Venues & Ownership

Venues

Venues are a core part of event creation. Informativ uses a dual-ownership model to ensure proper management.

Adding a Venue

When you create an event, you can add a new venue by providing the name and address. The system automatically normalizes the data and checks for duplicates:

• Matching logic: Compares name + address (case-insensitive). If a match is found, the existing venue is reused.
• Field requirements: Name, address, city, state, and country are required.

The Two Ownership Fields

Every venue has two person references:

• added_by: The person who initially created the venue record. This could be an organizer creating a venue during event setup.
• owner_uuid: The verified owner of the venue. This is null until proven via ownership verification.

Important: A venue cannot be made available for booking until its ownership document has been verified and the owner has their banking account approved by a ROOT admin (Profile → Banking) — same requirement as every other publishable listing on the platform. Only the owner can manage the venue's settings.

Managing Your Venues

Enable Venue Management in Profile → Feature Access to get the Venue Manager role, then go to Dashboard → Venues to add a venue: name, description, type (guest house, lodge, B&B, pub, bar, club, café, restaurant, etc.), capacity, address, and photos. Accommodation venues set check-in/check-out times on the venue form; Restaurant / Bar venues set their weekly operational hours from the venue's Opening Hours page instead.

Every venue type sits under a category, and the category decides your tools: Accommodation / Lodging (guest house, lodge, B&B) gets room booking, meal plans, and the room shop below; Restaurant / Bar (bar, pub, club, café, restaurant, grill) gets operational hours, table/space reservations, and Menu & QR Table Ordering. Corporate Space (conference centre, auditorium, business / co-working centre) gets bookable meeting and conference rooms - see the Meeting & Conference Spaces article. Commercial & Professional Space (recording, rehearsal and podcast studio) gets bookable studios with your own services list - see the Studios article. The venue type dropdown is grouped by category.

If you run more than one kind of business at the same place - say a lodge with its own restaurant - tick the extra category under Also offers on the venue form and you get both sets of tools. A venue left on "Not sure yet" has no category and no tools until you pick a type.

Every venue kind can list Offerings & Amenities - from the venue's page → Manage Offerings, tick the facilities guests can expect (Free WiFi, Secure Parking, Pool, Backup Power, Wheelchair Access, and more) and add your own free-text entries for anything not on the list. They show as chips on your public page.

Start typing in Address Line 1 and pick a suggestion to auto-fill City, Province/State, and Country - no need to type them separately.

The dashboard side menu's Venues section lists the everyday tools of the venue you're working on (or of your only venue): room bookings and room types, the order boards, reservations, the menu, and the staff schedule - whichever apply to that venue. There's also an Add Venue shortcut.

Ownership Verification

From the venue's page, upload a document proving ownership (deed, utility bill, lease, etc.) and click Submit for Review. A ROOT admin reviews it from Dashboard → Users and approves or rejects it with a reason. Approval assigns you the VENUE_OWNER role and unlocks Make Available for Booking on the venue.

Venue Banking Details

Owners can add banking details specifically for their venue. These are used to receive payouts for venue bookings.

Room Booking (Accommodation)

For Accommodation venues (or any venue that ticks Accommodation under Also offers), once ownership is verified go to the venue's page → Rooms to add room types (name, nightly rate, number of rooms, sleeps-how-many, photos). Activate a room type to make it publicly bookable.

Guests pick dates, quantity, and party size on the venue's public page; the system checks live availability so rooms can't be double-booked, then charges the full stay via Yoco up front (no deposit). Once paid, mark the guest Checked In on arrival and Checked Out on departure from the venue's Bookings page. Room bookings are charged the standard 8% venue booking commission.

Meal Plans

An Accommodation venue can offer breakfast, lunch, and dinner as add-ons to a room booking - go to the venue's page → Meal Plans and set a name and price per guest, per night for each. A guest ticks whichever meals they want when booking; the cost (price × party size × nights) is added to the room total and paid in the same Yoco checkout - no separate payment step.

Table/Space Reservations (Restaurant / Bar)

For Restaurant / Bar venues (bar, pub, club, café, restaurant, grill, etc. - or any venue that ticks Restaurant / Bar under Also offers), once ownership is verified go to the venue's page → Manage Spaces to add reservable tables/spaces (name, seats, slot duration, buffer time, optional reservation fee), and Opening Hours to set your weekly schedule plus one-off exceptions (holidays, closures). Activate a space to make it publicly reservable.

