Try It Live — Interactive Demos
🏕️ Whether you run a 10-pitch campsite in the Cotswolds or a 200-berth marina on the Grand Union Canal, PayCamp is built for you — not retrofitted from hotel software. Already trusted by operators like Milton Keynes Marina.
So, What Exactly Is PayCamp?
PayCamp is site management software built from the ground up for UK outdoor hospitality. Campsites, caravan parks, holiday parks, marinas, and boat yards — all under one roof.
Most software in this space was designed for hotels and then awkwardly stretched to fit a field with 30 pitches. PayCamp is different. We started by talking to the people who actually run these sites — the ones juggling seasonal pitches, annual moorings, electricity billing, compliance paperwork, and guest arrivals, all before their morning cuppa.
When Milton Keynes Marina came to us, they'd spent nearly two decades on an ASP.NET booking system built in 2006. Updating prices meant months of emails with a developer. The site didn't work on mobile phones. Sound familiar? That's exactly the problem PayCamp was built to solve.
The result is a platform that understands your world. And here's the bit that really matters: every feature is included on every plan. No nasty surprises when you discover the thing you actually need is locked behind an upgrade.
Why We Built It This Way
We kept hearing the same frustrations from site owners across the UK:
- "I'm using three different systems" — one for bookings, one for invoicing, another for compliance. Nothing talks to anything else.
- "The software doesn't understand moorings" — or pitches, or berths, or seasonal pricing, or electricity billing. It was built for hotel rooms and everyone pretends otherwise.
- "I can't afford the plan with the features I need" — basic tier gets you a glorified calendar. Want invoicing? That'll be the Pro plan. Want compliance tracking? Enterprise.
- "It took months to set up" — consultants, training sessions, data migration projects that never quite finish.
- "My developer retired and took the code with him" — Milton Keynes Marina lived this one. Their booking system worked, just about, but nobody could change it without hiring a specialist. Price updates that should take 30 seconds took months of back-and-forth emails.
PayCamp solves every one of these. One platform, one plan, operational in hours. That's not a marketing line — our Site Setup Wizard genuinely gets you from sign-up to taking bookings in a single sitting.
The Core Platform: Day-to-Day Operations
At its heart, PayCamp handles everything you do every day:
Pitch, Plot & Mooring Management
Visual maps with drag-and-drop assignments and real-time availability. Whether you call them pitches, plots, berths, or moorings — the system adapts to your language and your layout. Set seasonal pricing, manage long-term stays, and see your entire site at a glance.
Bookings & Guest Check-in
From first enquiry to final checkout. Automated confirmations, digital check-in flows, and a booking calendar that actually makes sense for outdoor hospitality. No more standing in the rain with a clipboard while a family of five waits in the drizzle.
Compliance & Document Management
Gas certificates, insurance documents, BSS certificates, electrical safety records — track them all with automatic expiry reminders. Request document uploads from customers through secure links. Nothing slips through the cracks.
Customer Portal
Give your guests and berth holders their own self-service portal. They can view invoices, upload compliance documents, update their details, and manage their account. Less admin for you, better experience for them.
💡 Pro Tip
Our Site Setup Wizard asks you a few questions about your operation and builds your entire configuration — pitches, pricing tiers, payment settings, email templates — in one go. No consultants required.
Customer
James Mitchell · Berth A1
| Item | Net | VAT | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| 👆 Pick an item above to start building your invoice | |||
Payments That Just Work
This is the section that matters most to operators who've been burned by complicated payment setups. PayCamp gives you two ways to collect money, and both are designed so you can start taking payments the same day you sign up.
PayCamp Payments — The Easy Way
Most small and mid-size sites just want to collect money without becoming a Stripe expert. PayCamp Payments is our built-in payment system — turn it on, start collecting. That's genuinely it.
Here's how it works:
- No merchant account needed — You don't create a Stripe account, you don't manage API keys, you don't visit any payment dashboard. PayCamp handles all of that.
