Taking payments from your guests

How to let guests pay for a table when they book, using your own payment account — and how refunds work.

This works the same way on every plan: your own account with your own payment company, your money, your refunds.

What this does

When prepayment is on, a guest who books a table has that table held for them first, then is sent to a payment page to pay; the booking is confirmed once the payment clears. The money goes straight into your own account with the payment company you choose. Noctessa never holds it and is not a party to the payment.

That also means the money side is yours. You are responsible for chargebacks, disputes and refunds. The Payments screen says the same thing next to whichever processor you pick.

What you need first

Your own account with one of the three processors Noctessa connects to. You can have only one turned on at a time.

cPay (CaSys) — for venues in North Macedonia. Charges in Macedonian denar. CaSys issues you a merchant reference, a merchant name and a secret, and you enter all three exactly as given.

PayPal — your own PayPal business account. No company registration is needed, and it works in countries other card processors do not cover. It cannot take payments for a venue in North Macedonia, so use cPay there.

Stripe — cards, plus Apple Pay and Google Pay, in a long list of currencies. Stripe cannot charge in Macedonian denar.

Connect your processor

1. Open Venue settings from the menu.
2. Go to the Payments tab.
3. Under Payment processor, choose the company you hold an account with.
4. Read the How to connect — 3 steps box that appears. It changes for each processor, and the order it gives you matters.
5. Where a Notification address is shown, press Copy and set it up once in your processor's own dashboard, as those three steps describe. This address never changes, not even when you change your keys, so you only do it once.
6. Fill in the fields your processor asks for. They are stored safely and never shown to you again. A field that already holds something shows dots — leave it blank to keep what is saved.
7. Choose your Currency. Only currencies your processor can settle are offered.
8. Tick Enable prepayment.
9. Press Save.

Take your time with step 8. While Enable prepayment is off, bookings are simply recorded and no money is taken — exactly as before you set any of this up. Turn it on once your keys are saved and you have tried a booking yourself.

If you later switch to a different processor, the old keys are dropped. You will need to enter the new processor's keys before you can turn prepayment back on.

Set the price a guest pays

Turning prepayment on does not charge anyone by itself. A guest is charged when they book a table on an event that has a priced tier.

1. Open Events and edit the event.
2. Add Table voucher tiers — and VIP voucher tiers if you use them — each with an amount.
3. Save the event.

A guest booking that event picks a tier, and the amount on that tier is what they pay. A priced tier is what makes a charge happen — with no tiers on the event, the booking is simply recorded, whatever your payment settings say. So if you want a deposit taken, put the deposit on a tier.

New events you create use the currency chosen on the Payments tab. Events you made earlier keep the currency they were created with.

What the guest sees

1. They fill in the booking form on your site and choose a tier.
2. They are sent to your processor's own payment page.
3. They pay and land on a Payment received page, telling them the payment was received and their booking is being confirmed.
4. If they close the page or the payment does not go through, they see Payment cancelled, the table is not reserved, and they can try again.

The table is held while the payment is in progress. If the guest never finishes, the hold is released after a while and the table goes back on sale.

What you see when a guest pays

The booking lands in Reservations already marked Confirmed, with a Paid badge showing the amount taken. There is nothing else for you to do.

A booking marked "Paid, not confirmed" (cPay)

Very rarely, cPay takes the guest's money but the booking does not finish confirming on our side. The guest still sees Payment received, the booking is not released automatically, and it shows an amber Paid, not confirmed badge. A banner at the top of Reservations tells you such a booking is waiting.

1. Open your cPay merchant portal and check that the payment really went through.
2. Back in Reservations, use Change status on that booking: Confirmed if you are keeping the guest, Cancelled or Declined if not.
3. Whichever you choose, the booking is then recorded as paid and the badge goes away.
4. If you cancelled or declined it, refund the guest in the cPay portal — Noctessa cannot refund a cPay payment for you.

Refunds

Refunds are done in your processor's own dashboard — cPay, PayPal or Stripe — because that is where your money is. There is no refund button in Noctessa.

1. Open your processor's dashboard.
2. Find the payment and refund it there.
3. Come back to Reservations, open that booking, and use Change status to set it to Cancelled. A paid booking cannot be deleted, so the record of the payment stays with it.

Step 3 matters. A refund you make in your processor's dashboard does not change anything on this side by itself — the table stays held for that guest and their ticket stays valid until you change the booking yourself.

Refund the whole amount. A table payment is recorded here as one single amount, so a part-refund in your processor's dashboard still shows here as the full amount paid.

If something looks wrong

• A guest paid but the booking is not confirmed. The Notification address is nearly always the reason. Open the Payments tab, copy it again, and check it is set up in your processor's dashboard exactly as the three steps describe. Without it, nobody tells us the guest paid. On cPay, a booking with the Paid, not confirmed badge is a different case — see the section above.
• Guests are not asked to pay at all. Check three things, in this order: Enable prepayment is ticked and saved, the event has table tiers with amounts on them, and the guest is picking one of those tiers.
• Save refuses and asks for a key. After switching processors, the old keys no longer count. Enter the new processor's keys, then save again.
• The currency you want is missing. The list only offers what your chosen processor can settle. If the currency you need is not there, that processor cannot take it.
• The Notification address says it will appear once your site domain is configured. Ask the Noctessa team to finish setting up your site address, then come back.
• You want to test first. Most processors give you test credentials. Use those to make a booking end to end, check that it arrives in Reservations marked Paid, then swap in your live keys.