Stripe Integration

Overview

Ticket payments in Event Schedule run through Stripe Checkout: the buyer pays on Stripe's own hosted page, Stripe calls a webhook back, and the sale is marked paid. What you have to configure depends on who collects the money - one account for the whole install, or a separate account per event owner.

The same keys and the same webhook endpoint also cover gift card purchases and paid appointment bookings, so you only set this up once.

Where the payment method is chosen

Server configuration only makes Stripe available. Each event still picks one payment method in the event editor, under Tickets → Payment: Cash, Stripe, Invoice Ninja, Payfast or Payment Link. The five options are described on the Tickets page.

Choose Your Setup

Find your setup type and follow the corresponding guide:

Which one am I?

• Will several people each need to be paid into their own Stripe account? You are a SaaS operator.
• Should every ticket sold anywhere on the install settle into one account you control? You are a selfhosted user.

For Selfhosted Users

If you're running your own Event Schedule instance for your organization, venue, or community, all ticket payments go to a single Stripe account that you control.

1. Get Your Stripe API Keys

1. Go to the Stripe Dashboard
2. Open Developers → API keys
3. Note your Publishable key and Secret key

2. Configure Environment Variables

Add these to your .env file:

# Stripe Direct Payments (selfhosted)
STRIPE_PLATFORM_KEY=pk_live_your_publishable_key
STRIPE_PLATFORM_SECRET=sk_live_your_secret_key
STRIPE_PLATFORM_WEBHOOK_SECRET=whsec_your_webhook_secret

• STRIPE_PLATFORM_SECRET: Your secret key (starts with sk_live_ or sk_test_). This is the value that switches Stripe on: with it set, Stripe becomes an available payment method for every event owner on the install.
• STRIPE_PLATFORM_KEY: Your publishable key (starts with pk_live_ or pk_test_). Ticket checkout happens on Stripe's hosted page and does not need it, but the in-app card form for paid boosts and on-network promotions reads it, so set it too.
• STRIPE_PLATFORM_WEBHOOK_SECRET: Webhook signing secret (next step)

If you cache your configuration, run php artisan config:clear after editing .env so the new values are picked up.

3. Set Up Webhooks

1. In Stripe Dashboard, go to Developers → Webhooks
2. Click Add endpoint
3. Set URL to: https://yourdomain.com/stripe/webhook
4. Select event: checkout.session.completed
5. Save and copy the Signing secret to STRIPE_PLATFORM_WEBHOOK_SECRET

4. Enable Stripe for Events

1. Open Settings → Payment Methods. The Stripe tab should read "Stripe is configured".
2. Edit an event and open its Tickets section, then choose Tickets rather than External or Registration.
3. On the Payment tab, set Payment method to Stripe and pick the Currency the tickets are priced in.
4. Add your ticket types on the General tab and save. Payments automatically use your platform Stripe account.

How Checkout Works

1. The buyer selects tickets and fills out the checkout form
2. Event Schedule creates a Stripe Checkout Session on your platform account, tagged with the sale ID
3. The buyer completes payment on Stripe's hosted page
4. Stripe calls /stripe/webhook; Event Schedule verifies the signature, checks the amount charged against the amount owed, and marks the sale paid
5. The buyer is emailed their tickets, with a QR code for check-in

Gift card purchases and paid appointment bookings use exactly the same keys and the same endpoint, so no extra configuration is needed for either.

For SaaS Operators

If you're running your own white-label SaaS platform (like eventschedule.com but with your own branding), you need two Stripe integrations:

Both require IS_HOSTED=true. The rest of the SaaS setup, including domains and plan limits, is covered in the SaaS setup guide.

Part A: Stripe Connect (ticket sales)

Lets your event creators receive payments for their own ticket sales.