- 5% + 50p per transaction — That's the total processing fee. No monthly charges, no gateway fees, no PCI compliance headaches. You pay nothing when nobody pays you.
- Automatic settlement — Funds land in your bank account automatically after a 7-day settlement period. No invoicing PayCamp, no manual withdrawals.
- Works everywhere — Guest portal payments, booking deposits, invoice 'Pay Now' buttons, Self-Service Pay Point — all routed through the same system.
For a 10-pitch campsite taking a £50 booking, that's £3 in fees. No monthly subscription on top. No minimum transaction count. If you take one payment a month or a hundred, the maths works the same way.
Bring Your Own Stripe — For Operators Who Want Full Control
Already have a Stripe account? Prefer to manage your own payment processing? Connect it directly to PayCamp and you're done.
- Standard Stripe rates — 2.8% + 25p per transaction (standard UK Stripe pricing). PayCamp doesn't add anything on top.
- Your Stripe dashboard — Full access to disputes, refunds, payouts, and reporting through Stripe directly.
- Same PayCamp features — Everything works identically: Pay Point, invoice payments, booking deposits. The only difference is where the money lands and who manages the Stripe account.
This option suits larger operators who already have a Stripe relationship, want direct payouts, or need specific Stripe features like Stripe Radar for fraud prevention.
The Accounting Advantage — Why Your Bookkeeper Will Thank You
Here's something nobody talks about until VAT return time: how do you account for Stripe fees?
If you take a £100 mooring payment through direct Stripe, you receive roughly £97.20 in your bank. Your accountant needs to show:
- £100 as revenue (Sales account — typically 4000)
- £2.80 as an expense (Payment Processing Fees — typically 6040)
- £97.20 matched to the bank deposit
With direct Stripe, this means downloading a CSV from your Stripe dashboard, cross-referencing every single transaction against your invoices, and manually creating journal entries. Every. Single. Month. For some of the marina owners we work with, that's hundreds of transactions to reconcile.
PayCamp Payments eliminates this entirely. Every transaction is automatically split into gross revenue, processing fee, and net deposit. You get:
- A dedicated Fee Breakdown Report — showing every transaction with gross, fee, and net columns, plus monthly totals ready for your ledger
- One-click Xero export — generates two rows per transaction (revenue to Account 4000, fee to Account 6040), so the net figure matches your bank statement automatically
- No manual reconciliation — your accountant imports the CSV, the numbers balance, job done
For a small marina with no dedicated accounts team, this alone can save hours of bookkeeping time every month — and reduce the risk of errors that lead to HMRC queries.
Self-Service Pay Point
Every site owner we speak to ends up talking about the Pay Point. It's a QR code — printed on a weatherproof sign, stuck on your gate, reception window, pitch marker, or pontoon post. Guests scan it with their phone, enter their details, and pay by card. Done.
Think about what that replaces:
- No card machine rental (that's £20–40/month you're saving straight away)
- No cash handling, no chasing people around the site
- No "I'll pay you later" that turns into never
- No reception queues on changeover day
You get instant payment alerts on your phone the moment someone pays. The guest receives a branded arrival guide with WiFi codes, gate codes, local recommendations, and everything they need for their stay.
The Pay Point works with both PayCamp Payments and Bring Your Own Stripe — whichever you've chosen, the guest experience is identical. Try the live Pay Point demo and you'll see why operators call it transformative.
How MK Marina Takes Deposits Before the Boat Leaves the Dock
Here's a real example. Milton Keynes Marina hires out two day boats — Mary Jane and Meadowlark — on the Grand Union Canal. Before PayCamp, deposits were taken over the phone with card details read out loud (yes, really).
Now, when a customer books through their partner booking site, the system automatically requests a deposit. The payment goes through PayCamp Payments. The booking confirmation goes out. The deposit shows on the operator dashboard. The customer gets a receipt. Nobody read out a card number.
On the day of hire, the remaining balance is settled at the quayside — either through the Self-Service Pay Point on the marina's tablet, or through the operator dashboard when the customer arrives. The entire financial trail is in one place.
