pre-payment-plan

---
name: pre-payment-plan
description: Turns a festive booking into money in the bank before December, with terms that survive being challenged: the deposit named and sized, a cancellation scale that tracks your real loss, the mirror term for when you cancel, the VAT consequence written into the cash plan, and a dated payment schedule with a chase ladder. Use when you are taking festive bookings and your deposit terms are one line at the bottom of an email.
---

# December's money in the bank by October, on terms that hold up when somebody cancels

You give this your package prices, your booking calendar, your current deposit wording if you have any, and your costs by the week. You get back a payment plan: what the money you take is called and why that matters, a cancellation scale built from your own direct losses rather than a round number, the term that applies when you are the one who cancels, the transparency test applied to every clause, the VAT position on money you keep, and a dated schedule with the chase ladder. It will not tell you that your terms are enforceable. It prepares them for your solicitor, and it refuses to write a non-refundable clause that the law would strip out anyway.

## What it does

1. **Name what the money is before writing a word of terms, because three different things get called a deposit.** A booking deposit held against a specific date. A part payment of an agreed total for a known menu on a known night. A voucher or gift card redeemable at large. They behave differently on cancellation, on VAT and on the customer's expectations, and a term that mixes them is a term that will be read against you. Section 69 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 settles that point of interpretation: "If a term in a consumer contract, or a consumer notice, could have different meanings, the meaning that is most favourable to the consumer is to prevail." Write one sentence saying which of the three this is, and use that word consistently everywhere, including the booking email and the card machine receipt.

2. **Establish, and write down, that this booking has no fourteen day cooling off right, so nobody assumes one.** Regulation 28(1)(h) of the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 takes out of the cancellation regime contracts for "the supply of accommodation, transport of goods, vehicle rental services, catering or services related to leisure activities, if the contract provides for a specific date or period of performance". A table for twenty on 18 December is catering on a specific date. This is one of the few genuine advantages a hospitality booking has, and it is regularly given away by staff who have read a shopping website's returns policy. State the position plainly in the terms and brief whoever answers the phone.

3. **Build the cancellation scale from your own direct losses, week by week, rather than picking a round percentage.** Paragraph 5 of Schedule 2 to the Consumer Rights Act 2015 lists as potentially unfair a term whose effect is "requiring that, where the consumer decides not to conclude or perform the contract, the consumer must pay the trader a disproportionately high sum in compensation or for services which have not been supplied". The CMA's consumer guidance states the working test: "Cancellation charges must be a genuine estimate of the business' direct loss" and "If you cancel the contract, the business is generally only entitled to keep or receive an amount sufficient to cover their actual losses that directly result from your cancellation." So the scale is built from what is actually committed at each point: nothing at eight weeks out, the ordered goods at two weeks, the ordered goods plus the rostered staff at seventy two hours. Show the working.

4. **Keep the never-refunded portion small and say exactly what it covers.** The same CMA guidance is direct about this: "Non-refundable deposits should only be a small percentage of the total price." A term that keeps everything a customer has paid regardless of when they cancel is the clearest example on the grey list, and it will simply be struck out, leaving you with nothing rather than with the small sum you could have defended. Name what the retained amount pays for, such as the administration of the booking and the date held off sale, and keep the figure to something you would be willing to read aloud in front of the customer who lost their job in November.

5. **Write the mirror term for when you are the one who cancels, or the whole clause weakens.** Paragraph 4 of Schedule 2 lists a term "permitting the trader to retain sums paid by the consumer where the consumer decides not to conclude or perform the contract, without providing for the consumer to receive compensation of an equivalent amount from the trader where the trader is the party cancelling the contract". The point is symmetry. If a customer forfeits their deposit at seventy two hours, your terms must say what the customer gets if you cancel at seventy two hours because the boiler failed. A one sided clause is weaker than a two sided one, and in a town where corporate bookers compare terms it is also worse commercially.

6. **Run every clause through the transparency and prominence test, because failing it puts your price itself in play.** Section 68 requires that "A trader must ensure that a written term of a consumer contract, or a consumer notice in writing, is transparent." Section 64 protects a price term from an assessment of fairness "only if it is transparent and prominent". Read together: a deposit term buried in a PDF attachment, or in grey five point type under the booking form, is not merely ineffective on its own terms, it can pull the headline price into a fairness assessment it would otherwise have escaped. So the terms sit above the payment button, in the same size as the rest of the page, and the customer ticks to accept them rather than being told they accepted by paying.

