✨ Please note: Ticket costs are available on the Lite plan or above.
You can include tax as a percentage of the ticket price to ensure your pricing complies with regulations and is transparent for your customers. This article explains how to set up tax on your tickets and how it will appear during checkout.
Tax overview and important notes
As the account owner, you’re responsible for setting the correct tax rate for your location and business needs. If you charge tax on Bookwhen, the system lists the tax cost separately from the displayed price.
For example, if you charge 20% tax: £25.00 + £5.00 VAT.
Adding a tax percentage
To add tax to your tickets and tailor the fee to your requirements:
Select Settings from the left-hand menu on your account, Payments, then Edit:
Tick the My business is registered to collect tax checkbox:
Add your percentage amount in the Tax percentage field:
Select Save changes.
💡 Any changes to the tax percentage won’t affect existing bookings.
How the tax amount affects the checkout
💡 Pricing updates for UK legislation
New UK rules require booking fees and tax to be included in the upfront price shown during the booking process. This change helps keep costs clear and supports pricing transparency.
To reflect this, tax is now included in the headline price that your customers are shown during their booking journey. This helps them understand the full cost before reaching the checkout.
Once you have set your tax cost, your ticket will display a "+ [price] VAT" message next to the ticket(s) on your public page.
For example:
The fee amount also shows to customers in the basket view as "Added tax". For example:
💡 Any changes to the tax percentage only affect future bookings.
Tax on vouchers
Bookwhen uses multi-purpose vouchers (MPVs). If you sell vouchers and use our tax functionality:
No VAT, sales tax, or fees are charged when the voucher is purchased.
Tax is added only when the voucher is redeemed for goods or services.
Because no tax is charged at purchase, vouchers are not taxed twice.
💡 Important: If you operate outside the EU or UK, please check local tax regulations as rules may differ.
Important information
We’re improving how fees and tax are calculated
We’ve updated our cost calculations to ensure fees, taxes, and booking totals are more accurate and consistent. These improvements ensure your reports, exports, and financial summaries are more transparent and better aligned with upcoming tax enhancements.
Why this change?
As we continue to improve our tax and fee features, we have identified an opportunity to refine the underlying calculation method. The updated approach prevents minor rounding differences and keeps fees and tax consistent, even when bookings are edited later, helping the system to prepare for future improvements.
What to expect
You may notice very small adjustments (around ±0.1p) on some older bookings, especially those with tax or fees that were cancelled or transferred after the update. These changes do not affect your revenue, and customers will not be charged or refunded.
How it appears in the transferred booking:
The recification appears at the bottom of the price breakdown as Cost rectification:
💡 Note for franchises
Franchise fee amounts are fixed when a booking is completed, so cancelling or transferring an older booking won’t affect them. After updating your fee settings, new bookings at the same ticket price may show slightly different fee amounts.