Questions and answers
Pumpkin patches and corn mazes: questions, answered
bindro sells timed entry to a pumpkin patch or corn maze: each open day is cut into arrival slots, each slot holds its own inventory, and a visitor picks a date, picks a time and pays on one page that works on a phone in a farm track with one bar of signal. Hayrides, pick-your-own bags and parking are add-ons with their own stock. The gate scans a code or a bound wristband with no signal at all and reconciles when the device is back on wifi. Money reaches the farm two days after the last day of the visit it was sold under.
Reviewed: 2026-08-09
What farms ask
How should I price timed entry for a pumpkin patch?
Price the slot, not the day: a Saturday eleven o clock arrival and a wet Tuesday two o clock arrival are different products with different demand, and on bindro each one is a separate slot holding its own inventory. Publish an entry type per price — weekend, weekday, under-threes free as a comp — and put the things that vary per head into add-ons with their own stock, so a hayride or a pick-your-own bag is bought at the same checkout and counted separately. The price is derived on the server every time, so a stale page cannot buy yesterday price. A group rate that applies itself at twelve entries is a field on the entry type; what you cannot publish here is a pass that admits all season.
What ticketing works with no signal in a field?
bindro check-in is built for exactly this, with one thing you have to supply yourself. Before the gate opens, a device downloads a signed manifest of everybody due at that session; from then on it validates scans locally, with no network at all, and refuses anything not on the list. When the device is back on wifi it replays what it recorded, duplicate uploads count once, and two devices that admitted the same visitor surface in a conflict queue you read afterwards rather than argue about at the gate. Entries scan as a code, or as a wristband once a band is bound to the visitor. The part bindro does not give you is the scanner itself: the manifest, replay and scan endpoints are an API, and the device that holds a camera is yours or your integrator.
How do farms handle rained-off weekends?
You make the call at seven in the morning and bindro carries it out. Open the day, choose "Move or cancel", and before you press anything it tells you how many bookings are on it and how much money they are holding. Then you choose what happens to that money — refund everybody to the card they paid with, give everybody a credit for another visit, or keep their booking for a day you will offer — and it is applied to every family on the day at once. Tick the box and each of them is emailed after the money has moved, saying which of the three happened to theirs. The day comes off sale immediately. What bindro will not do is decide it: nothing here reads a forecast. Visitors can also refund themselves in full up to the moment their slot starts, which on a bad forecast is what many will do before you get to them.
Do I have to name every visitor on a family booking?
Yes, and this is the single most important thing to know before your first Saturday. Any order for more than one entry becomes a roster of places, and a place nobody has named is refused at the gate — it is left off the offline door list and a live scan returns "roster place not filled in". The booking page does not ask for those names, because this vertical asks its questions of the order rather than of each visitor, so the booker gets an email with a link and fills them in afterwards. Three ways to live with it: chase the roster in your confirmation copy, sell single-entry orders so no roster is ever made, or keep a phone on the gate and fill the places in as the family arrives.
How do I open six weekends of timed entry without building every slot by hand?
Generate the grid: give bindro the dates you are open and the arrival times you run, and it creates a session for each combination in one go, up to two hundred sessions per generation. Each session gets its own inventory pool, so eleven o clock selling out has no effect on midday, and the booking page shows live availability per slot rather than a single number for the day. Six weekends at eight arrival times is under a hundred sessions, comfortably inside one pass. Add a mid-season weekend later by generating again for those dates; the limit is per generation, not per visit.
When does the money from a weekend actually reach my bank?
Two days after the LAST day of the visit that entry was sold under — and the shape of that sentence matters more than the number. bindro schedules one payout per visit, only once every session of it has ended. Publish your whole autumn as one visit and you get one payment in November covering the entire season, however much sold in September. Publish a visit per weekend, or per week, and you are paid through the season as it runs. Nothing is ever released before delivery, and there is no advance.
Can I sell hayrides, pick-your-own bags and parking as add-ons?
