HobbyDetective platform guide

HobbyDetective is an online platform for discovering hobbies and activities. It connects people looking for their next hobby with local organisers like you.

Through the platform you can present:

• activities and classes with recurring sections,
• events,
• excursions,
• youth programmes,
• volunteering actions,
• space rental — courts, rooms, kitchens or studios, by the hour or by the booking,
• corporate activities for companies' teams, by quote request (Premium),
• products through the e-shop — straight away with an active subscription, on Free after approval.

The platform’s primary language is Spanish and there is a full English version. Everything you publish can appear in both languages.

The provider area is your operational hub. Everything is managed from there:

• a dashboard with the overall picture of your activity,
• your public profile,
• venues, spaces and amenities,
• central settings for bookings, packages, offers, payments, policies and holidays,
• your listings, in every available type,
• calendar, sessions and bookings,
• your list — the people you serve — and their families,
• package purchases and interest requests,
• statistics,
• messages and notifications,
• reviews and review invitations,
• e-shop tools — straight away with an active subscription, on Free after approval,
• platform fees — the booking commission you owe on paid bookings and packages, and paying it,
• Premium and account settings.

The account owner is the account that registered: it has access to everything, including team management. Every member you invite gets one of three access levels:

• "Administrator": broad day-to-day access across customers, finance, content and settings.
• "Member": bookings, calendar, customer records, leads and messages — no finance, sensitive customer details or settings.
• "View only": sees the operation without changing anything, with no finance and no sensitive customer details.

Inside "Member" there are ready-made permission sets so you do not tick them one by one: "Reception", "Teaching", "Finance" and "Content". Pick one, then add or remove any individual permission — both on the invitation and later, for a member already working. What you approve stays as you left it: changing a ready-made set never rewrites an existing member’s permissions.

Exporting financial data, deleting data permanently, team management, the subscription, the payout details (IBAN and Bizum mobile number), the NIF and the profile's "Contact email" always stay with the account owner — they are delegated to no member. The customer list can be exported by "Administrator" and "Member" (the levels that may update customer records), never by "View only". A member sees the contact email read-only, because order notifications with customers' details arrive there. The card payments setup at Stripe is open to the owner and to members with the "Finance operations" permission.

A provider account is different from a hobbyist account. If you need both, use different email addresses.

What details you will need

Registration happens in two main stages: your organisation’s details and creating a password. Have these ready before you start:

• legal form: business, organisation, NGO, association or freelancer,
• trading name (brand),
• Tax Identification Number (NIF: your DNI, NIE or CIF),
• name of the responsible person / administrator,
• contact email,
• a Spanish phone number, with the +34 code and 9 digits,
• address, city and postcode — the address is picked from Google search so the coordinates are stored correctly,
• acceptance of the terms of use and privacy policy,
• a password of at least 8 characters.

Checks and verification

• An email already used by another account is not accepted.
• A brand name already in use may be rejected.
• You must verify your email before you can continue.
• The English version of some fields may be generated automatically by machine translation. Review it and correct it where needed.
• There is no provider sign-up via Google. Use email and password.

Onboarding starts the first time you log in. Until you complete the basic steps you will see the full menu, but most features stay locked. Onboarding is not bureaucracy: it is exactly the information the platform needs to present you properly.

The order of the steps

1. 1Profile
2. 2Where you operate (venues)
3. 3How you take customers
4. 4First listing

Four steps. The first two can be postponed ("I’ll complete the profile later", "I’ll say where I operate later") and still count as settled — the listing library unlocks either way. The third can be left for later too, and it locks nothing.

Step 1 — Profile

To count as complete, you need at minimum:

• brand name,
• email,
• phone,
• business category,
• logo,
• opening hours.

The opening hours are on the "Hours" tab of your Partner Profile, next to the profile form. While onboarding is open, once the form itself is complete, saving it takes you straight to "Hours" with the editor already open — the hours are the part of this step people most often miss.

Step 2 — Where you operate (venues)

A delivery mode is required — "In person", "Online" or "In person & online" — and, unless you work online only, at least one valid address saved as a venue, where your customers come. You can also add its amenities. Note that the initial address you gave at registration does NOT automatically count as a venue: it has to be saved properly under "Facilities/Amenities". Once it is saved, if you have not chosen a mode, the platform records "In person" and the step is done — you do not need to press "Save selection".

Step 3 — How you take customers

Answered on the hub itself: no booking system (customers message you — the default), online booking, or a participation request (Premium). It comes before the first listing because the answer decides what the listing asks: with no booking system there are no "Bookings & payments" and "Policies" steps, and no closed days under availability. Your list, the calendar and packages work under every choice, and you can change it any time in Booking settings.

Step 4 — First listing

The listing library unlocks as soon as profile and venues are settled — completed or explicitly postponed. Only a finished listing (active or inactive) closes this step; a draft shows up on the hub as "Saved draft listing" with "Continue editing", but does not.

Prices go inside the listing itself. On an activity they live inside each delivery method, under "Prices" below "Availability" — there is no separate pricing step. There each delivery method first answers "How does the customer take part?": "Paid" needs at least one price or package before it can be published, while "Free" and "On request" need no price. An event, excursion, programme or volunteering action has its own "Prices" step.

The introduction is optional

The introduction screen is not a step and locks nothing: open it whenever you like from its card on the hub, or never.

What stays reachable during onboarding

Help (FAQ), the Premium page, Messages and Notifications are always open, as are the two step pages and your account.

The dashboard pulls together data from your list, bookings, interest requests, package purchases, messages, recent listings, the calendar and financial summaries. Depending on how you accept bookings and what data exists, you may see:

• account status and profile completeness,
• a presence/visibility view, when there is no active booking flow yet,
• today’s agenda,
• a weekly snapshot,
• recent bookings,
• items that need your attention,
• revenue and attendance rate,
• your best-performing listings,
• calendar, packages and listings.

How the key figures are calculated

• Revenue: paid package purchases plus direct bookings that did not use a package — a direct booking counts once its payment is settled, so a deposit alone adds nothing yet.
• Pending, refunded and cancelled transactions are not counted.
• Attendance rate: those present against the total of present and no-shows.
• Trends can cover up to 24 months of data.

Your Partner Profile has the tabs "Profile", "Social", "Hours", "FAQ", "Team" and "Shared space" — the last two only for the account owner. Your profile is your shop window inside the platform — it is worth your time.

Basic profile

You can manage:

• contact email — only the account owner changes it,
• NIF — only the account owner corrects it (9 characters, and it must be valid); team members see it read-only,
• name of the responsible person and contact details,
• description,
• logo,
• business category.

The business category is required before the profile can be saved. Your brand name acts as your central identity and is not treated as a plain free-text field.

Under the category, "Who do you serve?" asks whether your people are Students, Members or Customers — tick all that apply. It names the "Students & Customers" list in the menu and its buttons: a club picks "Members" and sees "Members" and "New member". Until you answer, the list is called "Students & Customers"; with your e-shop open, "Customers" is added on its own. Only the words change — the people, packages and bookings stay the same.

What your public page shows of these depends on your plan: the contact email, the phone, a venue's phone, your website and your social links are published on Premium and Premium Plus. On Free the page keeps «Message on HobbyDetective» instead — your details stay in your settings, they are simply not published. The settings mark each of those fields with a Premium badge saying so.

Payment at your venue

On the Profile tab, below the basic details, you state how you take payment at your venue: cash, card at the venue (on your own POS), Bizum or bank transfer. Each switch saves straight away and no account details are needed. It shows as "Paying at the venue" on your public profile and on your listings, even if you take no bookings.

It is not the booking system. How someone who books through HobbyDetective pays is set separately, in Booking Settings → Payments.

The profile-completeness indicator is calculated, as a guide, from: brand name, email, phone, responsible person, a description over 50 characters, logo, social links, opening hours and FAQ. It tells you how appealing your profile is — it is not an approval or a guarantee of visibility.

Where you appear publicly

Besides your listings, you appear as a provider on the "Providers" page (/en/providers) and in the providers strip on the home page. You are listed there once the first onboarding step is genuinely finished — brand name, email and phone, a business category, a photo and opening hours ("No fixed business hours" counts). "I’ll complete the profile later" fills nothing in, so it does not put you on the list. There visitors filter by "Provider category" — your profile's business category — so pick it precisely. Providers with at least one active listing come before those with none; otherwise the order is drawn afresh on every visit.

On the home page, activities go into "Discover activities", in an order drawn afresh on every visit. Events and volunteering appear there only when their next date is within the next 30 days, excursions and youth programmes within 60, nearest first and at most 2 cards per provider — a listing with no upcoming date does not appear there.

The place your card shows: the service venue you have published, in full. With no venue, only the AREA of your account address is shown — "Chamberí", never the street and number — and if you work online only, no place is shown at all.

People can press "Follow" on your card or your page. Whoever follows you sees you under "Following" in their account and hears your news — in the bell and by email — such as every new listing you publish. For new listings there is nothing for you to do.

Social and website

Links are supported for Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X/Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and your website.