Pricing Made Simple: Quick Start Templates
Setting up pricing is one of those jobs that sounds straightforward until you're staring at a blank screen wondering what to charge per foot, per night, or per season. PayCamp takes the guesswork out with Quick Start rate card wizards for both asset pricing (moorings, pitches, plots) and boat hire.
Here's how it works: you pick from ready-made templates designed for UK outdoor hospitality — things like Annual Residential Mooring, Seasonal Touring Pitch, Weekend Premium, or Winter Storage. The wizard walks you through adjusting the key numbers (your price per foot, nightly rate, VAT rate) and creates the complete rate card in one go. No spreadsheets, no copying from last year's paperwork.
For boat hire operators, the templates go further — bundling pricing rules like peak-season multipliers, early-bird discounts, and time-slot rates into a single preset you can apply to your fleet. Milton Keynes Marina set up their entire rate structure — hourly, half-day, and full-day rates for both boats — in under five minutes. What used to take an afternoon of fiddling with their developer now takes two minutes.
Already have your own pricing structure? You can still create rate cards from scratch — the templates are there for anyone who wants a sensible starting point. Read our step-by-step guides: Asset Rate Card Quick Start and Boat Hire Rate Card Templates.
Electricity Billing
Meter readings, automated calculations, fair usage billing. This is one of those features that sounds simple but saves hours every week. We wrote an entire guide on choosing an electricity billing solution because getting it wrong costs you money and causes arguments.
Site Essentials: Your Shop and Gas Cage, From Your Phone
This is the feature nobody knew they needed until they saw it. Site Essentials gives you a real-time dashboard for everything you sell on site — gas cylinders, Elsan fluid, firewood, milk, camping sundries — without a barcode scanner, a retail EPOS, or a trip to the gas cage.
Here's the problem it solves: a guest asks if you've got a 13kg Propane. You think there were a couple left yesterday. But it's 6:30pm, you're halfway through dinner, and the gas cage is 200 metres away. So you put your fork down, walk there, discover you're out, walk back, and explain. Meanwhile their sausages are going cold.
With Site Essentials, you check your phone. "Yes — two left. Help yourself, the cage is unlocked." Five seconds, no walk, dinner stays warm.
Key capabilities:
- Gas cylinder tracking — Full, Empty, Spares, and On Order counts for every gas type and size. One-tap exchanges that automatically decrement stock.
- Low-stock alerts — Set a threshold per gas type. When you hit it, you see an amber warning before the cage goes empty.
- Product catalogue — Add your shop products with categories, prices, and a simple in-stock/out-of-stock toggle. No SKU numbers required.
- Delivery tracking — Mark cylinders as "on order", then record deliveries when they arrive. Handles partial deliveries gracefully.
- Activity log — Every exchange, sale, delivery, and alert is logged with a timestamp for full reconciliation.
We wrote The Gas Cage Walk of Shame about why this matters more than you'd think, and a practical guide to what campsite shops should actually stock. For the technical detail on gas management, see our complete gas bottle management guide. Or explore the Site Essentials feature page for the full picture.
💡 Pro Tip
Site Essentials is included in every PayCamp plan. No add-on, no extra charge. Enable it in your settings and start tracking in under 2 minutes. Try our interactive stock management guide to see it in action.
HireHelm: How Milton Keynes Marina Replaced a 20-Year-Old Booking System
If you run boat hire alongside your site — kayaks on a lake, motor boats at a marina, pedalos at a holiday park, canoes on a river — HireHelm is your dedicated module. And it's included in every PayCamp plan.
But rather than list features, let us tell you what actually happened at Milton Keynes Marina.