Yes — add-ons are a real catalogue with real stock, not a note on the order. Publish a hayride seat, a pick-your-own bag or a parking space as an add-on with variants and a stock count each, and the visitor buys them in the same checkout as the entry; the stock is decremented inside the same transaction that takes the money, under a constraint that cannot oversell. What add-ons do not carry is a time of their own: a hayride add-on is a thing bought, not a seat on the three o clock trailer, so which ride somebody joins is your team job at the barn door.
Can I sell pick-your-own pumpkins by weight?
No — nothing on bindro reads a scale or prices anything per pound. Entries and add-ons have a price each, and the till sells items at the price you set them, so a bag of ten pounds and a bag of thirty are either the same product at the same price or two products at two prices. Farms that price by weight keep doing that on whatever they weigh with today; bindro handles the gate, the pre-sold bag and the shop items with a fixed price.
Do the farm shop and the cider stand work on bindro?
Yes, both — this vertical declares a merch till and a food and drink till, and they are the same till with a kind on each item, gated separately. Sell hoodies and pumpkins on one, doughnuts and hot cider on the other, from any browser on the counter. One thing to understand about the money: those takings are recorded as your sales and never enter the platform ledger, so they are never part of a payout. That is deliberate. The card machine paid you directly; crediting your bindro balance too would pay you twice.
Can I take a card at the gate from somebody who just turned up?
Yes, on card. The door till sells an entry on the spot and the payment is captured by the provider on your device, so the walk-up joins the same session, counts against the same capacity and scans like any other entry. Cash-recorded entry sales are deliberately not implemented: bindro never held that money, and crediting your balance for it would pay you for the same admission twice. If a slot is full the walk-up is refused for the same reason a booking would be.
How do wristbands work, and how does a band get on a visitor wrist?
A band is bound to one visitor and then scans exactly like their entry code, interchangeably — the door resolves either. Only the HMAC of the band identifier is stored, so a stolen database row is not a working band. Binding is a field on the visitor list in the console, or an API call for a farm issuing bands in bulk from its own kit. Bands are not required. Scan the code in the confirmation email and the offline door, re-entry and conflict queue all behave identically.
Can I roster my gate and maze staff in bindro?
Yes — there is a rota, and today shifts appear on the day-of page next to the numbers you are watching. Put a member on a session with a role and a start and end time; rostering the same person again edits their shift rather than stacking a second one, and inverted times, unknown roles and unknown sessions are refused. One thing a shift is not: permission. Being on the rota grants nobody access to anything — what a member can see and do is their role in your organisation and nothing else.
How does sales tax work on an entry?
You set a percentage per visit and it is added on top of the price the visitor sees, US price-exclusive style; tax-inclusive VAT is not implemented and is not claimed. Tax never counts towards the platform fee. Now the part to plan around: the tax collected is held on a remittance account, it is not part of your payout, and bindro files nothing with any state and produces no return. Refunds give the tax back to the buyer correctly. Treat the rate as a way to charge and show tax on an order, and keep your filing exactly where it is.
Can I sell farm gift cards for the autumn?
Yes — a gift card is real stored value on your organisation, bought on its own page and redeemed at checkout like any other tender. Because it is tender and not a discount, the sale it is spent on is still the full price, you are credited the whole of it, and the platform fee is charged as it would be on a card. Two consequences worth knowing: an unredeemed card is a liability and can never be paid out to you until somebody spends it, and only the HMAC of the code is stored, so nobody — including you — can read a code back out of the console.
Can I offer a group rate for a school visit or a birthday party?
Yes, as a rule the checkout applies by itself. On the entry type you set a group price each and the party size it starts at — "twelve or more pay less" — and a booking that reaches that size is priced at the group rate on the server, where the price is always derived, so nobody can talk their way into it from a stale page. If you would rather handle a particular school by hand, a separate entry type at the party price or a promo code for that one booking both still work. None of the three changes the roster behaviour: a party of twelve is still twelve places to name.