Website and social links are a Premium feature: you edit them, and they show on your public page, while you have Premium or Premium Plus. After a downgrade they are not deleted — they stop being shown until Premium returns.

Opening hours

For each day you set whether you are open or closed, and one or more time ranges.

Profile FAQ

You can add, edit and delete question/answer pairs. This is a Premium feature: the questions show on your public page while you have Premium, and after a downgrade they are kept but hidden. Profile FAQs are different from the FAQs you can attach to a specific listing.

A team is a Premium feature: up to 9 colleagues besides you. If your plan no longer includes a team, members keep their accounts but cannot sign in; as soon as Premium or Premium Plus is active again, their access returns. The "Team" tab shows the "Seats" you have taken: your own account, active members and invitations waiting for an answer each take one.

Inviting a member

1. 1As the account owner, open the "Team" tab of your Partner Profile.
2. 2Enter the member’s email address.
3. 3An invitation valid for 7 days is sent.
4. 4The member opens the invitation link.
5. 5They create a password of at least 8 characters.
6. 6The email is confirmed, an active staff member is created, and they are logged in.

An email already used by any account, or that already has a pending invitation, is not accepted.

Permissions

• Only you, as the account owner, manage the team.
• A staff member cannot invite or deactivate other members.
• You can revoke a pending invitation and deactivate an active member.
• "Send again" on an invitation — a pending one, or the newest expired one for an address — emails a new link with a new 7-day expiry; the previous link stops working. An invitation that ran out shows as expired.
• A member has a name, not just an address: you can type it with the invitation, the person can correct it when they accept (it is their name), and you can rename them later on the Team tab. Clearing the name shows their address again.
• Marking attendance follows either the bookings or the calendar permission, so the "Teaching" set can do it. Confirming a booking, walk-ins, moves and cancellations stay with bookings.
• Each member gets an access level ("Administrator", "Member", "View only") and, under it, their individual permissions — "Dashboard", "Bookings", "Customers" (and their sensitive details), "Leads", "Calendar", "Finance operations", "Content", "Analytics", "Messages", "Business settings". See "Roles: account owner and team".
• You can change an active member’s permissions at any time from the same tab.
• Notifications follow the permissions too: a member’s bell shows bookings, waitlist places and package purchases with "Bookings", participation and group requests with "Leads", orders with "Finance operations", reviews with "Content", conversations with "Messages" and people joining or leaving your list with "Customers". The booking emails go to whoever holds the bookings permission.

The "Facilities/Amenities" page has two levels: venues are the addresses you work at, and spaces are the courts, rooms, pools, kitchens and studios inside each venue.

Adding a venue (an address)

1. 1Open "Facilities/Amenities" under "Settings".
2. 2Under "Venues and addresses", add the address through the Google address search.
3. 3Check the city, postcode and the point on the map.
4. 4Fill in the venue’s phone number.
5. 5Optionally, give the venue a name.
6. 6Save.

The address and phone number are required for a valid save. You can have multiple venues and edit or delete them.

Spaces

Under "Spaces", "Add space" creates the spaces of each venue: a kind (e.g. "Court", "Pool", "Studio", "Kitchen", "Room"), a name, a capacity, a "Calendar colour" and, optionally, "Opening hours", a "Changeover time" (e.g. 10 minutes of cleaning after each use) and characteristics. Each activity's schedule picks the space it runs in; with "Can be rented on its own" switched on, the space can also be sold in a "Space rental" listing. Because both point at the same space, nobody can rent it while one of your activities is on.

If you do not rent spaces out and run your activities in a single place, you need to add nothing. A space is not deleted, it is archived — and not while it has upcoming bookings: cancel them or move them to another space first.

Amenities

You can pick from the predefined amenities and add your own, which you can also delete. They are optional, but they improve how you appear in search filters and give visitors a fuller picture. They are worth filling in. Besides what the space has inside (wifi, lockers, showers) the list now answers how people get there: near a metro stop, near a bus stop, easy access, parking, air conditioning, a lift.

The page runs in the order of the decision: the venues and the map first, then "Spaces", then "Delivery mode" — in person, online or both — with the online-only note under it, and the amenities last. That is on purpose: the delivery mode cannot be saved as "In person" before an address is saved as a venue. Conversely, once an address is saved as a venue and you have not chosen a mode, the platform records "In person" — you do not need to press "Save selection". If you want "Online" or "In person & online", choose it and save it; a saved choice never changes on its own.

Many professionals work out of the same space. When the address you register matches another provider’s venue, the platform asks what applies: if it really is the same venue, a connection request is sent to that venue’s provider; if it is merely next door or in the same building, nothing gets linked.

What the connection means

• You appear on the venue’s public page together with its other professionals.
• Your schedule, prices, bookings and revenue remain exclusively yours.
• Neither side gains access to the other’s data — not bookings, not finances, not the people on their list.
• You see and answer connection requests on the "Shared space" tab of your Partner Profile (account owner only).

The two ways to appear

• "Own brand": you keep your own name and your own profile, and simply appear on the venue’s page alongside the others.
• "Shared brand": one shared public identity with the venue — same name, same page, and you both edit the shared profile. Reviews always follow whoever teaches the class.

A shared brand is exclusive: if you also operate elsewhere under your own name, choose "Own brand". It needs confirmation from the venue’s provider and a review by the platform — until it is approved, nothing changes publicly. Either side can end the relationship at any time; if you split, the brand stays with the venue and you take your listings and your reviews with you.

The "Booking settings" page has six tabs, named exactly this on screen:

• "Bookings" — how you accept bookings,
• "Shared packages" — the catalogue of your prices and packages (shared packages are built here; each listing's prices inside the listing),
• "Offers",
• "Payments" — how you collect,
• "Policies" — cancellation and refunds,
• "Holidays, unavailable days & exceptions" — the days you do not run.

Everything you set here applies centrally and is reused across your listings. Set it up once, properly, and it will save you a lot of work later.

A team member opens the page with only the tabs their role covers: bookings, policies and the closed days with the settings permission, shared packages and offers with finance, and "Payments" for the account owner alone. A tab they may read but not change says so, and a member with neither permission is told the page is outside their role.

The available modes

Globally you pick one of those three. Varying it per listing or section is not a global choice: you set that inside the listing itself (Premium).

With no booking system, the listing page shows no cancellation policy and no booking payment methods: nothing there is cancelled or paid through the platform. They appear as soon as the listing takes bookings (online or by participation request). A volunteering action's participation terms, which you write in the listing itself, always show — and so does the "Paying at the venue" you state in your profile, because it describes your venue, not the booking.

The wizard follows the same rule: a listing nobody books through the platform has no "Bookings & payments" and no "Policies & safety" step at all — there is no flow to choose, nothing is paid here and nothing can be cancelled. The prices stay: a customer still wants to know what it costs.

You can also pause bookings without changing anything else — the listing stays visible and messages keep working, it just completes no booking through the platform (by card, off-platform or free) until you switch them back on.

You can save online booking without a way to collect: only free participation is then booked online, and its card in Booking settings says so. For listings with a price, customers send you a message until you connect Stripe or, with an active subscription, an off-platform method.

On the Free plan only the global setting applies: if the global setting is a Premium one (a participation request), it behaves as "no booking system", and any per-listing or per-section choices are ignored. The setting is not lost — go Premium again and it comes back as you left it.

Additional settings

Collecting a phone number and an email applies to both modes. Only the participation request adds:

• automatic acknowledgement of receipt (not an acceptance or a booking),
• how soon you reply ("How soon you reply"), from 1 to 168 hours — shown on your profile as "usually replies within…"; nothing enforces it,
• your own request form ("Your request form").

The request form starts as a simple default: name, email / phone and a note to you are always asked; "Who it is for", "Number of people", "Group / corporate request" and "Preferred date and time" (activities only) can each be switched off. Below them you add up to 12 questions of your own — short or long text, pick one, pick one or more, number, date, yes / no — each with Spanish wording, an optional English version and hint, and an "Answer required" switch. The preview under it shows the form as the customer sees it. It is a Premium feature: after a downgrade a saved form stays as it is and can still be removed.

That form is the account-wide one. A listing that needs different questions gets its own in the listing wizard, step "Bookings & payments", card "Request form for this listing" → "A different form for this listing" (it starts as a copy of the account form). "Use my account form" goes back to the account one. An activity's form covers all its sections.

The answers arrive with the request: under the request in "Sales & requests", in the request details from the calendar, in the new-request email and in the Opportunity assistant. They keep the wording the customer saw, so editing the form later never changes old requests. The customer sees their answers with the request in their own account.

Online bookings are charged in full. There is no deposit percentage to set.

With per-listing options, each listing or section can set its own approach: online booking, a participation request, or no booking system. New sections follow the global setting, so if you want something else, set it explicitly on that section. If your account still holds an old "hybrid" global setting, sections that follow it behave as online booking — pick explicitly what you want.

"People manage their own lessons"

The same tab carries the "People manage their own lessons" switch. It starts closed: you schedule the lessons of their packages yourself, from the Calendar. Open it and the people on your list book, move and cancel the lessons of their packages themselves, from their own account.