Guests pick a date on the venue's public page and see live available time slots for that space; reservations with a fee are paid via Yoco, free ones confirm instantly. Mark a reservation Completed from the venue's Reservations page once the guest has been seated. Cancellation and refund rules are the same as room bookings (48-hour free-cancellation window, 50% fee inside it for guest cancellations; full refund for venue-initiated cancellations), and reservations are charged the same 8% venue booking commission.

A confirmed reservation gets its own QR code, shown on the guest's My Venue Reservations page. Door staff (granted the "Scan Reservations" team permission — separate from managing venue bookings) can check guests in on the mobile app's Scan Reservations screen — a pending, cancelled, or already-checked-in reservation can't be scanned again.

VAT & Invoices (Rooms and Reservations)

Room rates, meal plan prices and reservation fees are set before VAT. If you're VAT registered (Profile → Company Details), VAT is added on top at checkout - your public venue page shows "excl. VAT" under each price - and the guest pays the VAT-inclusive total. The 8% commission is only taken on the ex-VAT amount; the VAT goes to your balance in full for you to pay over. Refunds and the 50% late-cancellation fee are worked out on the total the guest paid, VAT included.

Once a room booking or reservation is paid, open it from the venue's Bookings or Reservations page and click Download Invoice (a Tax Invoice with your VAT number when VAT applies). Guests get the same invoice from My Venue Bookings / My Venue Reservations and from their booking confirmation. Free reservations have no invoice.

Menu & QR Table Ordering

Restaurant / Bar venues manage a Menu (categories and items with price, description, photo) and print a QR code per physical table from Dashboard → Venues → a venue → QR Tables. A customer scans the code, browses the menu with no login required, confirms their age if ordering an alcoholic item, and places the order.

Your menu page. Dishes are listed by category the way customers read them: name, dotted line, price. Use the switch on a dish to take it off ordering when it's sold out (it's dimmed and marked Off) and switch it back on later; the … menu has Edit, Options and Delete. To delete several dishes at once, tap Select, tick them (or use Select all on a category), then tap Delete in the bar at the bottom. The bar at the top searches your menu, shows only dishes that are On, Off or short on stock, and jumps to a category. + Add an item opens the form for a dish of your own.

Already have a printed menu? On Menu, tap Import from photo or PDF and upload a photo, screenshot or PDF of it. For the best result, shoot straight on in good light with the whole menu and its prices in the frame. Reading takes about a minute per page. Next you'll see every dish we read beside your menu: fix any name or price, add sizes, untick what you don't want, then tap Add to my menu. Nothing is added until you do, dishes already on your menu are skipped, and the uploaded file is deleted once you finish or cancel.

Running more than one restaurant? On the second venue's Menu, tap Copy from another venue, pick the venue whose menu you want, tick the categories, and choose whether photos, options and recipes come along. Copying only adds: dishes already on this menu are skipped, categories with the same name are reused, and alcoholic dishes are skipped if this venue can't sell alcohol. Recipes are linked to this venue's own ingredients by name; any it doesn't have yet are added with no stock, so count them on the Ingredients page. Prices are copied as they are, so change any that differ at this venue.

Quick start: Pick from List. On Menu, tap Pick from List to see a ready-made list of common dishes and drinks: kotas, lunch boxes, dagwoods, burgers, chicken, shisa nyama, pizza, breakfast, chips, sides, extras, desserts, cold and hot drinks, and alcohol if your venue can sell it. If your customers say Skhambane, Skambani, Sphatlo, Mangola or Bunny Chow instead of Kota, pick that word at the top of the Kota group (or type your own) and it's used for the category and every item in it. Tick what you sell, adjust what's in it if yours is different, type your price, and optionally give it your own name (e.g. The Boss); a named item keeps what's in it as its description. Selling something in sizes or versions (Small / Medium / Large, 6 / 12 / 18 wings, plain or with chips)? Use Sizes or versions on the item: give each one a price and each is added as its own menu item, e.g. Slap Chips (Large), so it works the same at the table, the counter and online. Chips, pizza, wings and similar items come with their sizes filled in, ready for prices. The board on the right shows your menu as customers will read it. Tap Add to my menu. Each item is put under a category of its group's name, which is created if you don't have it yet. Items already on your menu are marked so you don't add them twice. Add photos, serving windows, recipes and options afterwards from each item's edit page.

