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Billing

Payments & Stripe Connect

Connect your Stripe account so you can accept payments through your booking widget. Your money goes straight to you.

Last updated March 11, 2026

Real talk: getting paid shouldn’t be the complicated part of running a training business. SitStay uses Stripe Connect to process payments, which means when a client books through your widget, the money goes directly to your Stripe account. SitStay never holds your funds.

Connecting your Stripe account

Before you can accept payments through the booking widget, you’ll need to connect a Stripe account. It takes a few minutes:

  1. Go to Settings > Stripe Connect in your dashboard (owner access required).
  2. Click Connect with Stripe.
  3. Stripe will walk you through signing in or creating a new account.
  4. Complete the onboarding steps — identity verification, bank account, the usual.
  5. You’ll be redirected back to SitStay with a confirmation.

SitStay uses Stripe’s standard account type, so you get full access to your own Stripe dashboard. Invoices, payment history, disputes — it’s all there, managed by you.

How payments flow

When a client books through your widget:

  1. They enter payment info on Stripe’s hosted checkout page (secure, PCI-compliant, not your problem to maintain).
  2. Stripe processes the charge and deposits funds into your connected account.
  3. SitStay gets a webhook confirmation and marks the booking as paid.
  4. The client gets a confirmation.

SitStay never sees or stores credit card details. The entire payment flow runs through Stripe’s infrastructure.

What gets charged

The amount is calculated from your class or series pricing, with adjustments for:

  • Member discounts — applied automatically if the client has an active membership
  • Discount codes — your custom codes that reduce the price by a fixed amount
  • Credit packages — pre-purchased credits the client can redeem at checkout

Everything stacks correctly. The final amount after all applicable discounts is what hits Stripe.

Processing refunds

Sometimes you need to give money back. SitStay makes it straightforward:

  • Open the booking in your dashboard and initiate a refund from there.
  • The refund flows back through Stripe to the client’s original payment method.
  • The booking status updates to refunded and the enrollment is marked accordingly.
  • If the client used credit package credits, those credits get restored to their balance automatically.

Refund timing depends on the client’s bank — typically 5-10 business days. That’s a Stripe/bank thing, not something you can speed up.

Disconnecting (if you need to)

If you need to switch to a different Stripe account, go to Settings > Stripe Connect and click Reset. This removes the connection but doesn’t touch your Stripe account itself or any existing charges.

After disconnecting, you won’t be able to accept new payments until you connect again. Existing bookings and payment records stay intact.