It is only about activities, and only about people who are already on your list — the ones you added yourself and the ones who came through the platform and you added with "Add to your list". It changes nothing about selling or handing over packages, and nothing about events and excursions, where the seat is the purchase itself.

It applies with no booking system too: a settled package is private access to its listing, so whoever holds it can book a lesson with their credits even when the public books nothing from your page. This switch is the only thing that decides it.

It never closes public booking: a lesson someone pays for on your page (a single class, a drop-in or free participation) is booked as usual, by anyone, the people on your list included. Closed, it stops only the lessons booked, moved or cancelled with a package's credits, or booked by you — the customer is then told they arrange the times of their package's lessons with you.

"Availability": how full a section is

Without a booking system nothing counts the seats — which is why the "Availability" card asks how full it is: "Normal availability" (nothing is shown), "Low availability" or "No availability". It is your statement, not a count, and you can change it whenever you like.

An activity is asked per delivery method, inside "Availability", under "How many people"; a dated listing is asked once, at the end of its dates step. You do not have to reopen the wizard to change it: under "Listings", open an activity's sections and change it on the section itself — it saves straight away, on its own.

On the public page it shows as a chip on every method and one line under "Send a message" for the whole listing — "No availability" only when it is true of every method.

When a section takes online bookings the platform counts the seats, so "Low availability" is not offered. "No availability" stays, and it closes the section: it takes no new bookings and customers cannot move a seat onto it, while bookings already made stay, the waiting list keeps working and you can still add someone by hand. The customer reads "This section is not taking new bookings. Send the provider a message." The same goes for a space rental. A section on participation requests or "On request" asks nothing: there is no seat to close and no count to correct.

Bookings on your own site (Premium Plus)

If you already take bookings on your own site, you put the link on the "Bookings & payments" step, among the booking options — it is offered only to a listing that takes bookings — and every booking button on its page then opens that site in a new tab. Dates, prices and capacity then become optional — add them only if you want them shown. Customers' messages still come here.

Such a listing shows no HobbyDetective cancellation policy and no payment methods, and its wizard has neither of the two booking and policy steps: the booking happens elsewhere, under your own terms. The link must be a full address (https://…) and the feature is Premium Plus; if your plan stops including it the link is kept, bookings return to HobbyDetective, and it comes back when Premium Plus does.

Packages are created once and reused across as many listings and sections as you like. You do not have to build a price again for every new activity.

Beyond shared packages, a listing can also have prices of its own that belong only to it — you set those inside the listing: on an activity under each delivery method, on every other kind on its "Prices" step. Build a shared package when you want the same balance to count across several listings; the customer sees the "Shared package" badge and which listings it covers.

What you can do

• create a package,
• edit it,
• archive it,
• restore it,
• duplicate it.

A price that belongs to one listing and is left with no link at all is really deleted — unused prices do not pile up in your catalogue. If someone has already bought it, though, it is not deleted: it is archived — it stops being sold — and it stays linked to its listing, so whoever holds it keeps booking with what they have left.

Package types

The package name is required. A package can be free or have a price. "Class pack" and "Cycle" always need a valid number of classes and a validity period.

How it is paid

On a priced package you also choose how it sells: "One-off purchase", "Auto-renewal" or "Either". With auto-renewal the customer’s card is charged automatically at the start of each period through Stripe; the customer can stop the renewal at any time, and the package stays valid until the end of the period they have already paid. If an automatic charge fails, Stripe retries over the following days.

Every paid package sale, and every renewal, adds your plan’s booking commission as a fee under “Platform fees” — whether the customer paid by card or you recorded the payment yourself. Sessions booked later with the package’s credits are not charged again.

Start date and usage limits

For each package you can set:

• a cutoff time before the booking, and last-minute hours,
• start on payment,
• start on the first class,
• a custom start,
• a fixed start date,
• unlimited use, or a limit per week, per month or in total.

If you choose a usage limit, you must give a positive value. If you choose a fixed start, you must give a date.

On a subscription sold with auto-renewal, a total session limit counts per paid period: each renewal starts a new count, so the customer can book the new period's sessions.

Registration fee

An activity can also carry a "Registration fee": it buys a place in your school rather than a place in the lesson, so it travels beside the price and is never inside it. You set it in the wizard, per person, once or every year — "every year" means once per school year (September to August).

If you would rather not write an amount, tick "On request" under "There is a registration fee": no amount is asked, "How often is it charged?" becomes optional and the page reads "+ registration fee per person, on request". The fee is then never charged at checkout — you agree it and collect it yourself.

At checkout the customer gets a tick box for each person the fee could apply to, ticked to begin with: they untick anyone who is already enrolled, and nobody ticked is a valid answer that charges nothing. It is not charged on a subscription that renews automatically, on a lesson booked with package credits, on a free lesson or on a space rental. Your bookings list and the booking's action card show the amount and how many people it covered, next to "Record payment" — and because the revenue figures count the booking amount alone, registration fees you collect are not in them.

An offer can be a percentage or a fixed amount, and can be triggered:

• with a code: the customer types the code themselves when booking or buying,
• automatically: it applies on its own to every customer who meets the rule.

The automatic rules include offers for someone already on your list, families, early bird, first purchase and quantity (several packages, or several places in one booking). You can apply an offer to all or to selected packages, and set dates, a maximum number of redemptions and an on/off switch.

When it actually applies

The status you see tells the truth about today: "Active" only when it really applies, "Scheduled" before its start date, "Expired" after its end date, and "Used up" once the redemption limit is reached. The on/off switch is only one of those four conditions.

If a customer types a code that does not apply, they see so on the spot, with the reason — instead of paying without the offer and writing to you afterwards.

You delete an offer from Booking settings. Bookings and purchases already completed are not changed retroactively.

In Booking Settings → Payments you set how someone who books through HobbyDetective pays. You can declare that you accept:

• card,
• card at the venue,
• Bizum,
• cash,
• bank transfer,
• free participation.

For Bizum you can provide the mobile number that receives your payments. For bank transfer you can provide an IBAN, the beneficiary and the bank.

The Bizum number and the IBAN belong to your account: whatever you fill in on the first listing applies to every other one. Booking Settings → Payments always has them, and a listing asks for them on its "Bookings & payments" step only while it takes online bookings, with a note underneath saying they are the account's. A listing that takes no online booking asks for nothing and points at Payments.

These options are ways to settle payment outside the platform. On Premium, a booking can also be settled directly by Bizum or bank transfer: the customer sees your details after booking, declares that they sent the amount, and has a payment deadline — if it passes with no declaration, the place can be released automatically. The customer’s declaration is not proof: you always confirm the money yourself. Do not confuse these with the automated online card charge, which requires an approved payments connection.

A customer picks one of these off-platform methods at checkout only while you have Premium or Premium Plus. On Free, whoever books through HobbyDetective pays by card through the platform, and your listing simply shows which methods you accept, as information.

Paying outside the platform does not skip the commission. Once a booking or package is recorded as paid in cash, Bizum, bank transfer or card at the venue, your plan’s booking commission on it is added under “Platform fees”, exactly as for a card payment through the platform.

If you do not enable any payment method, you will see a warning about it.

These are the booking system's methods. How you take payment at your venue — from anyone, booked or not — is a separate statement in your Partner Profile ("Payment at your venue"); switching a method on or off here does not change it.

The same area has an extra Premium setting for a free participation request. It is separate from the central booking mode.

Ready-made options

• very flexible — 12 hours,
• flexible — 24 hours,
• moderate — 48 hours,
• strict — 7 days,
• non-refundable,
• custom, with your own number of hours or days — the description is optional.

You can also write your own text for:

• cancellation details,
• refund or credit,
• confirmation,
• no-show,
• cancellation by you,
• default minimum and maximum number of participants.

What happens in practice

• For a timely cancellation by the customer: automatic refund, credit, or the customer’s choice.
• For a no-show: loss of the amount, or a percentage deduction.
• For a cancellation by you: full refund, credit or rescheduling.

A section can have its own policy that overrides the central one. Volunteering actions use free-text participation and cancellation terms. In some event types the relevant step shows you the central policy and lets you add supplementary text.

Central setting

You can:

• enable the holidays feature,
• see per-year tabs — a holiday that spans two years shows up in both,
• enable or disable the national, regional and local holidays of your town — read automatically from your first saved address, while each listing's own list uses its venue's town,
• add your own holiday,
• add a future year,
• remove a year that has no entries.

Every holiday row is born inactive — yours and the local ones alike — and you switch it on from its own toggle. There is also a master switch for holidays, off to begin with: while it is off nothing is closed, whatever you have ticked. Changes are saved row by row.

How they affect your schedule

An active holiday automatically removes the sessions that the recurring schedule would have created that day. Each section can either ignore the central holidays or define its own exceptions. So if you do operate normally on a given holiday, make sure you declare that on the specific section.

A section's exceptions are set inside the activity wizard, on the section itself — the "Holidays, unavailable days & exceptions" card under Availability. The listing assistant can write them for you if you tell it which days you are closed.