Quick start for ingredients: Pick from List. On Ingredients, tap Pick from List for a ready-made list of kitchen stock: bread, wraps, chips and potatoes, polony, special, vienna, russian, patties, chicken, ribs, eggs, cheese, vegetables and fruit, sauces, shake and bar stock, cold drinks and packaging. The Counted in box suggests common units (each, slice, kg, litre, tot and so on). Tick what you use, check the unit it's counted in (slice, each, kg, litre), type how much is on the shelf, and optionally set a low-stock warning level and a cost per unit. Salt, spices and sauces start with Count this stock unticked, so they show on recipes but are never deducted; you can change that. The stock-take sheet on the right shows your count as you go. Tap Add to my ingredients, then attach them to menu items as recipes.

Important: QR orders are not paid through the platform — the customer settles up in person with staff (cash, card machine, tab), the same as any walk-in order. No commission is charged on QR orders. Staff fulfill orders from the Order Board, moving each one through New → Preparing → Ready → Served (or cancelling it). Drag a card to the next column (or tap its button); it can jump ahead, e.g. straight from New to Ready, but never back. Drop it on Done today to mark it served, or on the red bar that appears at the bottom to cancel it. The board updates itself: new orders and moves made by other staff appear within a few seconds, with a chime you can switch off. Cards turn amber, then red, when an order runs past its kitchen time. Across the top you'll see today's open orders, longest wait, order count, sales, average time from order to served, and cancellations. Give a team member the venue.orders permission via Dashboard → Team to let them work the Order Board without full venue management access.

Assigning staff to this venue and to tables/sections: from the venue's page → QR Tables you can group tables into Sections (e.g. "Patio", "Main Floor"). Then, from → Manage Team, pick which of your team members (who already have the venue.orders permission) work this specific venue, and optionally scope each one to specific tables and/or sections. A staff member with no scope set sees and is notified of every order, exactly as before; give someone a scope and they only see and get notified about orders for their own tables/sections, plus anything on a table nobody else has specifically claimed.

Online Ordering (Takeaway, Collection & Delivery)

A Restaurant / Bar venue can also take orders from its menu online, paid up front - so there's no cash to collect. From the venue's page → Online Ordering Settings, tick Takeaway (collect as soon as it's ready), Collection (collect at a day and time the customer chooses), and/or Delivery, set your preparation time (shown to customers, and the earliest collection time today), and an optional minimum order.

For delivery, choose who takes orders out: Our own driver - you set a flat delivery fee, paid to you with no commission, plus an optional delivery area in km (checked when the customer picks their address from the suggestions); or the Platform delivery fleet - the nearest fleet that does same-day deliveries picks the order up from you, and the customer pays that fleet's price, which goes to the fleet.

Customers order from the Order online button on your public venue page - no account needed - and pay via Yoco. Takeaway is only offered while you're open (per your Opening Hours). Collection and delivery can be ordered ahead: the customer picks a day (any day you're open, skipping the days you're closed) and then a time from that day's opening hours, so an order can be placed for tomorrow or next week, not just for later today. Delivery can also be as soon as possible while you're open. Choose how far ahead customers can order with Order ahead (days) on Online Ordering Settings - 0 for today only, up to 14 days; the default is 7.

Pre-order items: a menu item marked Pre-order only with a notice period (Menu → the item → up to 168 hours) can only be bought as a Collection far enough ahead to meet that notice - never as an order-now Takeaway, Delivery or sit-in QR order. The customer sees the notice period on the item, and if the day they picked is too soon, checkout tells them to pick a later one.

What the customer is emailed: if they give an email address at checkout, they get a confirmation when payment goes through (reference, items, total, the collection day and time or delivery address, and a link to follow the order), and an email if you cancel, telling them what was refunded. There's nothing to switch on.

Paid orders appear on the Online Order Board: New → Preparing → Ready → Collected or Delivered (your own driver adds Out for Delivery; a fleet order ends at Handed to Driver, and the customer gets a driver tracking link). The customer can follow each step on their order page. Like the table Order Board, it updates itself and has today's numbers across the top: open orders, longest wait, the next booked-ahead order, orders and sales today (food and delivery fees), average time from payment to ready, and cancellations with the amount refunded. Drag a card to the next column or tap its button; it can jump ahead along its own path, but a takeaway or collection never goes to Out for Delivery, and a fleet order goes straight from Ready to done. Drop it on the red bar that appears at the bottom to cancel and refund it (only while it's New or Preparing). Orders booked for later count down to their time on the card. A card whose voice note you're playing isn't refreshed until it finishes.