1. Enable Stripe Connect

1. Go to the Stripe Dashboard
2. Open Settings → Connect
3. Enable Connect for your platform
4. Configure your branding and platform profile. Event Schedule creates the connected account for the user and sends them through Stripe's own hosted onboarding, so your branding is what they see.
5. Get your API keys from Developers → API keys

2. Environment Configuration

# Stripe Connect (for event creators to receive ticket payments)
STRIPE_KEY=sk_live_your_stripe_secret_key
STRIPE_WEBHOOK_SECRET=whsec_your_connect_webhook_secret

• STRIPE_KEY: Your platform's Stripe secret key, despite the name. It is the key every Connect call is made with.
• STRIPE_WEBHOOK_SECRET: Signing secret of the Connect webhook endpoint (next step)

3. Webhook Configuration

1. Go to Developers → Webhooks
2. Click Add endpoint and choose to listen to events on connected accounts, since the charges are created on your customers' accounts rather than yours
3. Set URL to: https://yourdomain.com/stripe/webhook
4. Select event: payment_intent.succeeded
5. Save and copy the signing secret to STRIPE_WEBHOOK_SECRET

What Your Event Creators Do

1. Open Settings → Payment Methods → Stripe
2. Click Connect Stripe
3. Complete Stripe's onboarding
4. They return to your platform, their Stripe business name is shown with an Unlink Account link, and Stripe becomes selectable as an event payment method

Onboarding that is started but not finished leaves the field labeled Account ID [Pending], and the event editor's Payment tab shows a "Stripe is verifying your details" notice. Stripe only becomes selectable as a payment method once Stripe reports that charges are enabled.

Connect API Endpoints

Part B: Laravel Cashier (subscription billing)

Charges your customers for Pro and Enterprise plans on your own Stripe account.

1. Create Subscription Products

1. In Stripe Dashboard, go to Products → Add product
2. Create a Pro product with two recurring prices, one monthly and one yearly
3. Optionally create an Enterprise product the same way. The Enterprise tier is hidden from the subscribe page unless both of its price IDs are configured.
4. Note each Price ID (starts with price_)

2. Environment Configuration

# Laravel Cashier (for subscription billing)
STRIPE_PLATFORM_KEY=pk_live_your_publishable_key
STRIPE_PLATFORM_SECRET=sk_live_your_secret_key
STRIPE_PLATFORM_WEBHOOK_SECRET=whsec_your_subscription_webhook_secret
STRIPE_PRICE_MONTHLY=price_monthly_price_id
STRIPE_PRICE_YEARLY=price_yearly_price_id

• STRIPE_PLATFORM_KEY: Publishable key for your platform, used by the card form on the subscribe page
• STRIPE_PLATFORM_SECRET: Secret key for your platform
• STRIPE_PLATFORM_WEBHOOK_SECRET: Signing secret of the subscription webhook endpoint
• STRIPE_PRICE_MONTHLY and STRIPE_PRICE_YEARLY: Pro price IDs
• STRIPE_ENTERPRISE_PRICE_MONTHLY and STRIPE_ENTERPRISE_PRICE_YEARLY: Enterprise price IDs. Leave both unset to sell Pro only.
• STRIPE_PRICE_MONTHLY_AMOUNT, STRIPE_PRICE_YEARLY_AMOUNT, STRIPE_ENTERPRISE_PRICE_MONTHLY_AMOUNT and STRIPE_ENTERPRISE_PRICE_YEARLY_AMOUNT: the amounts displayed in the app. They are labels only, so set them to match your Stripe prices or your pages will show the defaults of 9, 90, 29 and 290. A super-admin can override all four at /admin/settings without touching .env; keep these set anyway, because revenue reporting and renewal emails read the values here rather than the admin panel.
• PLATFORM_CURRENCY: the currency the platform quotes its own price in - a label there, like the amounts, so set it to match the currency of your Stripe prices. It does one real job beyond that: it is the currency a new event starts in when its schedule has no country set, or a country outside the built-in currency map. Defaults to USD, and a super-admin can change it at /admin/settings without touching .env.
• STRIPE_LEGACY_PRICE_MONTHLY, STRIPE_LEGACY_PRICE_YEARLY, STRIPE_LEGACY_ENTERPRISE_PRICE_MONTHLY and STRIPE_LEGACY_ENTERPRISE_PRICE_YEARLY: comma-separated retired price IDs. Stripe prices cannot be edited, so changing what a plan costs means creating a new price and pointing the variables above at it. List the old IDs here and anyone still billing on them keeps the tier and term they pay for. Leave empty until you have actually retired a price.
• STRIPE_LEGACY_PRICE_AMOUNTS: what those retired prices charge, as price_id:amount pairs (for example price_abc:9,price_def:90), so grandfathered subscribers are not counted at zero in reporting or quoted a price they are not paying. This one is .env only by design: it records what existing customers are actually being charged, keyed by opaque Stripe IDs, and is never editable from the admin panel.

