For owners
Getting started
Five steps take a bunkhouse from nothing to taking real bookings, and none of them needs a developer. The first takes a minute, you can try everything before any money moves, and going live is a button.
The steps
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Sign up
Sign up with the bunkhouse’s name, the address guests will book at, and your email address. Open the link we email you, and the bunkhouse is ready, with you signed in as its first admin.
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Try it out
Every new bunkhouse starts in test mode. Book, pay, change and cancel as a guest would: paying is a pretend button, and no money moves. Emails go only to you, your staff and anyone you invite to see them, marked [Test]. Guests who find your pages are told they are for test bookings only.
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Set up the rooms and beds
Add your rooms and their beds, your three prices, how big a deposit you take and when the balance is due, and your cancellation terms. Choose your colours, the name guests see and how the emails are signed, and invite the rest of your staff. Bookings you already have can come in from a spreadsheet, so the old diary is not retyped.
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Connect Stripe
Press Connect with Stripe under Settings, Payments. Stripe asks who you are and the bank account your money goes to, and makes the bunkhouse a Stripe account of its own. It takes about ten minutes, and you can do it while you are still trying things out. What Stripe is, and why you need it.
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Go live
Once Stripe says your account can take payments, press Go live under Settings, Test mode. Guests pay by card from then on, emails go to everybody they are for, and the bookings you made while trying it out are cleared away, unless you keep them. Until a real guest books, you can go back to test mode.
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Optional
Use your own domain
If you would like guests to book at a domain of your own, such as book.yourbunkhouse.co.uk, ask for it under Settings, Book on your website. It shows you one record to add where your domain is registered; we attach the domain, usually within a working day, and email you when guests can book there. Without one, guests book at the address you chose when you signed up.
Step 4, explained
What Stripe is, and why you need it
Stripe is a payments company. It takes card payments online for millions of businesses, from sole traders to very large ones, and pays the money into their bank accounts.
Guests pay when they book. A booking made online is paid for online, by card, there and then: the deposit, or the whole stay if it is soon. Stripe is what takes that payment. Without it, BunkhousePage can take no money, and a bunkhouse cannot go live.
The money goes straight to you. The Stripe account is yours, not ours, so guests’ payments go into it and on to your bank. They never pass through us. Stripe takes its own card fee (1.5% + 20p for a UK card) and BunkhousePage’s 2% as each payment is made, and pays the rest into your bank three working days later. The first payment a new account takes waits seven days. See what a £60 booking comes to.
Nobody at the bunkhouse sees a card number. Guests type their card details on Stripe’s own page. Stripe keeps the card and tells the app only that it was paid, which spares you the rules that come with handling card details yourself.
It collects the balance and makes the refunds. Stripe keeps the card for the one later charge the guest agreed to, so the balance is taken on the day it is due. Refunds go back to the same card.
Opening an account takes the bunkhouse’s details and the bank account the money should be paid into, and Stripe checks who you are before it pays anything out. Staff can still take cash or use a card terminal (not provided by BunkhousePage) at the desk; those are recorded against the booking without going through Stripe.
Start with step one
If you run a bunkhouse or a small hostel, sign up and try it. Test mode costs nothing, and so does a month without online bookings.
Questions first? Write to hello@bunkhouse.page.
See how guests book and the staff dashboard, or what it will cost.