Counter orders and order tokens (no till needed). If you serve walk-in customers at a counter and hand out numbered tokens, open the venue's Counter Orders page (or More → Restaurant / Bar → Counter Orders in the app). Type the number on the token you're handing over, or tap Scan to read a token card's QR code, then tap the items and Create Order. Prices come from your menu. A token can't be on two open orders at once; once its order is collected or cancelled, the same card can go out again. Counter orders are paid in person like QR table orders, with no platform commission, and they appear on your Order Board under their token number, where you move them to Preparing, Ready and Collected. After saving, a big receipt QR appears. If the customer has a phone, they point the camera at it and see the whole receipt (shop, token, time, items and total) without needing internet or an app. The QR holds no customer or payment details. No cut-outs yet? Print Token Cards on the Counter page prints (or downloads as a PDF) numbered cards, any range up to 200 at a time, each with a QR holding its number: cut them out, hand one out with each order, and scan it into the Token field. Don't hand out tokens? Untick Counter orders use numbered tokens on Edit Venue: the Counter page then has no token field, each order is called by its order number (e.g. ORD-7K2QXM) shown on the receipt and the Order Board, and token cards are switched off. Either way, tap Cash or Card to note how the customer paid - it's for your records only, nothing is charged through Informativ. Start each day with a float: before the first sale, enter the cash in the till (R0.00 for an empty drawer) in the Start the day box at the top of the Counter screen, or tap Set float in the app. The box then shows the float, today's cash and card sales, and the expected cash in drawer (float plus cash sales, cancelled orders left out), so you can check the drawer at any time. Got the float wrong? Correct it the same day. Setting it is never required before you can sell. Online Takeaway and Collection orders get their own automatic tokens with a W in front (W01, W02, ...), counted per day, so they never clash with your counter numbers. The customer sees theirs on their order page, receipt and confirmation email. Their receipt has two QR codes: one for you to scan at hand-over, which opens the order on your dashboard with a Mark Collected button (only you and staff with order access can open it), and an offline copy of the receipt for the customer.

Kitchen & Bar screens, and working offline. Run one phone or tablet as the till and others as Kitchen or Bar order screens. On Menu → Categories, set each category to Made in the Kitchen or Made at the Bar (a subcategory can follow its parent). Each screen then shows only its own items from counter and QR table orders, oldest first, with a timer that turns amber, then red, when an order runs late. Tap Start when you begin and Done when your part is ready; once every station is done, the order turns Ready on the till and the Order Board. Tapped Done by mistake? Tap Undo on it in the Done strip. Give each person a duty (Till, Kitchen, Bar or All) on the venue's Team page, and the app opens straight on their screen; with All they choose. For a shared kitchen tablet nobody signs in to, open Kitchen Screens on the venue (web) or the kitchen icon on the till (app), make a pairing code, and on the tablet tap Use as kitchen screen on the app's welcome page and scan it. A paired tablet only ever shows that station's orders, with no money, menu or anything else, and you can unpair it at any time. If the internet drops, the till keeps taking orders from its saved menu, gives out the receipt QR as usual, and uploads them when the connection is back. Prices stay as the till charged them, and anything that changed in the meantime (a price, an item switched off, a token already in use) is flagged Taken offline on the order for you to check. Screens on the same Wi-Fi as the till get new orders straight from it while the internet is down. If a screen can't find the till, tap Connect to till and scan the QR shown under the till's kitchen icon. With no Wi-Fi at all, the till still works on its own.

Online orders are charged a 6% commission on the food and drink only - never on the delivery fee. You can cancel an order while it's New or Preparing, and the customer is refunded in full. If a fleet declines a delivery, the customer is refunded the delivery fee and you deliver the order yourself (or cancel it). Staff with the venue.orders permission can work the Online Order Board; only the owner (or staff with venue management access) can change the settings.

Don't leave a paid order sitting at New. If nobody presses Start Preparing within 10 minutes of when an order should start - the moment it's paid, or for a scheduled order your preparation time before its slot - you and staff with order access get a reminder. If it's still at New 30 minutes past that point, it's cancelled automatically and the customer is refunded in full, with the refund coming off your balance just like a cancellation you make yourself. Each New order on the board shows its start-by and auto-cancel times. So press Start Preparing as soon as the kitchen picks up a ticket, even on a busy night. Unpaid orders (a customer who left the payment page) are cleared after an hour and never reach your board; if the payment does come through later, the order appears as normal.

Customers can also find you in the mobile app. The app's Order Food screen lists every venue taking online orders, and once a customer shares their location it sorts them by distance and can show only the venues that deliver to where they are. Customers can also search by place, suburb or a dish on your menu - so a menu item called "Lamb curry" is how someone searching "curry" finds you. Nothing to switch on: if online ordering is on and your venue is published, you're listed. Your preparation time, minimum order, delivery fee and rating all show on your card, so keeping them accurate is worth doing.