The same goes for a dated listing (event, excursion, volunteering, youth programme) that repeats: on its dates step you pick "Repeating", and the exceptions for that run are declared right underneath.

Types

• Activity: recurring sections or classes.
• Event: one or more specific dates.
• Excursion: specific dates and, where relevant, stops or a route description.
• Youth programmes: a programme with dates, individual prices and participation information.
• Volunteering action: a free action or one with an individual price and participation terms.
• Space rental: a court, room or studio customers book by the hour or by the booking. It has its own menu entry ("Space rental", under Listings); underneath it is an activity whose sections rent out the spaces you create under Facilities. See "Space rental" below.

Activities are the only type with sections; the other four ("dated" types) are priced and configured on the listing itself. Each of them also has its own booking mode — it can be explicitly "no booking system", in which case people see the listing but cannot reserve a place.

Each delivery method's "Schedule" is "Fixed schedule", "Course cycle", "Open access" or "No Schedule" (appointments arranged case by case show in the list as "Flexible appointments"). When no delivery method of an activity has set times to book (e.g. "Open access", or appointments with no fixed times), its public page shows no calendar of times but the "Sessions by arrangement" card: each delivery method with its package and one button — e.g. "Book" to buy the package, or "Ask by message" — and you agree the day and time together. That is not a fault: there is no time to reserve yet.

The four statuses

A listing that has bookings, or that customers hold unused packages for, cannot be deleted — archive it instead: it leaves your list and the public site, and their packages keep working. In the same way, an activity's delivery method cannot be removed while customers hold packages they can use only there: keep it, or first offer their package in another delivery method of the activity.

Automatic saving

The first time you press "Next", a draft listing is created and your data is saved as you go. When editing you can freely open whichever step you want.

Automatic saving protects you from losing work, but it does not mean the listing is complete or public.

Moving on with something still missing

"Next" always moves on — you do not have to finish a step to see the next one. At the bottom of every step a panel lists what the listing still needs before it can be published: the step you are on and every step you have already been through, each with a "Go there" link. Steps you left with something missing are marked in the step bar. Publishing is the one thing that needs everything: until then the listing is not published, and the panel turns red and lists every gap.

Core required fields

The first step generally needs:

• a title,
• at least a contact phone number or email,
• at least one location, unless the action is online,
• a detailed description.

Events, excursions and programmes additionally need at least one language. On an activity, the language and the delivery method are set per section.

Categories

A first-level and a second-level category are required. The third-level category and tags are optional. The platform can suggest categories and tags with "Suggest categories with AI", but the final check is yours — correct categorisation determines which searches you appear in.

Images

You need:

• a cover photo.

Use only images you hold the rights to. That is an obligation under the terms of use, and it needs no separate confirmation before publishing.

The image gallery is optional: on Free up to 3 more images (4 with the cover) and on Premium up to 10 (11 with the cover). After a downgrade the ones already there stay; the limit applies to new ones. Video — a link or an upload — is Premium only; on Free there is none at all.

Tapping the cover photo box or the gallery’s «Add image» opens «Your photos»: every photo already in your listings — activities, events, excursions, youth programmes, volunteering, products and corporate activities — grouped under the listing each one belongs to, with the one you are editing first. From there you pick one you already have or upload a new one from your device. The photo you pick goes through the same «Adjust» step as an upload and is saved as this listing’s own copy, so changing or deleting it in one listing never affects the other. If you have no saved photo yet, the file picker opens straight away.

Optional information

Additional information and FAQs are optional. Listing-specific FAQs are a Premium feature.

On the "Ideal for…" card you can declare who the experience suits — e.g. families, couples, schools, corporate teams, kids’ parties, Erasmus students and expats. It feeds the search’s "Ideal for" filter, so pick only what genuinely applies.

"Corporate activities" (Listings → Corporate activities) are something else: you describe how you run an activity for a company’s team — for how many people, at the company’s premises or at your own, in which areas and for how long — with no prices. They appear only on the "For companies" page, where companies send you a quote request; requests reach your email and "Sales & requests", under the "Interest requests" tab. It is a Premium and Premium Plus feature: if the plan lapses they stay saved but are not shown.

Final check

On the last screen you choose whether to publish the listing as active or finish it as inactive. If something required is missing, the check will send you back to the relevant step to fill it in.

Every activity needs at least one section.

What each section needs

• a title,
• a maximum capacity greater than zero,
• a delivery method,
• at least one language,
• an answer to "How does the customer take part?" — "Paid" with at least one price or package, "Free" or "On request",
• a valid schedule.

The optional minimum number of participants must be at least 1 and must not exceed the maximum capacity.

Schedule

On the section you set the days and times for the recurring sessions. Central holidays apply, unless the section ignores or overrides them. Remember that your public profile’s opening hours do not create the section’s schedule.

Per-section special settings

Each section can have:

• its own booking mode, through the Premium per-listing options,
• its own cancellation and refund policy,
• its own holidays, unavailable days and exceptions,
• its own capacity and minimum number of participants.

Duplicating a section

You can duplicate a section from inside the creation wizard. It is the fast way to set up, for example, the same class at a second time or on a second day.

These types are based on specific dates rather than recurring sections.

They need:

• at least one occurrence with a date and start time,
• free participation or at least one individual price,
• the shared required fields, images and categories.

An excursion additionally includes a description of stops or the route, where applicable, and its "Meeting point", "Meeting time" and "Return time", which show on its public page — the meeting time says when the group gathers, often before the start time. Events, excursions and programmes use one or more individual prices that belong only to that listing, or can be marked as free participation.

A volunteering action can be marked as free participation or use one or more individual prices that belong only to that action. Its payment methods come from your account settings.

Whether free or paid, describe any criteria, required documents, age restrictions, cancellation terms or need for your own confirmation clearly in the participation terms.

A space rental sells courts, rooms, kitchens or studios by the hour or by the booking. Before you start, under "Facilities/Amenities" → "Spaces", switch on "Can be rented on its own" for the spaces you rent out — only those appear in the wizard.

"Spaces & availability"

• Which spaces you rent out: with several identical spaces the customer books “one” and the system gives them the first free one — unless you switch on "Customers choose the space".
• "When you take bookings": the windows every booking starts and ends inside ("Copy from the spaces' opening hours" takes them from the spaces' hours), "Start every" (how often a booking can start), "Minimum notice" and "Bookable up to" (how many days ahead).
• "Booking lengths", in hours: 1 hour, 1 hour 30′, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8 or 12 hours, or "Another length" in hours and minutes (15 minutes to 12 hours, in 5-minute steps), up to 8 lengths. The customer picks one; for a whole day pick 8 or 12 hours. If a length fits no window, the wizard warns you.
• "People per booking": "At least" and "At most" in one booking — a limit, not a price.

"Rental rates"

• "How you charge": "Per hour" (prorated — 90′ costs an hour and a half) or "Per booking".
• A base rate and, optionally, "Price bands (optional)" with another rate on given days and hours (e.g. weekday evenings, weekends). Where two bands overlap, the one lower in the list applies.
• "Extra people": "People the price covers" and the "Charge per extra person (€)" — that one is a price. If the price already covers the booking's maximum, the extra charge never applies, and the wizard says so.
• The "Example" shows what the customer will pay; cards show “from …/hour”.

Because a rental and your activities point at the same spaces, a rental cannot be booked while one of your lessons runs in that space. No registration fee applies to a rental. In the "Space rental" list each row says how many spaces it sells (e.g. 2 spaces). The listing fill assistant writes the copy, the categories and the contact details, but the spaces, the availability and the rental rates are yours to set.

Available on every plan

Inside the creation wizard, to save you time, there are tools that can:

• improve the title and the short and the detailed description — the "Improve with AI" button beside each field,
• generate the English content automatically,
• suggest categories and tags — "Suggest categories with AI" on the categories step.

On the Partner Profile too, "Improve with AI" improves your description and "Suggest a category with AI" suggests your business category.

While editing there is a Spanish/English toggle so you can manually correct whatever needs it.

Also available on every plan is AI Chat, this conversation right here: ask how something on the platform works and it answers.

Premium Plus features

Two tools require Premium Plus:

• The listing fill assistant: a chat inside the wizard that asks about your activity. It writes nothing on its own: each turn it shows what it would fill in (Title, Descriptions, Sections, Prices) and separately which prices it would create in your catalogue, and proceeds only when you press "Yes, fill them in". It works on every listing type and always leaves a draft — it never publishes. It does not touch the steps that are yours: the photos, the dates of a dated listing, and — on a space rental — the spaces, the availability and the rate card; there it writes the copy, the categories and the contact details, and tells you what is left for you.
• The CRM opportunity assistant: it reads a participation request and suggests a summary, how ripe the opportunity is ("Hot opportunity", "Warm opportunity" or "Cold opportunity"), what to do next, and a draft reply you edit yourself before it goes anywhere.

Without Premium Plus those two do not appear. The rest of the AI help works as normal.