3. Subscription Webhook

1. Go to Developers → Webhooks
2. Click Add endpoint (this is a second webhook, separate from Connect, listening on your own account)
3. Set URL to: https://yourdomain.com/stripe/subscription-webhook
4. Select events:
   • customer.subscription.created
   • customer.subscription.updated
   • customer.subscription.deleted
   • customer.subscription.trial_will_end
   • customer.updated
   • customer.deleted
   • invoice.payment_succeeded
   • invoice.payment_failed
   • invoice.payment_action_required
   • payment_method.automatically_updated
5. Save and copy signing secret to STRIPE_PLATFORM_WEBHOOK_SECRET

These events are what keep a schedule's plan in step with Stripe: a successful invoice sets the plan and term, a deleted subscription drops the schedule back to Free, and a failed payment emails the owner and sends them a push notification.

4. Customer Portal Setup

1. Go to Settings → Billing → Customer portal
2. Enable subscription management features:
   • Subscription cancellation
   • Plan switching
   • Payment method updates
3. Customize branding to match your platform

Subscription API Endpoints

Invoice Ninja (Alternative Payment Method)

In addition to Stripe, Event Schedule supports Invoice Ninja as an alternative payment method for ticket sales and gift cards. Invoice Ninja is an open-source invoicing and payments platform that supports many payment gateways, Stripe among them.

Prerequisites

• An Invoice Ninja company, either selfhosted or on invoicing.co
• An API token from that company
• At least one payment gateway configured in Invoice Ninja

Setup Steps

1. In Invoice Ninja, go to Settings → Account Management and create an API token
2. In Event Schedule, open Settings → Payment Methods → Invoice Ninja
3. Paste the token into API Token
4. Fill in API URL with the base address of your instance, for example https://invoicing.yourdomain.com, without a trailing /api/v1. Leave it blank to use invoicing.co.
5. Save. Event Schedule verifies the credentials and registers a webhook in your Invoice Ninja company, so the connection either works or fails outright rather than saving a broken one.

Once connected, the company name is shown with Edit and Unlink Account links. Editing the credentials replaces the old webhook rather than adding a second one, and leaving the token blank there means "keep the current token", so you can correct just the URL.

How It Works

1. Edit an event, open Tickets → Payment and choose Invoice Ninja as the payment method
2. At checkout the buyer is sent to Invoice Ninja: to an invoice they can pay, or to an Invoice Ninja purchase page, depending on the mode below
3. Invoice Ninja processes the card through whichever gateway you configured there
4. Invoice Ninja calls the webhook back so Event Schedule can mark the sale paid and email the tickets

Invoice Ninja Modes

Once the company is connected, a Checkout mode setting appears in the same Invoice Ninja tab. It applies to every event this user sells through Invoice Ninja. The full comparison lives on the Tickets page.

Payfast (Alternative Payment Method)

Payfast is a South African gateway, useful where Stripe is not available. It settles in South African rand only. Setup is documented in the user guide; the notes below are the parts specific to running your own install.