Scheduled orders on your board. An order for later - on the web or in the app - can come in while the kitchen is still shut. It shows the time it's wanted (Deliver at or Collect at), and one for a later day carries an Ordered ahead badge, so the kitchen doesn't start tomorrow's order tonight. When a platform fleet delivers a scheduled order, its driver is booked to collect from you 30 minutes before the delivery time.

Live delivery tracking. Where a platform fleet delivers the order and its driver has turned on Driver Location Sharing, the customer follows the driver on a map in the app. If you deliver with your own driver there's no map (your driver has no vehicle on the platform) - the customer gets an update at each step instead, so moving orders along the board promptly is what keeps them informed.

Push updates. A customer with an account is notified on their phone each time you move their order along - Preparing, Ready, Out for Delivery, Delivered or Collected - and if you cancel it. Guests ordering without an account still get the emails described above.

Ratings. Once an order is collected or delivered, the customer can rate it out of five and leave a comment, and rate the delivery driver separately where a platform fleet brought it. Read them under the venue's Reviews & Ratings page, which shows food ratings and stay ratings together - both make up the rating shown publicly on your venue. Driver ratings are listed there too but count towards the fleet, not you. A poor rating affects your standing the same way a poor review anywhere else on the platform does.

Customers can cancel their own order — but only before you start. While an order is still New on your board, a customer signed in on the app can cancel it themselves and is refunded in full. The moment you tap Start Preparing that option disappears for them and they're told to call you instead, so you're never left holding food nobody is paying for. You can still cancel while it's New or Preparing, exactly as before. When a customer does cancel, you get a push and an in-app notification saying not to prepare it — worth watching for on a busy service. A fleet-delivered order also stops being cancellable once a driver has been dispatched.

Ordering again. From My Food Orders in the app a customer can repeat a past order in one tap. Anything no longer on your menu is dropped and they're told, and any price that has changed since is shown before they continue - so an old order never quietly bills them at an old price.

Options (No onions, Large, Extra cheese). On Menu → an item → Options, add option groups - e.g. Remove (No onions, No tomato), Size (Regular, Large) or Extras (Cheese) - and set how many the customer must pick (0 makes the group optional) and may pick (leave it blank for no limit, or 1 for a single choice such as a size). Give an option an extra price and it's added per item; it counts towards your minimum order and the 6% commission like the rest of the food. Switch an option off when you run out rather than deleting it. If a required group has no options left switched on, the item can't be ordered online until you fix it - the editor warns you. Each line on your board shows the options picked and any note the customer wrote for that dish. When a customer orders again, the same picks are kept where you still offer them. Options apply to online orders (web and app) only, not QR table or counter orders.

Voice notes. At checkout a customer can record up to a minute of extra instructions for you - directions to the gate, or an allergy they'd rather explain. Play it from the order's card on the Online Order Board or on the pickup scan page; only you and staff with order access can hear it, and the board doesn't refresh while it's playing. Your new-order notification tells you when one is attached. Recordings are stored encrypted and deleted 30 days after the order is completed or cancelled.

Room Shop (Room QR Ordering, Accommodation only)

An Accommodation venue can sell items - snacks, toiletries, gift-shop stock, and now food or alcohol too - that guests order and pay for from their room. This is a separate system from Menu & QR Table Ordering above (which is for Restaurant / Bar venues): it's paid through the platform (there's no waiter to collect cash from a guest in their room), so a commission applies.

• From the venue's page, turn on the Room Shop, then go to Rooms & QR Codes to add each physical room (e.g. Room 101) - every room gets its own printable QR code.
• Go to Shop Catalog to add items: name, price, photo, description, and an available/unavailable toggle. If your venue type serves alcohol, or you've ticked Restaurant / Bar under Also offers, you can also flag an item Alcoholic - a guest ordering it must confirm they're of legal drinking age at checkout, the same rule as Menu & QR Table Ordering.
• A guest scans their room's QR code (no login needed), picks items and quantities, enters their name, confirms their age if the order includes alcohol, and pays via Yoco. The platform's room shop commission is deducted and the rest credited to your account balance, same as any other earning.
• Fulfill paid orders from the Order Board, moving each one through New → Preparing → Delivered (or cancelling it while it's New or Preparing - the guest is refunded in full; any tip they left stays with you). Only paid orders appear here.
• Tips: once their order is paid, a guest can leave a one-time tip (a preset percentage of the order or a custom amount) from their order status page - a separate payment raised after the sale, not part of the original bill. It's commissioned the same as the sale itself and lands in the same account balance as your other room shop earnings, so it pays out together.