On Premium Plus, AI Chat also sees a read-only view of your own account while it answers — your listings, prices and packages, venues, booking settings and statistics — so it can talk about your real setup instead of in general. It never sees customers' contact details. A team member's chat sees only what their permissions cover: revenue, for example, only with "Finance operations".

There is no AI help on the images, pricing and final check steps.

Usage limit

There is a daily usage limit per provider so the service stays available for everyone. It is not counted in messages but in processing cost: long, complex answers cost more than short ones, and the allowance is larger on higher plans. If you run out you will see a message, and the tools work again the next day.

"All listings"

The "All listings" page (/platform/listings) shows everything you have listed, of every kind, in one list — it is where "My listings" and the dashboard's listings card lead. It has a title search and filters by kind and status, and every row carries its own status action (publish, hide, continue a draft, restore), view and edit. Duplicating, archiving, deleting and the bulk actions stay in each kind's own library — the kind on every row is a link to it.

New listing

The "New listing" button does not open a form: it opens a menu of the six kinds — Activity, Event, Excursion, Youth programme, Volunteering action, Space rental — each with one line saying what it is for, and takes you to its wizard. A kind that is not available yet shows a "Coming soon" badge and does not open. Last, with a Premium mark, comes "Corporate activities" — not a listing kind but the page with what you offer companies (see "The listing creation wizard").

Each kind's library

For each listing type, the list gives you:

• search,
• a status filter,
• pagination at 20 records per page,
• view, edit and delete,
• an active/inactive toggle,
• bulk publish, hide or delete.

Bulk status changes skip any listings that are in progress. To publish such a record, it first has to be completed through the wizard.

Publishing from a list checks the listing first, as the wizard does: an incomplete one is not published, and you are told to open it for editing and fill in what is missing.

The calendar has three main views: "Calendar", "List" and "Participants" (the last for members who may see bookings). It provides search, category filters, week-by-week navigation and daily statistics.

A new manual booking

1. 1Choose "New booking".
2. 2Pick the session that accepts bookings.
3. 3Select someone on your list or enter a walk-in.
4. 4For a walk-in, fill in a name. Otherwise, pick the person from your list.
5. 5Choose to use a credit from a package, or an off-platform payment, if needed.
6. 6If it was paid outside the platform, fill in "Amount (€)" — empty means the activity's single-session price, 0 means free.
7. 7Confirm.

A manual booking does NOT charge the customer’s card online. It is how you record in the system someone who booked a place by phone or in person.

If you record it as paid (cash, Bizum, bank transfer or card at the venue), your plan’s booking commission is added under “Platform fees”, as for any paid booking, and it is computed on the booking's amount. A booking you mark as paid with no amount, on an activity with no single-session price, is not saved until you enter what was paid. A booking that uses a package credit is not charged again.

What you can do from a session

• see the participant list and the bookings,
• mark attendance or absence,
• mark everyone as present,
• manage the payment status of group participations,
• add, promote or remove someone from the waiting list,
• email all participants,
• change the capacity for this occurrence or for future ones too,
• cancel the session, stating a reason, a scope, and whether participants are notified,
• restore a cancelled occurrence,
• move an individual booking to another session,
• edit the price and the reason,
• add a note or call the participant,
• cancel an individual booking,
• see the action history.

The new capacity cannot be lower than the places already booked. You will also see a warning when the minimum number of participants has not been reached.

Waiting list

You can manage a waiting list and promote someone as soon as a place frees up. Before treating the promotion as done, check the participant list and the notifications that were sent.

Bookings view

The view separates group bookings — two or more places — from individual ones. It supports source and status filters and opens the same detailed session view.

The main booking statuses are: upcoming, present, absent and cancelled.

Check-in

"Check-in", under "Booking System" in the menu, shows one day at a time — "Today" or a date you pick — with every booking of that day: who is coming, the payment status and whether a package credit was used. You mark each person "Present" or "No-show", and a session with fewer bookings than its minimum is flagged as at risk of cancellation.

Your list distinguishes two categories:

• people who came through HobbyDetective,
• people you add yourself, by adding or inviting them.

The list is not "Students" for everyone: it takes its name from "Who do you serve?" in your Profile — "Members", "Members & Customers", "Customers" and so on — and its buttons follow ("New member"). With your e-shop open, "Customers" is always included.

The Free plan limit

The Free plan allows up to 50 people you add yourself. The limit applies to quick add, full add, invitations and interest conversions. On Premium there is no such limit. Your team members follow the account’s plan.

People who came through HobbyDetective do not count towards the limit. If you delete someone you added yourself, a place frees up.

Status, tags and filters

Each person has one status: "Active" (a lesson booked, attendance in the last 60 days, or added to your list within the last month) or "Inactive" (more than 60 days without a lesson). It is not a switch: it changes as soon as you book a lesson or mark attendance, and the person's card tells you in how many days they become "Inactive".

Tags sit beside the status on their own: how often they come ("Always comes", "Comes often", "Comes now and then", "Rarely comes", from attendance over the last 90 days), "New" in their first month on your list and "Long-time" after a year; a tag you pick yourself wins. "Tag" adds your own (e.g. "Child", "Private lessons"), and they save straight away.

Above the list, chips filter by status and tag ("Active", "Inactive", "Always come", "Come often", "Come now and then", "Rarely come", "New", "Long-time" and your own). "Filters" holds "Packages & payments" ("With balance", "Package ending", "To renew") and "List" ("HobbyDetective", "Internal", "Invited", "Removed", "Children"), and there is a "Sort". People who came through HobbyDetective carry a source badge; the absence of a badge means an internal record.

Adding and inviting

• Quick add: the basic details only.
• Full add: a detailed profile.
• Invitation: needs an email and creates a link valid for 14 days.

The invitation is accepted by a logged-in hobbyist. That links their account to you and their source becomes HobbyDetective. Linking the same account to the same provider a second time is not accepted.

Anyone who books with you through the platform joins your list at that first booking, as someone who came through HobbyDetective — there is nothing to invite. A package purchase does the same once the money is in: an abandoned checkout adds no one to your list, while a free trial with nothing to pay counts at once (one that carries a registration fee waits for it). The invitation is for someone you already serve who is not linked to you on the platform yet.

Removing and restoring

Removing someone from your list deletes nothing: they are simply off it — no more automatic offers for people on your list and no access to products only for people on your list — but their bookings, packages, comments and family links stay. You find them under the “Removed” filter and restore them with one button; if they book or buy with you again, they come back on their own. Only a row you added by hand, with no account and no history at all, is deleted outright.

Each person’s data

The profile can include:

• name, email and phone,
• date of birth and address,
• level, tags (automatic and your own) and notes,
• family offer and family links,
• booking history,
• packages,
• comments,
• attendance and statistics,
• emergency contacts.

Packages per person

For each person on your list you can:

• book them a lesson with "Book a lesson" on their card,
• assign a package or a trial,
• set the payment status,
• see an offer preview,
• adjust credits,
• extend the expiry,
• confirm a payment or a refund,
• change the status,
• delete, where the source and the linked records allow it.

A membership you hand out yourself ends when its months do: the months you give it become its end date, unless you pick one. A lesson pack you hand out has no end date of its own — its credits end it. Older memberships saved with neither a date nor an end read "Never expires — set an end" in the "Expires" column and in the person's drawer, and opening the purchase offers the date the rule would have written, in one click. A package that is deliberately open-ended keeps showing a dash.

Confirmation of attendance (Premium)

From the record of someone on your list you can issue a "Confirmation of attendance": how many sessions they attended with you, as you marked them on the calendar — for all your activities or one, over a period you choose — with the name as it will be printed, what they attended and an optional note in your own words. You attest it and the platform records it; the wording is fixed once issued, and you can open it, copy its link or withdraw it. It can never speak of certification or a qualification. It is a Premium feature.

"Sales & requests" (under "Booking System" in the menu) is not a list of every individual session. It has two tabs: "Package purchases" and "Interest requests". Individual session bookings are managed from the Calendar, and a day's attendance from "Check-in".

Package purchases

You have search, source and status filters. The main package statuses are: active, expiring, expired and revoked. A revocation removes credits and cancels upcoming bookings; it does not refund money. Any monetary refund is handled separately.

You can:

• confirm a payment,
• change credits or the expiry date,
• change the status,
• approve or reject a pause request,
• restart a frozen package,
• revoke package access without implying a monetary refund,
• delete a record, where permitted.

When a customer asks for a pause, the notification opens "Package purchases" with the "Pause request" window; there, and on the person's card, you also see any requests still waiting. "Approve pause" freezes the package's expiry, stops lessons being booked with it and, on a subscription, stops the automatic charge; "Resume package" moves the expiry out by the days it was paused and restarts the charge. "Decline request" keeps the package running with the same expiry. The customer is notified of your answer. The account owner, or a team member with "Finance operations", answers it.

Managing interest requests

The statuses are: "New", "Contacted", "Converted" and "Dismissed". You can send an email or call, and then convert the interest into:

• a free trial,
• a package from your catalogue, with the appropriate payment status,
• optionally a session booking as well, if you pick a responsible person, a date and a time.

