How do payment links work?

Send a customer a secure payment page by email, text or QR code — for a deposit, a pay-in-full balance, extras, a no-show fee or any other amount — and see every link in one place.

A payment link is how your team collects a card payment for a booking without ever handling card numbers.

How to send one

• Open the booking, go to its Money tab and, on its Payments card, press Take a payment → Send a payment link. (Without a connected Stripe account the choice is greyed, with the reason.)
• Choose what it's for — Deposit, Pay in full, Extras, No-show or Other. (Once the booking has already paid a deposit or paid in full, only Extras, No-show and Other appear.)
• Say what it's for in the box under it, in a few words (up to 80 characters) — for example "Prosecco on arrival". A deposit, a payment in full and a no-show payment start with their own words, which you can change; for Extras and Other you must fill it in. With Extras, tap one of your extras to fill in its name and price. The customer sees these words on the payment page, in the email (and the text, when they fit) and on their receipt — say what the payment is for, not who it's for.
• Enter the amount — between £0.30 and £5,000.
• Tick Email and/or Text message to send it straight to the customer, or create the link and show the QR code for them to scan at the table.

From the Payments page: press New payment link to make one without opening the booking first. Find the booking by the guest's name, phone or email (bookings still to come), choose A booking's deposit (only while no deposit is paid) or A booking's bill, enter the amount, then tick Email and/or Text message — or neither — and press Make the link. The next window shows the link: its QR code to scan and its address to tap and copy.

The customer pays securely on their own phone — card, Apple Pay or Google Pay — and the money goes to your connected Stripe account.

What happens next

• Links last 72 hours, and each one takes exactly one payment. A link's address is shown only once, in the window that opens when it's made — copy it or show its QR code there. It can't be shown again once you close that window (ResoFlow never keeps it), but its status always shows on the booking and in the Payment links list. If a guest has lost theirs, void it and make a new one.
• The booking's chip flips from Awaiting payment to Paid the moment the customer pays, and the customer is emailed a receipt — what it was for, the amount, the day and, where known, the card they paid with. The receipt is always sent; it has no switch (it's listed under Always sent on Settings → Communications → Customer notifications).
• Sending it again: while a link is open, Email again and Text again beside it (on the booking, and in the Payment links list on the Payments page) send the same link to the customer once more, with a fresh short address. You can't send the same link twice within a minute, and a text uses your text credits like any other text.
• On the booking: the booking's Payments card shows the deposit and each link as its own line — "Deposit £20.00 · Paid online", "Payment link for Prosecco on arrival £15.00 · Paid online" — never one growing figure; an open link reads Link sent (and counts in Still to pay), one that ran out Link expired. Everything paid on top (your extras and any Extras or Other link) shows as one small chip on the booking's row on the Bookings list, Home, the Timeline and the floor plan's booking card — "2 · £35" — and a paid no-show payment has its own chip. While a link is open, the booking's row on the Bookings list and Home also shows a small amber £ chip, so you can spot who still owes money at a glance (hover it for what's awaited).
• A deposit link marks the deposit paid, a pay-in-full link marks the booking paid in full, an extras link adds to its extras total, and a no-show link shows the customer a properly-worded No-show fee payment page rather than a vague "additional payment".
• You can Void an open link at any time, and cancelling the booking voids its open links automatically (the customer is emailed if the link had been sent to them). If a link is somehow paid after it stopped applying — say the booking was cancelled in the same moment — the payment is refunded automatically.
• Paid at the venue instead: if the customer pays your venue in cash or on your card machine and your team presses Mark paid in person, any open link for the same money is cancelled at once (the customer is emailed that it's no longer needed), so they can't pay twice. On a booking with a payment plan, Take a payment → Send a payment link starts with the rest of the payment (or a deposit still owed), prefilled with what's still owed — see How do payment plans and paying at the venue work?
• Creating a link needs the booking-edit permission and a connected Stripe account. There's no way to type a customer's card number in yourself — that's deliberate, for the customer's card security and yours.

What the customer sees

Before paying, the customer sees a short "By paying you agree to…" line linking the right terms for what the link is for: a booking payment links your venue's cancellation policy and Booking Terms (the same assembled policy your online booking page shows), while a gift-card link shows the Gift Card Terms. The page itself leads with what the payment is for — your own words from the link (for example "Prosecco on arrival") — then the booking's date, time and reference, the Total to pay and when the link stops working; the customer taps Continue to payment, the card form opens in the page, and the same button then shows the amount to pay. Once it's paid they see "Payment received — thank you", and if the payment is ever refunded the page tells them how much went back to their card and that it can take a few days to show. And where you offer the My account page (on every plan, and with the Gift cards, Loyalty, paid Tickets and Order & Pay products), a customer with an open link on a booking also sees an amber note on that booking's card — naming the amount still owed and pointing them at the secure link from their email or text, or your phone number — handy when they've lost the original message.

Refunds, the Payments tab and how long links are kept

Refunding a paid link: use the refund tools in ResoFlow to keep the payment and booking records together. On the booking's Payments card, click Refund… under a paid link: refund the full amount or part of it, either as a fixed amount (£) or a percentage (%) of what's left of that payment (worked out on what's still refundable and rounded down to the penny — 50% twice refunds half, then half of the rest), and confirm with your password or a manager's PIN — it needs the same refund permission as deposit refunds. The money goes back to the card the customer paid on, they're emailed, and the link shows Refunded once the whole payment is back (a part-refunded link stays Paid online on the booking — Paid in the Payment links list — with a note showing how much has gone back). In the rare case an automatic refund permanently fails, the link shows Refund needs attention with a Retry refund button. Two kinds of link refund elsewhere: a link that paid for a customer-made change (a pre-order, added extras or a party-size change) is refunded from the booking itself — the payment card's Refund…, the Extras card's Refund extras… or the pre-order's Refund dishes… — and a gift-card link is refunded from the Gift Cards page, which also settles the card.

Seeing every link in one place: the Payment links tab on the Payments page (in the sidebar under Money) lists all your links — booking links and gift-card links together — with an Awaiting payment view (who still hasn't paid, without opening bookings one by one) and an All links view showing paid, expired, voided and refunded links too, each with its amount, purpose, times and a jump to its booking or gift card. The list doesn't show a link's address — that is shown only once, when the link is made. (Like the rest of the Payments page, it needs the financial-reports permission; Settings → Payouts and Stripe keeps a row pointing there.)

How long a link is kept: each payment link is kept for 13 months from the day it was created, then deleted. The guest's details on it are blanked earlier, when your retention period for that record passes. The booking, order, ticket or gift card it paid for keeps its own payment record — that is the money record, and it stays for the life of your account.

Gift cards use payment links too — staff can sell a gift card or activate a physical one by link, and the card is only created (or activated) when the payment lands. See How do I sell gift cards? and Physical gift cards. Related: How do pay-in-full bookings work? · How do I sell extras with bookings? · How do I cancel a booking (and what happens to the deposit)?

If an automatic refund needs checking: Refund being checked means ResoFlow is still verifying the payment provider’s outcome; it does not confirm that the money has been returned. Pending or uncertain attempts are checked again automatically without starting a second repayment. Refund needs attention means a staff member must review it. Retry refund checks the original payment and existing refund first, and starts another attempt only when the previous attempt is confirmed to have failed and the full amount is still available to return. If the original payment or an older attempt cannot be verified, contact support; the system keeps it open for review. The link shows Refunded, and a completion email is attempted, only after the full return is confirmed.