VenueBook – Venue & Event Booking Marketplace SaaS (Marriage Hall, Banquet & Lawn Booking Script, Laravel 13)

VenueBook - a venue booking marketplace you run as a SaaS

VenueBook is a booking marketplace and SaaS for marriage halls, banquets, lawns, convention centres and party halls. One public website lists the venues of many owners; customers check live date availability, block a date with a small online advance held in escrow and follow their event in the customer area. Venue owners subscribe to a plan and run their halls from an owner panel with calendar, bookings, enquiries and quotes, payments, agreements, WhatsApp / SMS / e-mail and staff. You run everything from the super admin: plans with booking fees, verification, escrow and payouts, refunds, CMS and settings. Built on Laravel 13 (PHP 8.3+) with a browser installer - the vendor folder is included.

Every live demo opens with one click - no typing needed.

A marketplace website with live availability

Home page with date search, venue types, featured venues, muhurtham dates and FAQ; venue search by date and slot, city and area, event, type, guests, budget and amenities, as grid, list or map with price pins; city pages, a vendor directory, muhurtham dates and CMS pages. Language and currency switcher included.

Venue pages that sell dates

• Gallery, slot prices per weekday, weekend and muhurtham date, live availability calendar, add-ons, food and house rules, cancellation slabs, location map and reviews
• Block-a-date checkout with add-ons, coupons, ID proof upload and a live price summary
• Double-booking protection: every slot is booked inside a locked database transaction with a unique key per venue, date and slot

An online advance held in escrow

• The platform collects the advance and the balance in its own gateway account; the money is recorded as held in escrow until after the event
• Razorpay, Stripe, PayPal, Paystack, PayHere and bank transfer (reference and receipt, approved by the admin)
• Every payment is verified with the provider on the server; webhooks are signed and closed without a secret
• Unpaid holds are released automatically by the cron job

A customer area for the big day

My event with countdown, balance due, payment schedule, vendors, checklist and agreement status; bookings with timeline, cancellation with a refund preview from the cancellation slabs, quotes; payments and receipts; click-to-accept agreement and invoices; vendors, checklist, shortlist with compare and reviews. Works as a phone-first web app with a bottom tab bar (no app-store download).

An owner panel that fills the calendar

• Dashboard with booking value, occupancy, open enquiries, balances and a 12-month chart
• Availability calendar (month, week, year) with blocked dates, manual bookings and iCal export / import
• Pricing grid per slot and day type, add-ons, surge and offer rules, coupons, advance, hold time and cancellation slabs
• Booking detail with money, payments, reminders, agreement, notes and tasks, documents, roster and vendors; reports with GST

Enquiries, quotes, WhatsApp and staff

A drag-and-drop enquiry board (new, contacted, site visit, quoted, won, lost) with follow-ups; quotes with a public accept link that turn into a hold with an advance payment; payments and advances with escrow status, refunds and deposits; WhatsApp, SMS and e-mail broadcasts with automations; staff logins with section permissions and an event-day roster.

A super admin that pays the owners

• Dashboard and analytics: GMV, MRR, escrow balance, venues by plan, platform health, top cities
• Plans with monthly / yearly price, booking fee, limits (venues, staff, WhatsApp) and feature flags; subscription invoices with GST and renewals
• Escrow and payouts: approve bank transfers, run payouts, download the bank-transfer CSV and mark payouts paid with the bank reference; refunds and disputes
• Venues and owners with verification queue, KYC, plan changes, suspension and support login with audit log

Your brand, your market, easy setup

• Colours with presets and a live preview, logos and 1,950+ Google Fonts
• Website CMS and a drag-and-drop page builder with live preview
• Multi language with a translation editor and multi currency
• Browser installer for shared hosting, VPS and Windows (XAMPP / Laragon) - no Composer, Node.js or SSH needed

What you get

• The complete script with the vendor folder and browser installer (MySQL / MariaDB or SQLite)
• Demo data (38 sample venues of 25 owners in 18 cities with bookings, payouts, enquiries and vendors) and illustrated HTML documentation