Do the conversion after you have agreed things with the interested person. Do not create a paid record before the payment has actually been made.

A package recorded as paid — a confirmed payment, a package you assign, or a converted interest request — adds your plan’s booking commission under “Platform fees”. A package you hand out without payment should not be recorded as paid.

The section’s figures

The section shows revenue from purchases and bookings, pending amounts and new interest requests. Like the dashboard, it is an operational view and not an accounting report.

Depending on the data available, the statistics include:

• total people on your list and invited people,
• active and expiring packages,
• upcoming bookings,
• new interest requests,
• pending payments,
• attendance,
• a breakdown of bookings by status,
• a breakdown by source,
• revenue, trends and top metrics.

Trends cover up to 24 months on Premium and 6 months on Free. If you do not see data, it does not necessarily mean something is broken: there may simply not be any completed transactions or recorded attendance yet. Free gives you the basic booking and attendance indicators; Premium adds the full picture — revenue, sources, top listings and the CSV export (the export is for the account owner, and a team member sees revenue only with "Finance operations").

Revenue counts packages in the month they were bought and other bookings in the month of the session, once their payment is settled; the comparison with the previous period uses the same rule.

"What your numbers say"

On Premium the "Statistics" page carries "What your numbers say": a short written summary by the AI Assistant, drawn only from your own figures on that page — it does not compare you with other providers, never sees customer details and leaves out metrics with too small a sample. On Premium Plus, "Ask the AI Assistant about these" lets you question those figures in AI Chat.

Traffic

Views of your listings are available on ALL plans, free of charge: how many people opened your pages, day by day. They are counted without cookies, and your own visits are not included.

Premium adds the "Traffic & interaction" section: views per listing next to what people did afterwards (saves, requests, bookings), visits to your public page, and tips based on your own numbers — for example when plenty of people look without booking, or when one listing goes unnoticed.

You have an inbox with search, unread counters, real-time messages, a typing indicator and a read indicator.

The inbox is the business's, not one person's: a reply written by the owner or by a teammate is on your side of the conversation for everyone on the team, marked "Reply from …" with the teammate's name (or "Reply from a colleague" if they have none), and it never counts as unread for the rest of you. "Seen" means the customer read it.

You can write first to your students: "Message" on their card in "Students", or "New" in "Messages", where you pick a student. It opens the conversation with them (or the one you already have). It works only for people on your list who have a HobbyDetective account; for a child, you write to their parent. You do not start a conversation with hobbyists you do not know: they write to you from your public page. If you preview your own page, the contact button does not create a conversation with yourself.

File attachments (photos and documents) are a Premium feature — your plan decides for both sides of the conversation. There are currently no features for editing, deleting, archiving or blocking a conversation.

On the notifications page you see read and unread items, you can mark them all as read, and open the related link where one exists. Notifications about orders, products, subscription and the provider lead straight to the relevant page. Partner-referral notifications open "Invitations", shared-venue ones the "Shared space" tab, a Google Calendar reconnect "Connections", and a pause request the window where you answer it. Only group booking requests do not open a page yet.

What goes out by email

A new booking emails both sides — the customer and you — each in their own language, so you do not have to open the platform to find out. The same goes for a cancellation and for moving a booking. On your team, the email reaches whoever holds the bookings permission.

Platform fees are emailed to you as well: one email for each new fee, and reminders 3 days before it is due, on the due date and 7 days after. On Premium Plus the fees are €0, so no fee emails go out.

Everything else (reminders, package activity, messages) you see inside the platform; we do not send SMS.

"Reviews" in the menu gathers what people wrote about you, on two tabs: "Sessions & activities" and "Products".

Asking for a review

A session review comes only from someone who really attended. Under "Session review invitations" you see the attended sessions recorded on HobbyDetective that are still waiting for a review: "Ask for a review" emails that person a link, and "Copy invitation link" lets you send it yourself. "Send again" emails a fresh link, and the link in the earlier email stops working.

"Review invitations without a booking" covers someone who took part outside the platform: the dialog first asks who it goes to. Someone on your list costs nothing — their name and email come from their record, it works even when the allowance is used up, and it is allowed even if they already have an account. Anyone who is not on your list yet takes one of the 15 the allowance holds (as the counter and its warning say), and cannot already have a HobbyDetective account. Either way you confirm that the person genuinely took part, they are added to your list, and their review is attached to the activity you pick; the history badges the ones that went to people on your list. Such a review is not marked "Verified booking": no HobbyDetective booking is behind it.

Replying and reporting

You can post one public reply to each review; once posted, it cannot be edited. A review that breaks the rules — offensive, spam, false information, personal data, off-topic — you send to our team with "Report"; it stays visible until we have looked at it.

What the public sees

A public review shows the rating, the text, the date and your reply — on your profile also which listing it is about — and, when it was written for a booking, the "Verified booking" label (every product review carries "Verified purchase"); never which booking, session or day it came from. It is signed with the reviewer's first name and the initial of their surname, never with their email address; someone with no usable name appears as "Hobbyist".

A review — of a product, a session or your profile — can arrive as «Anonymous hobbyist»: the hobbyist chose to keep their name hidden, from you too. In that case «Reviews» and the notification show no name, and no session date, time or section — only the listing. You reply to it and report it to the team as usual.

Everyone sees the “E-shop Access Request” screen, because that is where the terms live. What differs is what happens when you accept: with an active Premium or Premium Plus subscription the e-shop opens straight away, with no approval; on Free your acceptance becomes a request and waits for review.

If the subscription ends

Nothing is lost. Products, orders and settings stay and you keep managing them. What stops is selling: while there is no way for you to be paid, your products do not appear publicly and cannot be bought. They come back by themselves once you renew or connect card payments.

The same applies before any lapse: if you have a subscription but have filled in neither an IBAN nor a Bizum mobile number, the e-shop is open to you but your products are not buyable, because there is nowhere for the money to go. Orders you have already taken can still be confirmed either way.

Two different things sit behind this screen. The first is e-shop access: on Free our team reviews it, and the request’s status can be:

• no request submitted,
• pending,
• approved,
• rejected.

All of the above applies to Free: there, submitting a request does not mean automatic approval, and the pages for managing products, delivery and shop details open once access is approved. With an active Premium or Premium Plus subscription they open immediately when you accept the terms, with no request in between.

If HobbyDetective switches your shop off

We can switch an individual shop off — for example when products do not match what they were sold as, or an order problem stays unresolved. Your products then stop being listed, cannot be bought and are removed from customers’ carts, and publishing is refused while it lasts.

Your e-shop pages stay open, on purpose: the orders already placed are still yours to fulfil, and returns are still handled from your panel. Your bookings are not affected at all — this is the e-shop alone. You get an email with the reason, and the same reason is shown at the top of your e-shop pages until the shop is switched back on.

Online card payments are set up at Stripe

The second is the payments account, which enables card payments for both the e-shop and bookings. Nobody on our team approves that one: as soon as you accept the terms (from the e-shop or from Booking Settings) we take you to Stripe, where you fill in your business details, an identity document and your IBAN yourself — about 5-10 minutes. Stripe verifies the details (usually a few minutes, sometimes up to two business days) and payments switch on automatically; we email you the moment they do.

You follow the setup on your payments page — the “Continue payment setup” button in Booking Settings and the email we send when you start both lead there. Its states: “Let’s get started”, “Almost there — a few details left”, “Stripe is reviewing you”, “Your payments are live” and “Your account needs attention”. You can pick it up from that page at any time; the link into Stripe is minted afresh each time, which is why we never email it.

Once setup is done, the same page shows “Open Stripe Express”: there you see your payments and payouts, change the payout bank account, handle refunds and disputes, and answer anything Stripe asks. The account owner, or a teammate with "Finance operations", opens it. If Stripe asks for a website and you have none, give your social page.

Paying an order by Bizum or bank transfer

On Premium and Premium Plus an e-shop order can also be settled off the card rail. The customer picks Bizum or a bank transfer in the cart, the order is created and reserves stock as usual, and they then see your details in My Orders, where they report that they sent the money.

The same payment deadline you set for bookings applies. If it passes and the customer has not reported sending anything, the order is cancelled automatically and the stock goes back. The customer’s report is not proof: you confirm the money yourself from the Orders page, and only then does the order become “Paid” and become fulfillable.

A paid Bizum or bank-transfer order can still be cancelled or returned on the customer’s request, within your policy. When you approve, the platform refunds nothing — the money never passed through it: a cancellation cancels the order and returns its stock, and you repay the customer yourself, the same way they paid. Both screens where you approve say so.

Cash and card at the venue do not apply in the e-shop — they belong to sessions someone attends, not to a parcel.

An order settled outside the platform carries no commission, because no money passes through the platform. That is the e-shop only: a booking or package paid outside the platform still carries your booking commission, billed under “Platform fees”.

The creation steps

1. 1Basic details.
2. 2Categories.
3. 3Pricing.
4. 4Images.
5. 5Attributes.
6. 6Variants, when you have selected more than one size.
7. 7Final check.

