Payments
How to collect booth rent without chasing anyone
Most booth-rental shops still collect rent the same way: a reminder text, a Venmo request, and a note in a spreadsheet when it lands. It works until someone is a week late and nobody wants to bring it up. This is how to set rent up once and let it collect itself.
Why rent collection goes wrong
Rent is usually the biggest single payment between an owner and a renter, and it is the one with the least structure around it. The due date lives in someone’s head, the amount lives in a text thread, and the record lives in a spreadsheet that only the owner updates.
Late rent is rarely about money alone. It is about nobody wanting to be the person who asks. An automatic schedule takes the asking out of it: the reminder comes from the system, the receipt comes from the system, and the owner only steps in when something actually needs a decision.
Set the rent once
In NextUp, a renter’s rent is a plan: an amount and a schedule, weekly, every two weeks or monthly. Each period opens one period before it is due, so renters see what is coming. Reminders, receipts and a note if a payment fails go out by email on their own.
Rent can go to the business’s Stripe account or to one location’s account, so a group with several shops keeps each location’s rent separate.
Where the money comes from
First, from what the renter’s own customers paid them through NextUp: tips, deposits and no-show fees go to the renter’s bank, and rent is taken from those payouts before they leave. Rent taken this way costs nothing extra.
Then, from a card or US bank account the renter saves. A card payment carries Stripe’s 2.9% + 30¢; a bank payment is 0.8%, at most $5, and takes a few days to clear. A bank account typed in by hand is only charged after the renter confirms Stripe’s two small test deposits.
Services your renters’ clients pay for in person never pass through NextUp, so rent from payouts only draws on online payments. Most renters cover the rest with a saved card or bank account.
When the due date comes and rent is short
You decide ahead of time what happens to anything left: charge the saved card or bank on the due date, carry it over to later payouts, or leave it for you. When it is left for you, the period shows under Needs you with four choices: charge it, take it from later payouts, mark it paid another way (cash, a check), or waive it.
If a customer later gets a refund or wins a dispute on a payment that rent was taken from, that part of the rent opens again automatically, so the books never quietly drift.
Records your renters can see
Each renter has an earnings card on their own book with their tips, payments, fees and rent for this week, this month or chosen dates. Statements per person and period download as CSV or Excel, and a renter can download their own. They are records, not tax advice; hand them to whoever does your books.
Owners choose who pays Stripe’s payout fees for each person paid through NextUp: the business, or each person from what they are sent. Renters often pay their own. See every fee on the pricing page.
Commission, booth rent, or both
A shop rarely runs one model. NextUp lets each person have their own setup: a commission chair next to a booth renter next to a suite renter, each paid the right way. The payouts tour shows the whole screen, and every plan includes it.