A booking request is how your organization engages performers directly, without posting an opportunity first. You choose one or more acts for a night, send them a request, and each tells you whether they're available. You pick who to book, pay, and ARRIVE prices, contracts and pays the booking on your organization's account.
Find it under Marketplace → Bookings → New Booking. You need the Bookings permission to open it, Bookings · Create to send requests and to book someone, Bookings · Edit to stop a request or cancel a booking, and Bookings · Approve to sign the booking agreement.
Before you can book
Your organization must be verified. Booking itself is free — ARRIVE earns its commission and service fee on the booking, not on a subscription. Until you are verified:
- The list of services on the booking form comes back empty.
- Pricing a request is refused with "Your organization must be verified to view this."
- Sending one is refused with "Your organization must be verified before you can do this.", or "Your organization is in read-only mode. Update billing to re-enable this." if your plan has lapsed.
Sending a request
1. Services — search approved services and add the ones you want; a card you have chosen reads Selected ✓. Only services ARRIVE has approved, from approved performers, appear. What you have chosen sits in a bar at the foot of the page: how many, the total of the agreed amounts, Edit selection and Continue. Edit selection opens a panel (a sheet from the bottom on a phone) where each act has an Agreed amount, in the performer's currency and labelled with it, filled in from its rate where it has one, which you can change — it is the price you negotiated, not a fixed rate card. Each act’s agreed amount must be at least $100, or $140 CAD for an act priced in Canadian dollars. Every act also has Duration (hours), filled in from the listing’s run time where it has one; for a service priced by the hour, the amount is the hourly rate times the hours until you type your own. Close the panel to go back to browsing. Continue waits until every act has an amount and its hours, and the bar names the one still missing.
Every act you add is its own spot unless, in the panel, you set its Spot to Alternative to … another act. Alternatives share one spot: you ask several acts, and you will book only one of them. You can ask up to 12 acts in one send.
2. The event — the Date (required), the Start time (required) and About the event (required) — every act you ask reads it, so don't name the others. The start time is in your location's time zone; with no location, in your organization's. The booking keeps that time zone, and its time is always shown in it. If your organization already has an event on that date at the same location and start time, the request joins it and keeps its title. If an event that day is at a different time or place, you're asked whether to Update the event to this booking's time and place, Attach anyway (the event keeps its own time), or Make a new event — nothing is attached without asking, and if the request can't be sent the event is left as it was. Otherwise a new event is created, and you give it an Event title (required) — for example Friday Jazz Night. The title and About the event can’t include contact details or off-platform payment terms. You will decide by is the date by which you promise to choose — see below. Location, space, program and internal notes are optional.
3. Review — ARRIVE prices each request and shows, for every act, the Agreed amount, the Service fee and the Total, in exact dollars and cents. For a single request the last line reads Total if booked; for several, the figure if you booked every spot at its highest-priced alternative. The service fee is non-refundable if you cancel. If the performer cancels or doesn't show, ARRIVE refunds you in full, including the fee. Nothing is charged when you send. Press Send request (or Send N requests).
Every figure — the service fee, ARRIVE's commission, the performer's payout and the total — is computed on ARRIVE's servers when you review and again when the request is sent. The stored numbers are the ones your card is later charged for.
What the performers do
Each act gets the request and answers it:
- Yes, I'm available — they are holding the date for you. You're told.
- Decline — with an optional note, shown to you. You're told.
- Someone who said yes can later say they're no longer available, up until you choose. You're told, and told how many others are still holding the date.
Asking is not booking: until you choose someone, the acts you asked appear under Professionals you've asked on the Bookings list, with See replies, not as bookings.
While a professional hasn't answered, you can press Send a reminder on their request — once every 24 hours; after that it reads Reminder sent today. You need permission to create bookings to use it. ARRIVE also reminds them itself 24 hours before the request runs out, if it was sent with more than a day to answer.
Choosing who to book
Open the event and go to its Requests tab. It shows every spot, who you asked, and where each of them stands. Press Book on the act you want. Everyone else for that spot is released at once and told it has been filled — they're never told who you chose.