Required fields

• title and description,
• first-level and second-level category,
• a base price greater than zero,
• a discount price or amount, when you enable a discount,
• a main image,
• at least 3 additional images.

The additional-image limit is 3 on Free and 10 on Premium.

Attributes and variants

Attributes are optional. When you select more than one size, variants are created with a SKU, price, stock and status. Only active and available variants can be purchased.

Stock and weight

• If you track stock and leave the quantity empty, the product becomes out of stock.
• If you do not track stock, no numeric limit is applied.
• Weight in grams is optional.
• If the weight is missing, the product counts as 0 kg at checkout and your lightest delivery rule prices it.

Statuses and the list

Products have three statuses: in progress, active and inactive — they are not archived the way listings are. The wizard saves automatically, and the list gives you search, status and category filters, variant expansion, bulk changes, view, edit, delete and a status toggle.

Audience

In the Pricing step you choose who each product is for: the e-shop and your list (the default), the e-shop only, or only people on your list. A product only for people on your list does not appear in the public shop; it is seen and bought only by people on your list who have a HobbyDetective account, from the “My providers” section of their account. The audience can also be changed from the products list, one product at a time or in bulk.

Offer on all products

From the «Products» page, under «Shop tools», you set one offer for your whole shop — a percentage (e.g. −10%, up to −90%) or an amount (e.g. −5 €) — optionally from and until a date. Your products stay as they are: each one sells at the lower price of its own offer and the shop offer, and a euro offer never makes a product free. Before saving you see how many products it will reach. Customers see it on your shop page and on the product pages. When you stop it or its last day passes, prices go back at once; anyone with the product already in their basket confirms the new price before paying.

Coupons

From the «Products» page, under «Shop tools», you create coupon codes, e.g. JDART10: a percentage (up to −90%) or an amount in euros, optionally with a minimum order, dates and a maximum number of uses. The customer types the code in the basket, under your shop's products (lower case works too). It applies only to your products, one coupon per order, on the prices after offers, and never to delivery. You bear the discount: the platform commission is worked out on the amount after it. Uses count when an order is placed and come back if it is cancelled unpaid. A coupon cannot be changed — stop it or create a new code. On a return the customer gets back what they paid for that product, after the coupon.

AI help on products

There are tools for improving text, automatic translation, category and attribute suggestions, and a short description. Check every suggestion for accuracy on properties, materials, dimensions, price and any legal claims.

A shop with no rules starts with suggested charges, retail prices with VAT: for a locker or pick-up point, €5.28, €5.74, €7.03 and €13.90 up to 1, 2, 5 and 10 kg on the mainland; to the door, €13.65, €17.10 and €22.95 up to 1, 5 and 10 kg on the mainland, €15.40, €21.80 and €34.90 in the Balearic Islands, and €21.30, €30.70 and €38.40 in the Canary Islands, Ceuta and Melilla. Its local code comes from its province. They are marked Suggested until you change the price; change or delete them, and with your own courier contract enter your own, usually lower, prices.

Each area has two lists of prices: «To a locker or shop» (you send it to the locker or point nearest the customer's address, and they get a text and collect it) and «To the door». At checkout the customer sees what each costs and chooses; a list with no price is not offered. The order shows what they chose.

Rules are grouped by area: Local (the postcodes you choose), Remote (the rest of the mainland), the Balearic Islands, and the Canary Islands, Ceuta and Melilla. Each area has its own «Add rule» button. A rule says: parcels up to this weight cost this much, with an optional name and optional maximum size. A new rule is on straight away; its switch turns it off without deleting it. At checkout the customer pays the cheapest rule of their area that fits the parcel. If Local or the Balearic Islands have no active rule, they are charged like Remote. The Canary Islands, Ceuta and Melilla need customs papers: they start switched off, and you ship there only with an active rule of your own.

The «Postal codes» page shows your codes in each area, finds which area a postcode belongs to and what the customer pays there, and lets you move any postcode to another area.

Also supported: pick-up from your venue and free delivery from an order amount. A product with no weight counts as 0 kg at checkout, so the page shows how many of your products have none.

«Packaging charge»: for things that need special packaging you set a price per package and how many pieces it holds, e.g. €3 per 5 sheets of 30×30 glass. You choose whether every product counts or only the ones you tick, and optionally only the sizes containing some text (e.g. «30×30», whichever product it is). The customer pays once for every package started, as a separate «Packaging» line with the delivery; never on pick-up from your venue, while with free delivery the packaging is still charged. It goes to you like delivery, with no commission.

You can set your returns policy and your cancellation policy in both Spanish and English. If one language is missing, an automatic translation is attempted on save.

You also configure:

• the cancellation window, from 1 to 168 hours,
• the returns window: the days from receipt in which the customer can withdraw, at least 14, as the law requires, and up to 90,
• free replacement of a defective product,
• an indicative refund timeframe,
• a default payment method,
• Premium options for accepting payments.

The timeframe texts are information for the customer, not a guarantee of bank clearing times. Make sure your policies agree with the terms of use and with the law.

Statuses

Supported: pending, paid, processing, shipped, delivered, cancelled, refunded and partially refunded.

The typical cycle

1. 1Pending or paid.
2. 2Processing.
3. 3Shipped.
4. 4Delivered.

You also have a manual choice of final status. Only use the refund statuses once the corresponding financial action has actually been completed or recorded.

Order details

On each order you can:

• see the customer, address, products and amounts,
• add a shipment tracking link,
• write a comment — "Provider Comments" are internal: the customer never sees them,
• see the order timeline,
• handle cancellation or return requests,
• record the returned items and the refund amount the system calculates.

The refund amount must come from the platform’s calculation and not from a rough calculation of your own.

The separate requests page supports:

• type: withdrawal/return, cancellation or problem report,
• status: pending, approved, rejected or completed,
• search and filters,
• your own reply,
• approval or rejection.

Before you approve, check the products, quantities, reason, policy, delivery and the calculated amount. Approval changes the order’s actual status and can trigger a refund process — it is not just a message reply. A problem report about a faulty product is not limited by your return policy: as the seller you are liable for faults that appear within 3 years of delivery.

You see the rating, title, text and the related product, and you can publish one reply. Everything else about reviews — anonymous ones included — is under "Reviews".

Plan comparison

This comparison is indicative. The definitive picture is always what you see on the Premium page and in your account.

Price

Premium is available on a monthly and a yearly subscription, with the yearly one having a lower monthly cost. Because prices and offers change, check the current price on the Premium page before buying.

For reference, at the time this guide was written: €18/month billed yearly (€216/year) or €25/month billed monthly, both plus VAT. Payment goes through Stripe and renews automatically.

Premium Plus

Beyond Free and Premium there is a third plan, Premium Plus. It includes everything in Premium, adds the in-app AI tools and bookings on your own site, and reduces commission to 0% on bookings and 2% on the e-shop. Reference price: €24/month billed yearly (€288/year) or €30/month billed monthly, both plus VAT. Always check the current price on the Premium page.

The Premium Plus "AI tools" are the assistant that fills in listings inside the creation wizard and the opportunity assistant in the CRM. AI Chat — this conversation right here — is available on every plan.

Changing plan

The plans page sells a plan only to an account that holds none. If you already have one, pressing another plan tells you what applies instead of opening a payment that would be refused:

• you already pay for a plan (for example Premium, and you want Premium Plus): our team makes the change — "Talk to our team" opens the support chat with the request already written for you;
• you have a plan for free with an end date (a welcome gift, a plan granted by our team, or a month earned by inviting partners or by switching bookings on): you can buy a plan as soon as it ends;
• you have a plan for free with no end date: talk to our team;
• your last subscription payment did not go through: you do not buy again — pay from the link we emailed you, with a card that works.

A free month for switching bookings on

While the platform offers it, switching the booking system on earns you a free month (or months) of a plan — how many and which plan are on the "Free …" card on your dashboard. It does not start by itself: start it whenever you like with "Start it now". If you already pay for a plan or have free access, the card tells you what happens — e.g. that your charge is frozen while the gift runs and resumes right after.

Cancellation and downgrade

A paid subscription can be scheduled to cancel at the end of the period you have already paid for, and re-activated before it expires. A Premium plan granted promotionally may follow a different process.

If an automatic renewal fails, the plan stays active while we retry the charge, for up to 3 days — pay from the email link, with a card that works. If no attempt succeeds, the subscription is cancelled and you are back on Free. Cancelling during those days stops the retries and moves you to Free at once — not at the end of the period.

On a downgrade:

• your data is not deleted automatically,
• the fields and features that belong to Premium are hidden or frozen,
• it is worth checking which of your active flows are affected — for example, sections using “Participation request”.

The platform charges a commission that depends on your plan:

VAT is INCLUDED in these percentages — it is never added on top of them.

Stripe’s payment-processing fees are calculated separately from the platform commission, in all cases. On card payments they still come out of your payout.

From a card payment you receive your price, less Stripe’s processing fee (on e-shop orders, also less the commission). Booking commission is never taken out of the card payment — it is billed to you separately, as described below.