7. **Write the VAT position into the cash plan on the day you decide to take deposits, not in the following quarter.** HMRC's Revenue and Customs Brief 13 (2018) changed the treatment of money you keep when a customer does not turn up. From 1 March 2019, "VAT is due on all retained payments for unused services and uncollected goods", and "No adjustments or refunds of VAT will be allowed for those retained payments." An unfulfilled supply is defined as one "where a customer does not use a service or collect goods that they have paid for". The practical consequence for a December no show is that the forfeited deposit is not clean margin. Put the VAT line next to every retained sum in the plan and take the figure to your accountant before the quarter closes.

8. **Commit to mitigation in the terms and record the attempt on every cancellation.** The CMA guidance states the duty on the business side: "Businesses must take reasonable steps to reduce their losses (eg by re-selling the goods or services)." For a festive booking that means putting the released table or the released private room back on sale, and logging what you did and when. Two things follow. If the date resells, the direct loss shrinks and so does the amount you may keep, which is the honest answer and also the one that produces a returning customer. If it does not resell, you have a dated record of the attempt, which is the only evidence that makes the retained sum defensible.

9. **Publish the payment schedule and the chase ladder with real dates, and put a date on the terms themselves.** One table: the deposit and its due date, each further instalment with its due date, the final balance date, and the date pre-orders close. One ladder: the reminder seven days before each instalment, the reminder on the day, the follow up at three days late, and the named point at which the booking is released, which must be a point you are willing to actually reach. Under it, the terms version number and the date they were written. Terms carried into a second December without being re-read are the most common way a venue ends up enforcing something it no longer does.

## Then it checks

1. The file uses one word for the money throughout, and the booking email, the terms, the payment page and the receipt wording all use that same word.
2. Every step on the cancellation scale is supported by a named committed cost with a figure and the date that commitment falls due, and no step is a round percentage with no working behind it.
3. The terms state the position on the fourteen day cancellation regime and cite the regulation, rather than asserting there is no right to cancel in general.
4. Every clause that lets the venue keep money has a matching clause saying what happens when the venue cancels, and the file names any that does not.
5. Every customer facing term is placed above the payment action, in body text size, with an affirmative acceptance step, and the file records where each one appears.
6. Every retained sum in the plan carries a VAT line, and nothing in the file states that a forfeited deposit is free income.

Any check fails: name it, redo that step once. Failed twice: say what is wrong and stop.

## Rules
- Public information only.
- Never invent a fact, a number or a quote.
- Anything sent in someone's name says whose name it is.
- Never tell an owner their terms are enforceable, that a particular percentage is fair, or that a clause would survive a challenge. Fairness under Part 2 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 is assessed on all the circumstances of a particular contract, and a document that says "this is fine" stops the owner asking the solicitor who could actually tell them.
- Never write a term making the whole payment non-refundable in all circumstances. It is the clearest case on the grey list, the likely outcome is that the term falls away entirely and the venue keeps nothing, and a skill that drafts it is handing the owner a worse position than the one they started in while telling them it is stronger.
- Never state a no show rate, a typical deposit percentage, a festive cancellation rate or an industry standard. No published figure exists for a single independent UK venue, and an owner who sets a deposit from a borrowed number has neither the evidence nor the margin behind it.
- Never treat a forfeited deposit as profit. It carries VAT under HMRC's current policy, it usually carries a committed food cost, and the version of the number that reaches the cash plan must be the one after both.
- Never take a payment before the terms have been shown. A term communicated after the card is charged is not a term the customer agreed to, and the fix costs nothing if it is done in the right order.
- Never release a booking for non payment without the ladder having run in full and been logged. A December date released in error is a date sold twice or not at all, and both are worse than the unpaid instalment.
- This output is a working document prepared for the owner's solicitor to settle before it is used, for their accountant to check on VAT and on the treatment of money received in advance, and for the owner to check against their own prices and costs. It applies published consumer law and tax guidance to draft terms. It is not legal advice, it is not tax advice and it is not a statement that any term is fair or enforceable.