Good to know

• Escrow means the platform collects online payments in its own gateway account and you pay owners by bank transfer (Run payouts creates the batches and a CSV); there is no automatic split such as Razorpay Route or Stripe Connect. Refunds are calculated by the script and sent by you in the gateway dashboard.
• Agreements are click-to-accept records (typed name, time, IP and a hash of the text), not a certified digital signature.
• Calendar sync uses iCal export and import; the Google Calendar API is not used.
• WhatsApp needs a Meta WhatsApp Cloud API account and templates approved by Meta; SMS needs an MSG91 or Twilio account.
• The customer area and owner panel are responsive web apps; no native Android / iOS apps are included. There is no public REST API in this version.

Requirements at a glance

PHP 8.3+, MySQL 5.7+ / MariaDB 10.3+ (or SQLite), Apache, LiteSpeed or Nginx, a cron job. No Composer, Node.js or SSH needed.

Support and updates

Support covers installation, configuration and bugs in the item. Server administration and custom development are not included.

Demo note: the live demo runs in demo mode - saving is disabled in the super admin and the owner panel, the customer demo can try the whole flow, and the demo data resets every 3 hours.

• PHP 8.3 or newer (8.3, 8.4)
• MySQL 5.7+ / 8.x or MariaDB 10.3+ (SQLite 3 for local tests and small installs)
• PHP extensions: pdo (pdo_mysql or pdo_sqlite), mbstring, openssl, tokenizer, xml, ctype, json, fileinfo, curl, gd
• Apache or LiteSpeed with mod_rewrite (cPanel, Plesk, DirectAdmin) or Nginx; Windows with XAMPP or Laragon for local use
• A cron job (or Windows Task Scheduler) every minute
• No Composer, Node.js or SSH needed - all libraries are included
• HTTPS recommended (payment providers need it for live webhooks)
• Optional: SMTP account, accounts with Razorpay / Stripe / PayPal / Paystack / PayHere, MSG91 or Twilio for SMS, a Meta WhatsApp Cloud API account with approved templates, Google and Facebook apps, a Google Maps key

Install

1. Create an empty MySQL / MariaDB database and user in your hosting panel and select PHP 8.3 or newer.
2. Upload the contents of the venuebook folder (with the hidden .htaccess files) and point your domain to its public folder - or upload it straight into public_html.
3. Open your-domain.com: the browser installer checks the server, creates the tables and your super admin (demo data optional).
4. Log in at /admin and set SMTP, branding, payment gateways, escrow and booking rules, cities and muhurtham dates, and review the plans.
5. Venue owners sign up at /list-your-venue/start and manage their halls at /owner; customers use /account.
6. Add the cron job * * * * * cd /path/to/venuebook && php artisan schedule:run for expiring holds, reminders, completed events, iCal sync and renewals.

Updates

1. Upload the new files over the old ones (keep .env, storage and public/uploads), then open Super admin - System update and run the one-click update - your data is kept.

The illustrated step-by-step guide is in documentation/index.html and online at /codester/docs/.

Version 1.0.0

• Initial release.
• Marketplace website: venue search by date and slot with map, city pages, venue pages with live availability, vendor directory, muhurtham dates, CMS pages.
• Booking flow: hold, online advance, blocked, click-to-accept agreement, confirmed, balance - with double-booking protection, coupons, add-ons, surge rules and tax.
• Escrow of online payments, payouts with bank-transfer CSV, disputes, refunds from cancellation slabs, security deposits.
• Customer area, owner panel and SaaS super admin with plans, booking fees, feature flags, billing, verification, escrow and payouts, CMS and page builder, Appearance and Google Fonts.
• Razorpay, Stripe, PayPal, Paystack, PayHere and bank transfer with server-side verification; SMTP, MSG91 / Twilio SMS, WhatsApp Cloud API; Google / Facebook login.
• Browser installer with demo data, demo mode with one-click logins and reset, one-click system update.