Can I put the booking page on my own farm website?
Yes, two ways. Every visit gets a hosted page that works on its own — one page, server-rendered, fast on a bad rural connection, and the thing to link from Facebook when the forecast turns. Or embed the widget in your existing site so the booking happens under your own domain and header. Both take the same money through the same checkout with the same slot inventory behind them; the choice is presentation, not capability.
Who on my team can see the money?
Whoever you give a role that includes it, and nobody else — gate staff can be members who check visitors in without ever seeing a payout. Financial reports show what sold, what was refunded, what the fee was and what is due, and every list you can see you can export, which is how the weather playbook works when you need to mail everybody booked for tomorrow. A shift on the rota grants nothing on its own.
What visitors ask
Can I get a refund if the forecast is terrible?
Yes, in full and without asking anybody, right up to the moment your slot starts. The confirmation email carries a link that refunds your own order — that link is the authorisation, so keep it to yourself — and the money goes back the way it came. After your slot has started the decision belongs to the farm and you should contact them. The farm cannot set a notice period or hold a fee back through bindro, so what you see is what you get.
What time should we arrive?
At the arrival time on your entry — that is the thing you actually bought. A slot is a window for coming in, not a booked activity: once you are on the farm, how long you stay is up to you and the light. Re-entry is allowed at pumpkin patches, so walking back to the car for wellies and coming in again is normal and your entry keeps working. Arriving an hour early does not move your slot, and on a busy Saturday a farm with a full gate may well ask you to wait for your time.
I booked four entries — why is the farm asking me for names?
Because a booking for more than one person is a roster, and a place nobody has named will not scan at the gate. You will have had an email with a link to your booking; open it, put a name on each place, and all four entries work. If you turn up without having done it, the farm can usually sort it out on a phone at the gate, but on a busy Saturday morning that is the queue you do not want to be in. Fill it in the night before.
Can I give my entry to a friend or move it to another day?
No to both, and it is better to know now than at the gate. Entries at pumpkin patches cannot be transferred to somebody else and cannot be moved to another date — bindro has no reschedule and no credit note for this vertical. What you can do is refund yourself in full from the link in your confirmation email up until your slot starts, and book the day that suits you. If the farm is fully booked for the day you want, there is no waiting list to join.
Do I need to print anything?
No — your confirmation email carries the code and a phone screen at the gate is enough. Screenshot it before you leave home, because farms are exactly where mobile data stops working: the gate scanner does not need signal, but your email app does. Some farms bind a wristband to your entry instead, in which case the band is what gets scanned. Either way there is nothing to print and nothing to collect from a box office.
Is the maze pushchair friendly, and can we bring the dog?
Ask the farm — bindro sells the entry and the farm knows its own fields. The booking page has a free-text box for access requirements and its answer goes straight to the farm, which is the right place to say you need a step-free route, a quiet arrival or space for a wheelchair. Understand what that box is: it tells the farm what you need. It does not reserve anything, and nothing on bindro promises a route is passable in October mud.
Can we just turn up and pay at the gate?
Sometimes — farms can sell an entry on card at the gate, and the walk-up counts against the same capacity as everybody who booked. Which means the honest answer on a sunny half-term Saturday is: book first. If the slot you want says "Fully booked" it is genuinely full, walk-ups included, and there is no list to join and no notification when somebody refunds. Cash at the gate is up to the individual farm and is not something bindro records.
What does bindro NOT do for a farm?
A capability this vertical does not declare is refused by the engine rather than quietly missing, so it is listed here rather than left to be discovered.
- Every place on a booking of more than one entry must be named before the gate will admit it. A farm sells "four entries" and bindro makes a roster of four places, emails the booker a link and refuses any place still unnamed — on the offline door list and on a live scan alike. The booking page never asks for those names, because this vertical asks its questions of the order rather than of each visitor, so a family that ignores the roster email arrives with four entries that do not work. Tell your booker to fill it in, or sell single-entry orders, or budget for naming places at the gate on a phone.
