Booking software for charter operators
Charter bookings that run themselves
Slipway takes the booking on your own site, holds the deposit, charges the balance before departure and hands your crew a manifest that works with no signal on the water.
- Flat monthly price
- No cut of any booking
- Payments through your own Stripe account
The fleet shown throughout this site belongs to Azure Line Charters, the demo operator.
The system
What Slipway does
One system runs the trip from the moment a guest picks a date to the moment the crew checks them aboard.
- 01
Bookings on your own site
Guests pick a vessel, a date and a departure time on your domain and pay there. The booking never hands off to a marketplace.
- 02
Deposit now, balance later
Slipway captures the deposit at checkout and charges the rest to the same card 30 days before departure. Nobody has to chase it.
- 03
A calendar that cannot double-book
A confirmed departure takes its slot and its turnaround window off the calendar immediately, so two parties can never hold the same boat.
- 04
Waivers signed before the dock
The waiver goes out with the confirmation and is signed on a phone. Nobody is filling in a clipboard while the engines are running.
- 05
Check-in with no signal
The manifest loads on the crew's phone and check-in keeps working offline, then syncs when the boat is back in range.
Pricing model
What a percentage costs you
Most charter booking platforms take a share of every trip you sell. The share is small when the season is quiet and large in the weeks you can least afford it. Here is what the common ones charge.
| Platform | Taken from each booking |
|---|---|
| FareHarbor | About 6% of every booking |
| Peek Pro | 6% to 8% of every booking, on top of a monthly fee |
| Xola | 2.39% plus 30 cents per transaction, on top of a monthly fee |
| Slipway | Nothing. The price is a flat monthly fee. |
$40,000 booked in a month
$2,400 to $3,200
Taken by a platform charging 6% to 8% of every booking.
The same month on Slipway
$189
The August invoice matches the January invoice. Card processing is Stripe’s standard 2.9% plus 30 cents and goes to Stripe.
Checkout
The all-in price at checkout
The loudest complaint in charter reviews is that the advertised price is never the price at the dock. Fuel, dockage, tax and gratuity turn up after the guest has already decided to book.
Slipway itemizes every one of those lines before the card is charged. The guest sees the trip, the add-ons, the fuel surcharge, dockage, sales tax and the gratuity they chose, then the total, then the amount taken today and the amount taken later. Nothing may be added after that screen.
Every line
Named before payment
Guest sets it
Gratuity is theirs to choose
No booking fee
Guests are charged nothing by us
Checkout
Azure Line Charters
- Sunset Cruise3 hours, 8 guests
- $1,200
- Champagne servicePer booking
- $95
- Fuel surcharge
- $85
- Dockage and launch
- $40
- Florida sales tax7%
- $99.40
- Gratuity18%, adjustable
- $255.60
Nothing is added after this screen. The guest signs the waiver from the confirmation email and pays the balance automatically on the stored card.
Departure day
At the dock
Marina wifi is unreliable and the water has none at all. The dock side of Slipway is built to run without a connection.
- Offline manifest
- The day's departures, guest names, headcounts and add-ons download to the crew's phone before they walk down the dock.
- Check-in that works at zero bars
- Names are ticked off on the water and sync back to the office as soon as there is a connection.
- Waivers already on file
- Every signature is captured before arrival and stored against the booking with a timestamp.
The rest of it
Also included
Every plan carries the whole system. There are no feature upgrades held back for a higher tier.
Guest profiles and trip history
Every guest carries their past trips, preferences and allergies into the next booking.
Add-ons and upsells
Champagne, water toys, photography and catering sell at checkout, priced per booking or per guest.
One-tap rebooking
A returning guest reopens their last trip with the date as the only thing left to choose.
Automated review requests
A request goes out after the trip while the day is still fresh in the guest's mind.
Post-trip route recap
Each guest gets a shareable card with the track you sailed, the miles covered and the hours aboard.
Crew assignment
Captains, deckhands and hosts are assigned per departure and appear on the manifest.
Turnaround buffers and blackout dates
The calendar protects the cleaning window after every trip and closes the days you are hauled out.
Seasonal and day-part pricing rules
Peak season, weekends and sunset departures price themselves from rules you set once.
Filterable bookkeeping exports
Bookings, payments and gratuities export to CSV by date range, vessel or status.
Booking audit trail
Every charge, waiver, message and check-in is stamped with who did it and when.
Live demo
See both sides of the demo
The demo runs Azure Line Charters of Miami Beach. Book a sunset cruise as a guest with a demo card, then open the back office and find the same booking with its deposit, waiver, crew and audit trail.