Deposits, instalments and the day the boat cannot sail

How do I take a deposit, and who collects the rest?

You take the deposit; you collect the rest. That split is the whole answer and it belongs in the first line. A plan is three settings on the ticket type — the deposit as a share of the fee, how many charges follow and how far apart they fall — and the console writes all three, so a diver choosing the plan pays the deposit at checkout and sees the schedule. What does NOT happen is bindro charging the stored card on those dates: off-session charging is armed by a separate switch that is deliberately set in no environment, because a background sweep bills people with nobody watching.

The shape of the plan is the centre’s either way, and the buyer never names an amount — their only decision is whether to use it. The deposit is charged when they book and their card is stored in the same gesture, so the later charges do not need them present.

The schedule is enforced by the database, not merely by the code that writes it: the instalments must total exactly the balance owed, and a charge cannot be recorded as paid without the provider reference proving it happened. A plan cannot be marked complete while any charge is outstanding.

Plan money rests on its own liability account until the final charge clears, so a half-paid course never appears in the balance you can be paid out. Price your season on collecting the balance yourself: a published schedule tells the diver what they owe and when, and it is you who takes it.

How do I bill a club, a school or an employer?

With an invoice on credit terms, carrying their purchase-order reference. The booking confirms with no card, the places are committed, and the bill goes to the accounts-payable address while the joining instructions go to the divers.

Nothing pretends the money arrived. There is no ledger entry, no fee and no movement in your balance until you record the remittance — and once you do, the invoice, the order and the ledger all move together in one transaction. An invoice left unpaid past its due date is voided automatically and the places go back on sale, which is usually what a centre wants in the week before a course.

What happens when a course is called off for weather?

You cancel the session and the divers are refunded. They can trigger it themselves from the link in their confirmation email — a cancelled event stays refundable even after its start time, which is exactly the weather case — so nobody is waiting on the shop to process a queue of refunds on a Sunday evening.

A refund reverses in a fixed order: your proceeds first, then tax, then the platform fee. You are not left paying a fee on money you handed back. What the platform cannot do is move anyone to another date; there is no deferral in this vertical, so a weather call means refund and rebook. Put that in your conditions rather than leaving a diver to discover it.

When does the money actually reach the dive centre?

Two days after the course has been delivered. Payouts are scheduled per event once its sessions have ended, and never before — the platform will not pay an organiser for something that has not happened, which is the only real defence against a centre closing with a season of deposits taken.

Dive courses sit in the medium risk tier, so twelve per cent is held as a reserve for ninety days against cancellations and chargebacks, and released after that. One payout is in flight at a time per organisation, and a payout reaches "paid" only when a real transfer reference comes back — the database refuses to record a payment with nothing behind it, so the console cannot tell you money moved when it did not.

What does all of this cost?

Two and a half per cent plus ninety-nine cents on each paid place, with no monthly fee, no setup fee and nothing at all on a free course or a comp place. You choose whether the fee comes out of your proceeds or is added at checkout.

The fee is charged over the whole basket, so a place plus rental kit is one fee rather than one per item. Sales tax is not added by bindro in this vertical and no tax report is produced: the price a diver sees is the price that is charged, and anything you owe is yours to handle.