- bindro will not tell you the weekend is washed out. Calling a day off is one control — it takes the day off sale and settles every booking on it as a refund, a credit or a kept booking, and emails each family if you ask it to — but nothing in the product reads a forecast, so the decision and its timing are yours. There is no general message tool either: that cancellation mail is the only one bindro sends to a day's visitors, so a change of parking still goes out from your own tool.
- bindro cannot price by weight or by the barrow. A group rate, a per-person add-on and a party price are all real controls now, but pick-your-own sold by the pound is not: nothing reads a scale, and entries and add-ons each have a price you set. Weighing at the gate stays on whatever you use today.
- bindro ships no scanner app. The offline door is an interface — a signed manifest your device downloads over wifi, scans validated on the device with no network, and a replay that uploads them later — and you or an integrator supply the thing that holds a camera. The console can check a visitor in one at a time from any browser, which is enough for a small gate and is not a queue of two hundred cars.
- bindro does not put a wristband on anybody, and does not sell you the bands. What it does is bind one: a band is bound to a visitor from the visitor list in the console or through the API, only its HMAC is stored, and the door then admits that band exactly as it admits a code. A farm not using bands scans the code in the confirmation email and everything else works the same.
- bindro does not sell pick-your-own by weight. Nothing on the platform reads a scale or prices anything per pound: entries and add-ons have a price each, and the till sells items at the price you set them. Weighing the barrow at the gate stays on whatever you use today.
- Money taken at the tills is never paid out to you, because it never left you. The merch till and the food and drink till record what you sold so your numbers are complete, and those takings deliberately never enter the platform ledger — crediting your balance for money bindro never held would pay you for it twice. Cash-recorded entry sales are not implemented at all for the same reason; the gate till takes cards.
- bindro does not remit your sales tax and does not pay it to you. You set a rate per visit, the buyer is charged it on top of the price, and it is held on a remittance account and left out of your payout. Nothing is filed with any state and no return is produced. Treat the rate as a way to show tax on an order, not as a tax service.
- No transfers and no date changes. A visitor who cannot come on Saturday cannot hand their entry to a neighbour or move it to Sunday: this vertical resolves neither ticket transfer nor deferral, and there is no credit note. On a weather-dependent day out that is the request you will get most often, and the only lever is a refund.
- No waiting list. When a slot is gone the page says "Fully booked" and stops — nobody joins a list, nobody is emailed when an entry is refunded, and a refunded entry does not return to sale by itself. If you want to resell it, raise that slot capacity by one.
- No season pass and no autumn membership. A pass that admits all season sits in this vertical optional list, which means the engine refuses it, so "come back any time in October" cannot be sold as one product. A gift card is the nearest real thing — it is stored value, not an entry, and it is redeemed at checkout like any other tender.
- No donation box. A patch raising money for a cause raises it in the entry price: this vertical does not resolve the donation add-on, so there is no "add a donation" control at checkout and nothing issues a receipt for a gift.
- bindro does not pay out mid-season. One visit gets exactly one payout, scheduled only once its last day has ended and released two days later. A whole autumn published as a single visit therefore pays once, in November — publish a visit per weekend if you need the money while the season is still running.
- bindro cannot enforce your refund policy. Every visitor can refund themselves in full from the link in their confirmation email, right up to the moment their slot starts — there is no notice window to configure and no fee to withhold. After the slot has started the decision is yours alone, from the console.
- bindro does not manage your car park, your queue or your access provision. Vehicle registration and access requirements are questions whose answers are stored and shown to you; nothing reserves a space, nothing holds a spot on the tractor and nothing promises a wheelchair-friendly route. Selling parking as an add-on with its own stock is real; directing the cars is yours.
What else should I read?
Pumpkin patches and corn mazes: the overview
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