Edinburgh business travel · NovaBid
Payments, receipts and expenses
Nothing is charged until you accept an offer. When you do, you pay once, for the whole stay, and the confirmation email, with the receipt in it, arrives immediately. The hotel is paid at the moment of booking, so nobody is settling a folio at the desk on the way out.
Hands-on Edinburgh service opens 12 October 2026. The self-serve platform follows. See the launch plan.
When does NovaBid charge, and what does finance get for a booking?
Nothing is charged while you are posting a trip or comparing offers. You are charged once, for the full stay, when you accept an offer and complete payment through Stripe, by bank transfer or card. One email follows: the confirmation, with the hotel name, address, phone, dates and your reference, and at the bottom a receipt section for finance showing the receipt number, the hotel, the dates, the total paid, and a line confirming the Edinburgh visitor levy is included where the hotel has said so. That section is what goes to expenses.
The booking pattern we hear about
Booking rooms one at a time can leave finance with several transactions and several confirmations to match up, and the person who booked them is the person who reconciles them.
Paying at the hotel means the traveller carries the cost, then claims it back, and the company finds out what the trip cost after it happened rather than before.
Extras added at the property turn a known number into an unknown one, and the person who booked it is not the person who has to explain it.
How NovaBid fixes it
01
Nothing is charged until you accept
Posting a trip and receiving offers costs nothing and commits you to nothing. No card details are taken to post. If none of the offers work, you accept none, nothing is charged, and no booking exists.
02
One payment for the whole stay
When you accept, you pay the full amount once, through Stripe, by bank transfer (Pay by Bank) or card. That covers every room and every night in the offer. NovaBid adds nothing on top: the number on the offer is the number charged.
03
One email with the receipt in it, and the hotel is paid at once
Once payment completes you get one confirmation email. It carries the hotel name, address and phone, the dates, the amount paid, the reference, the party where there is more than one guest, and everything the hotel included in its offer. The receipt is a section at the bottom of the same email: NovaBid's company name and number, your company name, the receipt number, the hotel, the dates and the total paid. The hotel is paid at the moment of booking, so your travellers arrive with the stay already settled.
Pricing
Free for SMBs. Hotels pay commission only on a paid booking: 10% founding, 12% standard.
No markup on the rate. No subscription. No per-booker fee. The hotel covers everything as the cost of winning your business.
Frequently asked
When is my card charged?
At the moment you accept an offer, and not before. Posting a trip, receiving offers and comparing them involve no payment details and no charge. If you accept nothing, nothing happens.
How can we pay?
Bank transfer (Pay by Bank) or card, both through Stripe. Pay by Bank is usually the cheaper rail and is offered first. We do not handle or store card details ourselves; Stripe does.
What does the receipt show?
The booking reference, the hotel and its address, the dates, the number of rooms and guests, what the offer included, the total paid, and a line confirming the Edinburgh visitor levy is included where the hotel stated that on its offer. It is part of the confirmation email, sent automatically, because it is your record of the booking.
Can we be invoiced instead of paying up front?
Not at the moment. Payment at booking is what lets us pay the hotel straight away rather than weeks after checkout, and that is the commitment the hotels have signed up to. Invoicing for approved accounts is something we expect to offer once there is a trading history to underwrite it, and we would rather say that plainly than imply it exists today.
What do travellers pay at the hotel?
The room is already paid. Guests bring ID and a card for extras only: bar, room service, parking if it was not in the offer, anything they add on the day. The confirmation tells them exactly that so there is no confusion at the desk.
How do refunds work?
Cancel more than 48 hours before check-in and you are refunded in full, back to the original payment method, normally within five to ten business days on Stripe's timelines. Within 48 hours or on a no-show there is no refund and the hotel is paid as normal, having held the rooms.
What about VAT?
The receipt states NovaBid's own VAT position on its face, so your finance team does not have to ask. It is a receipt rather than a full VAT invoice: it does not carry a VAT rate, a net amount or a VAT total, and NovaBid's VAT position says nothing about whether the hotel's own accommodation charge contains VAT. If your finance team needs a VAT invoice for the accommodation itself, ask the hotel. We are confirming the whole treatment with our accountant and will restate this once that is settled. We are not your accountant, and this is information rather than advice.
Written by Thomas Mellot, founder of NovaBid. He trained as a chef in France and worked front of house in Edinburgh hotels, as Chef de Rang at the Caledonian and the Balmoral. He built NovaBid after watching independents lose business travel to platforms that never set foot in the building. More about NovaBid.
Last reviewed 8 September 2026. We correct these pages when the facts change; tell us if something here is wrong.
Try it for one trip
Post the next Edinburgh trip your team needs. See what hotels offer. If the bids aren't right, you simply don't accept, nothing's charged until you confirm.
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