The Old System
MK Marina ran their boat hire — two day boats, Mary Jane and Meadowlark, cruising 15 miles of lock-free Grand Union Canal — off a booking system built in 2006 with ASP.NET. It worked. Sort of. But:
- Price updates required emailing a developer, waiting weeks for a quote, then waiting months for the change to go live
- The site didn't display properly on mobile phones — and 70% of their traffic is mobile
- Walk-in customers on sunny days meant staff juggling returns, new bookings, and families wandering off while someone wrote details in a paper diary
- No automated confirmations, no deposit collection, no digital waivers
What Changed
Milton Keynes Marina switched to HireHelm. Their partner booking site now runs a complete online booking flow — pick a date, choose your boat, enter your details, confirm. Guests complete the whole thing in under two minutes on their phone.
Price updates that took months now take 30 seconds. The operator opens the fleet card, changes the number, hits save. Done.
Walk-ins at the quayside use the same Dockside flow on a tablet. No paper diary, no crossed wires. Every booking — online or walk-in — lands on the same dashboard with the same confirmation workflow.
What HireHelm Gives Every Operator
- Public booking wizard — Customers browse your fleet, choose a time slot, and book online. Four steps, mobile-friendly, branded to match your site.
- Fleet management — Every craft tracked with photos, capacity, rates (hourly, half-day, full-day), features, and live availability.
- Staff calendar — A high-density view built for busy days. Your team sees exactly who's on what boat, when they're due back, and what's launching next.
- Automated communications — Pre-hire safety briefings, booking confirmations, and post-hire follow-ups. All branded, all automatic, all sent at exactly the right time.
- ID verification before arrival — For powered craft, send a secure upload link before the customer arrives. They photograph their driving licence or passport, you review it on your dashboard. Returning customers earn 'verified' status and skip re-verification next time — rewarding loyalty and reducing friction. MK Marina verifies every hirer before they step on the pontoon.
- Digital waivers — Customisable safety waivers that hirers sign on their phone before they step on the water. Legally compliant, timestamped, stored forever. No more chasing paper forms in the wind.
- Deposits & damage tracking — Take security deposits, record pre-hire and post-hire condition notes, and handle damage charges through a proper financial ledger.
- Rate cards & operating seasons — Set peak, off-peak, and shoulder pricing. Define blackout dates. Apply early-bird discounts. Everything MK Marina needed to replace their developer-dependent price management.
Read about how HireHelm scales for multi-operator fleets and how to start a hire business on someone else's site.
💡 Pro Tip
HireHelm and Yard Manager aren't paid add-ons. They're included on every PayCamp plan. If your site needs boat hire management or engineering job tracking, they're already there — just switch them on.
Yard Manager: Purpose-Built for Marine Engineers
Marine engineers and boat yard operators think differently. Where a campsite counts pitches and bookings, a boat yard counts jobs, parts, and labour hours. Yard Manager is purpose-built for that world — and like HireHelm, it's included in every plan.
- Job management — Create work orders, assign engineers, track progress from initial quote through to completion and sign-off. Every status change logged, every update visible.
- Visual scheduling — Drag-and-drop scheduling across zones and bays, with capacity planning so you never double-book a crane slot or overcommit your team.
- Photo evidence — Engineers capture before, during, and after photos directly from their phone. Categorised, captioned, date-stamped, and attached to the job automatically.
- Professional invoicing — Turn completed job items into itemised professional invoices with two taps. Labour, parts, materials, disposal fees — everything broken down clearly.
- Paperless workflow — Move from paper job cards to fully digital without the painful transition.
- Mobile-first — Because engineers work at the pontoon, not behind a desk. Everything works on a phone, including a quick-access floating action button for logging time, notes, photos, and payments on the move.
We've written about the solo marine engineer experience and surviving gas check season — real scenarios that Yard Manager was specifically designed to handle.
See Yard Manager in Action
Discover how marinas and boatyards streamline operations with PayCamp's purpose-built tools.
How It All Connects — A Real Example
This is where PayCamp genuinely stands apart from everything else on the market. Everything shares the same database.
Let's use a real example instead of a hypothetical one. Milton Keynes Marina manages their moorings through PayCamp's core platform. They hire out Mary Jane and Meadowlark through HireHelm. When they add boat yard services, Yard Manager will handle the engineering jobs.