If you asked only one act for a spot, their Yes, I'm available books them straight away — there's no one to choose between.
Either way the booking moves to Pending Payment, and both you and the performer are told. From here you can message them on the booking — see Messaging the performer you've booked.
Your decide-by date
A night has one date by which you promise to choose, shown to every act you ask. It can be no later than 48 hours before the event and no more than 7 days after you send, and it must be at least a day away — if the event is too close to give performers a day to reply, ARRIVE refuses to send the request and tells you to contact them directly. Once people are waiting on it, the date can't be moved. You can choose any time before it.
If the decide-by date passes and you haven't chosen anyone for a spot, the request closes: everyone you asked is released and told the venue didn't make a selection in time, and your team gets "A role closed without a decision". Nothing is charged. To ask again, send a new request.
Stopping a request
If you no longer need anyone for a spot, open the event's Requests tab and use Stop this request, with an optional reason. Everyone you asked is told you no longer need anyone for this. Nothing is charged. Stopping is only offered while someone is still waiting; once you've booked someone, cancel that booking instead.
If you cancel or archive the event
Cancelling or archiving an event withdraws every request on it that is still waiting for an answer, and each professional you asked is told. Nothing is charged. Bookings awaiting payment and paid bookings stay. The dialog lists them, with a link to each, so you can cancel them from their own pages.
When no one is left for a spot
If everyone you asked for a spot declines or becomes unavailable, your team is told "No one is left for your … role", and nothing is charged. The notice offers Ask someone else, which opens New Booking with the date and event already filled in, and a link to post the date as an opportunity so performers can apply.
Paying: the payment window
Once someone is booked you have a limited time to pay, so a performer's date is never held open indefinitely. Pay by is shown on the booking:
- normally 72 hours after they were chosen;
- but no later than 48 hours before the event;
- and never less than 12 hours after they were chosen, or later than the event itself.
If the window is longer than a day and you haven't paid with 24 hours left, your team gets one reminder: "Pay by … to confirm …".
If the window closes unpaid, the booking is cancelled, the performer's date is released, and nothing is charged. Your team gets "Payment window closed" and the performer is told the booking closed because payment wasn't completed — their date is free and nothing is owed. To go ahead, send a new request.
For what you pay, the service fee and when the performer is paid, see Paying for a booking, fees, and when the performer is paid.
Booking statuses
- Pending Acceptance — asked, waiting on the act's answer (shown on the Requests tab, not as a booking).
- Declined — the act said no, or said they're no longer available. Nothing was charged.
- Pending Payment — booked, waiting for your payment by the Pay by time.
- Confirmed — payment captured.
- Cancelled — cancelled, with or without a refund. Also where an act ends up when someone else was booked for the spot, when you stopped the request or it closed without a decision, when the event was cancelled or archived before they answered, and when a payment window closed.
Once the event and its release time (about 72 hours after the event ends) have passed, a confirmed booking reads Completed. Opening a dispute does not change the status; while it is open the booking reads Confirmed, dispute open or Completed, dispute open — see Cancelling a booking and how refunds work.
Checks ARRIVE makes
- The event date cannot be in the past.
- Each act must be free on that date when you send. If any act clashes with another booking, their vacation or a block they've set, nothing is sent and you're told "One of these acts is not free that night. Take them out of the list and send again." A direct request is deliberately not limited by the performer's own public booking window or advance-notice setting.
- When you press Book, ARRIVE checks the date again, so two organizations can never both book the same act for the same night. If it has gone, nothing changes — no one is released.
- Each service must be approved and live, and each performer's profile approved.
- Any location, space, program or event you attach must belong to your organization.
- You can't book onto a cancelled or archived event — you're told "This event is cancelled, so it can no longer be booked." (or archived). Updating an event to a new time or place is refused once it has a booking; attach, or make a new event.
What this does not do yet
- There is no way to edit a request or a booking after it is sent. If the price, date or details change, withdraw or cancel and send a new request.
- You can't extend a decide-by date once acts are waiting on it.
- The booking form has no event end date. This matters for when the performer is paid — see Paying for a booking, fees, and when the performer is paid.
- There is no recurring booking and no draft you can save and come back to.