Two ways to set it up

Payfast works either way round, and you can mix the two on one install:

Install-wide configuration

Take these from your Payfast dashboard, under Settings, and add them to your .env file:

# Payfast for every schedule on this install
PAYFAST_MERCHANT_ID=your_merchant_id
PAYFAST_MERCHANT_KEY=your_merchant_key
PAYFAST_PASSPHRASE=your_passphrase
PAYFAST_SANDBOX=false

• PAYFAST_PASSPHRASE is optional at Payfast, but required here. Without one, the payment notification signature is a plain MD5 that anyone could reproduce, so Payfast is simply not offered until all three values are set.
• PAYFAST_SANDBOX sends payments to Payfast's sandbox instead of taking real money. Sandbox tickets look completely normal, so leave it false outside of testing. When it is on, "Test mode" is shown next to Payfast wherever an owner picks it.
• PAYFAST_PAYMENT_TYPES (optional) pins the checkout to a single instrument, for example ef for Instant EFT. Leave it empty to let Payfast offer everything your account supports.

If you cache your configuration, run php artisan config:clear after editing .env so the new values are picked up.

Making Payfast the default for new events

New events start on Cash unless you say otherwise. On an install where Payfast is the only way to take money, that means choosing it by hand every time. Name it once instead:

DEFAULT_PAYMENT_METHOD=payfast

Accepts any gateway key - cash, stripe, invoiceninja, payment_url or payfast - and applies to events created through the API as well as the form. It only takes effect where the gateway can actually be used: an owner who has not connected it, or an event in a currency it cannot settle, still starts on Cash. On the event form a schedule's own saved ticket defaults take priority over it; the API has never read those, so there it applies whenever payment_method is omitted.

Testing

Test Mode Setup

For development and testing:

1. Toggle to Test mode in the Stripe Dashboard
2. Use test API keys (starting with pk_test_ and sk_test_)
3. Create test webhook endpoints pointing to your development environment
4. Keep keys, prices and webhooks in one mode. Test keys with live price IDs, or the reverse, fail with a "No such price" error.

Test Card Numbers

Use any future expiration date and any 3-digit CVC.

Testing Webhooks Locally

Use the Stripe CLI to forward webhooks:

# Install Stripe CLI
brew install stripe/stripe-cli/stripe

# Login to your Stripe account
stripe login

# Forward webhooks (selfhosted or Connect)
stripe listen --forward-to localhost:8000/stripe/webhook

# For SaaS: Forward subscription webhooks (separate terminal)
stripe listen --forward-to localhost:8000/stripe/subscription-webhook

The CLI prints a webhook signing secret for each listener. Put it in the variable that endpoint reads:

• /stripe/webhook on a selfhosted install: STRIPE_PLATFORM_WEBHOOK_SECRET
• /stripe/webhook for Connect: STRIPE_WEBHOOK_SECRET
• /stripe/subscription-webhook: STRIPE_PLATFORM_WEBHOOK_SECRET

Trigger Test Events

# Test checkout completion (selfhosted)
stripe trigger checkout.session.completed

# Test payment success (Connect)
stripe trigger payment_intent.succeeded

# Test subscription creation
stripe trigger customer.subscription.created

A triggered event proves the endpoint is reachable and the signature verifies, but it carries no sale ID in its metadata, so no sale changes state. To test the full path, buy a ticket with a test card.

Troubleshooting

Common Issues

Debugging Logs

• Application: storage/logs/laravel.log
• Stripe API: Dashboard → Developers → Logs
• Webhooks: Dashboard → Developers → Webhooks → Select endpoint → View logs

Security

1. API key security: Secret keys belong in .env only. Never put them in client-side code or commit them to version control.
2. Webhook verification: Both endpoints are public URLs, so both signing secrets matter. /stripe/webhook fails closed: a signature it cannot verify, and any request at all when no secret is configured, is rejected with a 400. /stripe/subscription-webhook fails open: the signature check is only installed once STRIPE_PLATFORM_WEBHOOK_SECRET is set, so leaving it blank leaves an unauthenticated endpoint that can move a schedule between plans.
3. Amount and account checks: A confirmed payment is also checked against the amount owed, and on Connect against the account that took the money, before anything is marked paid.
4. HTTPS required: Stripe requires HTTPS for webhook endpoints in production.
5. PCI compliance: Using Stripe Checkout and Elements keeps you out of PCI scope. Card data never touches your server.