## Built from
- Consumer Rights Act 2015, Part 2, sections 62, 64, 68 and 69, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/15/part/2, read 16 September 2026: the fairness test, the transparent and prominent condition on the price exclusion in step 6, and the contra proferentem rule quoted in step 1.
- Consumer Rights Act 2015, Schedule 2, paragraphs 4, 5 and 6, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/15/schedule/2, read 16 September 2026: the grey list entries that shape the cancellation scale in step 3 and force the mirror term in step 5.
- Competition and Markets Authority, "Cancelling goods or services", https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/cancelling-goods-or-services-guide-for-consumers/cancelling-goods-or-services, published 2 March 2016, read 16 September 2026: the direct loss test and the small percentage rule in steps 3 and 4, and the duty to mitigate in step 8.
- The Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, regulation 28(1)(h), https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2013/3134/regulation/28/made, read 16 September 2026: the catering on a specific date exclusion from the cancellation regime in step 2.
- HM Revenue and Customs, "Revenue and Customs Brief 13 (2018): change to the VAT treatment of retained payments and deposits", https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/revenue-and-customs-brief-13-2018-change-to-the-vat-treatment-of-retained-payments-and-deposits/revenue-and-customs-brief-13-2018-change-to-the-vat-treatment-of-retained-payments-and-deposits, published 14 December 2018, policy applying from 1 March 2019, read 16 September 2026: the VAT treatment of retained deposits in step 7.

# pre-payment-plan

## You are given
The festive booking calendar for one UK hospitality business: every held date, the package and price per head agreed for it, the party size, the booker's type marked by the owner as `consumer` or `business`, and the date each booking was taken. The owner's draft payment terms in full, exactly as they will be shown, with a note of where each clause appears, such as the booking page, the confirmation email, an attached PDF or a printed card. The owner's committed cost schedule: for each date, what is ordered or rostered by when, with the supplier or the rota line, the amount in GBP and the date the commitment becomes irreversible. The owner's decision, already made, on what the payment is called, how large the never-refunded portion is, and at what point an unpaid booking is released. The venue's VAT registration status and VAT quarter end dates. Last year's cancellation log where one exists. Every judgement about fairness, about the size of any figure and about whether to take deposits at all has been made by the owner or their solicitor and is supplied to you.