How booking commission is paid

Booking commission is not taken out of the customer’s payment — it is billed to you. Every paid booking, deposit balance, package sale and package renewal adds a fee under “Platform fees” in your panel, whether the customer paid by card through the platform or in cash, Bizum, bank transfer or card at your venue (as soon as you mark it paid). The fee is your plan’s rate at the moment of payment, on the price the customer paid. You get an email for each fee.

Not billed this way: bookings paid with package credits (the package sale was already charged), free (€0) bookings, registration fees and e-shop orders. On Premium Plus the booking rate is 0%, so its fees are €0 — nothing to pay and no email.

You have 14 days to pay each fee, by card or bank transfer, and you can pay several at once. Card payments are confirmed automatically; after a bank transfer you press “I’ve sent it” and the HobbyDetective team confirms it when the money arrives. Reminders go out before the due date, on it, and a week after.

If a customer is refunded, the fee is reduced — or, if you already paid it, credited back and taken off your next payment.

E-shop commission works as before: it is withheld from each order paid online by card and is calculated on the goods, not on delivery; an e-shop order settled outside the platform (Bizum or bank transfer) carries no commission.

“Platform fees” is the page in your provider area, at /platform/fees, that lists the booking commission you owe HobbyDetective and lets you pay it. It appears in the sidebar once online booking is your booking mode — or, in any mode, as soon as you have a fee (from a booking or package you recorded as paid, for example) — and "Booking Settings" → "Bookings" links to it ("See platform fees"); the page itself always opens at that address, which is where every fee email leads. The customer never sees or pays these fees.

Why a fee appears

A fee is added every time customer money settles for you: a booking paid by card through the platform, a booking or package you record as paid in cash, Bizum, bank transfer or card at the venue, a deposit balance you collect, a package sale and each package renewal. It is your plan’s booking rate at that moment, on the price the customer paid, and each new fee comes with an email.

What the page shows

• “Owed now” — what is open to pay,
• “Overdue” — fees past their due date,
• “Awaiting confirmation” — bank transfers you reported that we have not confirmed yet,
• “Available credit” — refunded fees you had already paid, taken off your next payment automatically,
• the fees on the “To pay”, “Settled” and “All” tabs, each with its kind (Booking, Booking balance, Package sale, Package renewal) and the rate on the amount,
• your payment history, under “Your payments”.

How to pay

1. 1Open “Platform fees”.
2. 2Tick the fees you want and press “Pay selected”, or press “Pay all” — one fee or several at once.
3. 3Choose “Card” or “Bank transfer”.
4. 4Card: you pay through Stripe and it is confirmed automatically. A card payment needs at least €0.50; for less, add more fees or use bank transfer.
5. 5Bank transfer: the page shows HobbyDetective’s account details, the amount and a reference such as HD-FEE-000012. Put the reference in the transfer description, send the money and press “I’ve sent it”. We confirm it once it arrives, usually within two working days, and email you.

Due dates, reminders and overdue fees

Each fee is due 14 days after the payment it is for. Reminders go out 3 days before the due date, on the due date and 7 days after it. A fee still unpaid after its due date is marked overdue and the HobbyDetective team follows up with you; nothing is blocked automatically.

Refunds and credit

If you refund a customer, an unpaid fee is reduced — or cancelled, for a full refund. If you had already paid it, the refunded share becomes a credit that is taken off your next payment automatically; when your credit covers the fees you pick, “Settle with credit” clears them without paying anything.

A fee marked “Taken with the card payment” belongs to a card payment started before this change, when the commission was still deducted from the card payment itself. There is nothing to pay on it.

Premium Plus

On Premium Plus the booking rate is 0%: your paid bookings are listed for your records at €0, with nothing to pay and no fee emails. E-shop commission is separate and is still withheld from each online order.

Who can see and pay them

The account owner, and team members whose permissions include finance.

In the promotion section you can register interest in:

• promotion of your HobbyDetective page,
• promotion of your own website.

Promoting your page costs €70 a month before VAT. The price covers creating and running the promotion, which runs from HobbyDetective’s own Google and social media accounts and leads to your page. It does NOT include a video, nor any extra ad budget of your own: both are priced separately, after we speak. There are no Starter/Growth/Pro packages — they were withdrawn.

Promoting a website of your own has no fixed price; it is quoted after we speak.

Priority in the order of search results is NOT sold: no payment changes the normal order, alongside the promotion or on its own. The only paid places inside HobbyDetective are the ones booked on the «Sponsored ads» page — separate places labelled «Sponsored» — and only once the HobbyDetective team has opened it; then it has its own section below. If there is none, Sponsored ads are not available yet — say so plainly.

The form is a contact request, not a direct purchase or promotion activation. It asks for a brand or personal name, email, phone, a message and consent; the link and the type of interest are optional.

The account area has the tabs "Account", "Settings", "Subscription", "Onboarding", "Connections", "Invitations" and "Delete Account". Team members see only "Account", "Onboarding" and "Connections", plus "Settings" when their role opens one of its pages.

Settings

The "Settings" tab opens the same pages as the sidebar's "Settings" group: "Partner Profile", "Facilities/Amenities" and "Booking Settings".

Email and password

You have two addresses and they are different: the "Sign-in email" you log in with, and the profile's "Contact email", where order notifications arrive and which your public page can show. Changing one never changes the other.

• You change the sign-in email yourself, on the Account tab: type the new address, we send a confirmation link there, and nothing changes until you open it from the new address. It is valid for 24 hours and you can cancel a pending change.
• Resetting or changing your password also cancels a pending change, and your current address gets an email as soon as a change is requested — if you did not ask for it, reset your password and the change is gone.
• The same form can change the contact email along with it. If you sign in with Google, confirm with Google before the change — otherwise Google sign-in will not recognise you afterwards.
• Changing the password requires the current password.
• The new password must be at least 8 characters and different from the previous one.

Subscription

You see your current plan, the cancellation or restart status, and the history of payments and receipts.

Connections

"Connections" links outside accounts. Google Calendar puts your bookings in your own calendar and checks the calendars you choose for clashes — it sees only when you are busy, never the titles or details of your events. The "Instagram & TikTok" card connects those accounts so your latest posts appear on your public profile (Instagram needs a Business or Creator account); we only ever read your posts and can never post, comment or message as you.

Invitations

On "Invitations" you invite other partners to HobbyDetective, by email or with your own link. When the partners you brought in finish setting up, you earn free Premium months — the banner there shows how many partners each free month takes and how far along you are. The months are added to your plan and show on the "Subscription" tab.

Account deletion

A provider account is closed by our team, so that active bookings, orders and payments are settled first. On the "Delete Account" tab the account owner sends the request ("Request account deletion"): we confirm your identity and check for active bookings or outstanding payouts, your listings are withdrawn from the public site and your personal details are anonymised — records the law requires us to keep are retained in anonymised form. We reply to your account email, with an internal target of 30 calendar days, and you can withdraw the request while it is open.

So you do not waste time looking, here is what is not supported right now:

• An "in progress" listing cannot be published without finishing the creation wizard.
• An activity and a space rental can be duplicated from their list and the copy always arrives as a draft; the dated kinds (event, excursion, programme, volunteering) cannot. Inside an activity you can also duplicate a single section.
• Participation requests and per-listing options cannot be used without Premium.
• Without a way to collect, online booking books free participation only; a listing with a price is booked online once there is a finished Stripe setup for cards or, with a subscription, an off-platform method.
• You cannot change plan from the plans page while you already hold one: a paid plan is changed by our team.
• A team member cannot change the contact email or the payout details (IBAN, Bizum).
• You cannot start a conversation with a hobbyist who is not on your list of students, or with a student who has no account.
• You cannot delete, edit, archive or block conversations.
• You cannot edit a reply to a review once it has been sent.
• You cannot close the provider account on the spot: you send a request from "Delete Account" and our team closes it.

Also, do not assume an e-shop request has been approved before the approval email arrives and the product pages open, that online card payments are active before the payments page says "Your payments are live", or that a package purchase from your profile was paid and activated automatically.

If a menu or a feature is not showing up, check in this order:

1. 1Are you logged in with the right account (provider, not hobbyist)?
2. 2Have you completed onboarding?
3. 3Does that particular feature require Premium?
4. 4Does it require approval (as the e-shop does on Free) or a finished Stripe setup (as online card payments do)?
5. 5Is the platform in its pre-launch phase, where some public areas appear in a reduced form?
6. 6Are you a team member? The menu shows only what your permissions cover, and some parts ("Team", "Shared space", "Subscription", "Invitations", "Delete Account") belong to the account owner alone.
7. 7Is it "Platform fees"? The entry appears once online booking is your booking mode, or as soon as you have a fee; the page itself always opens at /platform/fees.

If all of the above are fine and the problem persists, get in touch with us.

English on-screen labels

When the interface language is English, these are the labels shown in the provider area:

For anything not covered here, for approvals, for technical issues or for ideas and suggestions, write to us at [email protected].