The checklist vendors must clear before booking — see Vendor Compliance Rules
Documents	Agreements, insurance requirements, permits — see Document Library
Vendor Applications	Review and approve vendors who applied
Pricing Rules	Vendor type pricing, penalties, discounts — see Pricing Rules
Add-ons	Attach optional extras from your catalog — see Add-ons
Booking Rules	Booking cutoff hours and the message vendors see
Status & Visibility	Draft, active, paused, archived
Audit & Activity	A log of who changed what

How do vendors find and apply to my market?

Every market gets a public application page at /markets/<your-slug>/apply. Share that link in your vendor call, newsletter, or social posts. Vendors fill in their details, pick a vendor type, and land in your Vendor Applications tab for review.

When you decide, the vendor is notified automatically — in-app and by email — whether you approve, reject, suspend, or reinstate them. Rejections require a reason, and the vendor sees it word for word, so write it for their eyes. Rejected and suspended vendors stay visible in their own tabs: you can re-approve a rejected vendor if you change your mind, and reinstate a suspended one. If a vendor you’re rejecting or suspending still has upcoming bookings, VendorStreet shows you the count and asks you to confirm — their bookings aren’t cancelled automatically; manage those separately.

If your market is in Spaces mode and you’ve uploaded a map, there’s also a public booth map at /markets/<your-slug>/map, where visitors can pan, zoom, filter by region, and see which booths are available, booked, or locked.

Your market slug also works as a direct entry point at /<your-slug>, which sets the active market for anyone who signs in through it. This is handy when you run multiple markets and want a link that drops a vendor straight into the right one.

A vendor wants out of a booking — what happens?

Vendors can’t cancel their own bookings. What they can do is ask to be released, with a reason, on any booking they hold for a market day that hasn’t started yet. You decide.

Requests arrive as a notification (in-app and email) and land in Bookings. Pick Cancellation requested in the status filter to see just those, or spot them anywhere in the queue by the cancel requested chip that sits beside the booking’s real status — a booking with an open request is still submitted or approved, and the vendor is still expected until you say otherwise. Hover the chip to read their reason.

Two buttons on the row:

• Approve cancels the booking, frees the space, and voids its invoice if the invoice is unpaid — returning any credit the vendor had applied to it. The vendor is notified.
• Decline leaves the booking exactly as it is. A reason is required and the vendor sees it word for word, so write it for their eyes.

Whichever you pick, it’s final for that request: the vendor can send a fresh one if their situation changes, but a decision can’t be reversed from here. If two of you decide at the same moment, one of you wins and the other is told the request was already decided — you’ll never get a decline that silently undoes an approval that already cancelled the booking.

Approving does not refund a paid invoice. If the vendor has already paid, the invoice stays paid, the confirmation tells you so, and arranging the refund in Stripe is yours to do — the same as any other refund on the platform. Only unpaid invoices are voided automatically.

Cancelling the whole date runs this same per-booking machinery over every vendor booked on it — but it is not the same thing as approving one request, and two differences matter:

• Cancelling the date also refunds every ticket sold for it. Vendor invoices are not refunded automatically (they may have been paid by cheque or cash, which VendorStreet cannot send back); ticket sales always are, because they are card payments this system can reverse. See Cancelling a performance.
• Cancelling the date settles any cancellation requests still open on it. A vendor waiting on your answer is not left waiting for a day that no longer exists — their request is recorded as approved, because cancelling the date gave them exactly what they asked for.

How do I set booking cutoffs?

Under Booking Rules, set Hours before event — how many hours ahead of a market date bookings stop being accepted. You can also write a Vendor message (optional) that explains what to do if they’ve missed it (“Call the market office at…”).

Cutoffs are separate from penalties. A cutoff blocks the booking outright; a penalty lets it through at a higher price. Both are described in Pricing Rules.

Common gotchas

• The slug is in every public link. Changing it after you’ve shared your application page will break links people have saved.
• Draft means invisible, not incomplete. A market can be fully configured and still sit in draft — nothing publishes it but you.
• Timezone is per market. If you run events in more than one region, check it on each market; booking cutoffs and schedule times all depend on it.
• Reports need billing activated. The market report pages are locked until billing is live for the market. See Billing.
• Configuration is editable, but not always deletable. Booths, vendor types, capacity tiers, pricing rules and market dates can all be edited after the fact. Deleting one only works while nothing references it — otherwise you’ll get a refusal naming what’s still using it, like “is in use by 12 bookings.” That’s on purpose: the alternative is a delete that quietly rewrites records people already agreed to. When something is in use and you want it out of the way, deactivate or rename it instead.

Next steps

• Scheduling — build out your season
• Vendor Types — set up your categories
• Pricing Rules — decide what a spot costs
• Reporting & KPIs — see how the market is doing