## Produce
Write into a `./pre-payment-plan-output/` folder:

1. `bookings.csv` with these columns in this order: `booking_ref`, `event_date`, `party_size`, `package_ref`, `price_per_head_gbp`, `total_booking_value_gbp`, `booker_type`, `date_taken`, `deposit_due_date`, `deposit_amount_gbp`, `balance_due_date`, `preorder_close_date`, `status`. `booker_type` is exactly `consumer` or `business`. `status` is exactly one of `held`, `deposit paid`, `part paid`, `paid in full`, `cancelled by customer`, `cancelled by venue`, `released for non payment`.
2. `committed-costs.csv` with columns: `event_date`, `commitment_ref`, `commitment_type`, `description_verbatim`, `amount_gbp`, `committed_from_date`, `days_before_event`, `recoverable_if_cancelled`, `evidence_file`. `commitment_type` is exactly one of `food order`, `drink order`, `agency staff`, `rostered staff`, `hire`, `entertainment`, `print`, `other`. `recoverable_if_cancelled` is `yes`, `no` or `partial`.
3. `cancellation-scale.csv` with columns: `band_ref`, `days_before_event_from`, `days_before_event_to`, `committed_cost_in_band_gbp`, `retained_amount_supplied_gbp`, `retained_as_percent_of_booking`, `committed_costs_listed`, `working_shown`. `committed_costs_listed` is a semicolon separated list of `commitment_ref` values from `committed-costs.csv`. Any band whose `retained_amount_supplied_gbp` exceeds `committed_cost_in_band_gbp` is listed in `gaps.md` as unsupported by a committed cost. Never adjust a supplied figure.
4. `terms-placement.csv` with columns: `clause_ref`, `clause_text_verbatim`, `clause_type`, `where_it_appears`, `appears_before_payment_action`, `body_text_size`, `affirmative_acceptance`, `has_mirror_clause`, `mirror_clause_ref`. `clause_type` is exactly one of `deposit`, `instalment`, `cancellation by customer`, `cancellation by venue`, `release for non payment`, `pre-order deadline`, `service charge`, `other`. The last four columns are `yes`, `no` or `not stated`. Every clause of type `cancellation by customer` with `has_mirror_clause` of `no` is listed in `gaps.md`.
5. `payment-schedule.csv` with columns: `booking_ref`, `instalment_no`, `due_date`, `amount_gbp`, `cumulative_received_gbp`, `outstanding_gbp`, `reminder_minus_7_date`, `reminder_on_day_date`, `follow_up_plus_3_date`, `release_date`. All dates are computed from `due_date` and the owner's supplied release rule, and are written as DD Month YYYY.
6. `cash-and-vat.csv` with columns: `month`, `deposits_received_gbp`, `balances_received_gbp`, `retained_on_cancellation_gbp`, `refunded_gbp`, `vat_rate_applied`, `vat_on_retained_gbp`, `net_retained_after_vat_gbp`, `vat_quarter_end`. Written only where the owner has supplied a VAT registration status of registered and a rate. Where the status is not supplied the file is written with the amount columns filled and every VAT column left empty, and the omission is listed in `gaps.md`.
7. `word-consistency.csv` with columns: `surface`, `text_verbatim`, `word_used`, `matches_chosen_word`. `surface` is exactly one of `booking page`, `confirmation email`, `terms document`, `receipt`, `invoice`, `reminder`, `other`. `word_used` is the actual word found, such as `deposit`, `part payment`, `pre-payment`, `voucher` or `booking fee`. `matches_chosen_word` is `yes` or `no`.
8. `gaps.md` a numbered list of: every cancellation band with no committed cost behind it; every clause appearing after the payment action or in smaller than body text; every cancellation clause with no mirror; every surface using a different word for the money; every booking with no deposit due date; every committed cost with no evidence file; every retained sum with no VAT line where the venue is registered; and every figure supplied without a date.

## Rules
- Codex measures, matches, schedules and records. It never drafts a term, never rewords a supplied clause, never sets or adjusts a retained amount or a percentage, and never decides whether a term is fair. Those were supplied by the owner or their solicitor.
- Never state, imply or record that a term is enforceable, reasonable, fair or compliant. The files record what the terms say, where they appear and what committed cost sits behind each band, and nothing more.
- Never compute a cancellation charge yourself. The supplied figure goes in `retained_amount_supplied_gbp` unchanged, and the committed cost sits beside it so the owner and their solicitor can see the gap.
- Never treat a retained sum as income. Where the venue is VAT registered, every retained sum carries a VAT line and a net figure, and the net figure is the one used in any monthly total.
- Never write a no show rate, a typical deposit percentage, a cancellation benchmark or an industry average into any file. No such figure exists for a single independent UK venue and none is to be recorded.
- Never mark a booking `released for non payment` unless every reminder date in `payment-schedule.csv` has passed and the owner has supplied confirmation that each was sent.
- Never send anything. No email, no reminder, no card charge and no refund. Every reminder is written as a dated row for the owner to action.
- Use British English, GBP written as `GBP` or the pound sign, and DD Month YYYY dates. No em dashes in any file you write, and any supplied clause containing one is recorded verbatim and flagged in `gaps.md`.
- Every quoted clause, package name and customer facing line is copied exactly, including its punctuation and capitalisation.
- Every file ends with this line: this is a working document prepared for the owner's solicitor to settle and their accountant to check on VAT before it is used. It records supplied terms, supplied costs and supplied figures and is not legal advice, tax advice or a statement that any term is fair or enforceable.

## Return
The absolute path of every file written, the row count of each CSV, the total booking value held and the total deposits due by month, the number of cancellation bands whose retained amount exceeds the committed cost behind it with each named, the number of customer cancellation clauses with no mirror clause, the list of every clause appearing after the payment action, the list of every surface using a word for the money other than the chosen one, the total retained on cancellation with its VAT line and net figure or the reason the VAT columns are empty, the count of bookings with no deposit due date, and the `gaps.md` item count.