Here's what that integration looks like in practice:
- A customer books a day boat through the partner site → the booking appears on the HireHelm dashboard
- The system requests ID verification and a digital waiver → the customer completes both on their phone before arriving
- The deposit is collected automatically through PayCamp Payments → it shows on the financial dashboard alongside mooring invoices
- The boat returns → staff log the condition check from a tablet at the quayside
- The remaining balance is settled → receipt sent automatically
One login, one customer record, one financial ledger. No CSV exports between systems, no re-keying data, no "I think they paid but I can't find it."
We explored what makes PayCamp different in depth — the short version is that we're built for Britain's outdoor hospitality industry, not translated from American hotel software.
| Name | Balance |
|---|---|
| James Mitchell | £0.00 |
| Sarah Collins | £240.00 |
| David Hughes | £0.00 |
| Emma Richardson | £120.00 |
| Mark Thompson | £0.00 |
Click any row to open the full customer profile
Getting Started Is Genuinely Quick
We designed PayCamp so setup doesn't become a project in itself:
- Run the Setup Wizard — Tell us about your site: how many pitches or moorings, your pricing structure, your operating seasons. The wizard builds your configuration around your answers.
- Turn on payments — Choose PayCamp Payments (instant, no setup) or connect your existing Stripe account. Either way, you're collecting money today.
- Customise your details — Upload your logo, set your email templates, configure your Pay Point branding. All guided, all optional — sensible defaults are already in place.
- Invite your team — Add staff with role-based access. Reception sees bookings, engineers see jobs, everyone sees what they need.
- Go live — Start taking bookings, generating invoices, and accepting payments. Print your Pay Point QR code and put it where guests can see it.
Milton Keynes Marina went from "we've been meaning to replace our old system for years" to live boat hire bookings in a single afternoon. No six-month implementation project. No consultant fees. No training manuals thicker than your arm.
We wrote a guide on what to have ready before setup — it's a short read because there genuinely isn't much to prepare.
Who Is PayCamp For?
If you recognise yourself in any of these, we built this for you:
- A campsite owner managing bookings in spreadsheets and taking payments in cash envelopes
- A marina operator who's been meaning to replace a 20-year-old booking system but dreading the migration — Milton Keynes Marina was in exactly that position
- A holiday park manager juggling three systems for three different things and paying three different subscriptions
- A caravan park owner who needs seasonal pitch management, not an Airbnb clone
- A marine engineer writing job cards on the back of receipts and invoicing from a Word template
- A boat hire operator managing bookings by phone, WhatsApp, and crossed fingers
- Anyone in UK outdoor hospitality who wants to move beyond spreadsheets without remortgaging the site
What About Pricing?
We keep it simple: every feature, every module, every plan. No feature-gating, no per-user charges that punish you for having staff, no surprise costs when you discover something essential is "Premium only".
Payments are pay-as-you-go: 5% + 50p with PayCamp Payments, or your own Stripe rates (typically 2.8% + 25p) if you bring your own account. No monthly payment processing fees either way.
Check our pricing page for the details — we publish everything transparently, including exactly what's included.
Ready to Have a Look?
We don't do hard sells and we don't believe in 30-day trials that require your credit card. Here's how to explore:
- Try the Pay Point — See the live demo and experience what your guests will see.
- Explore the features — Our features page walks through every capability with live previews.
- Read the blog — We write practical guides for real operators, not marketing fluff. From electricity billing to compliance management to QR payments — if it matters to your operation, we've probably covered it.
- See MK Marina's setup — Visit miltonkeynesmarina.co.uk/boat-hire to see a live PayCamp-powered booking flow in action.
- Start your free trial — No credit card, no commitment, no sales call. Just your site, configured your way.
Welcome to PayCamp. Let's get your site sorted. 🏕️
✨ Monday Morning — Automated
4.5 hours saved this morning
Zero double bookings. Ever.
📋 Monday Morning Routine
⚠ Double-booking discovered at 2pm…
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See Yard Manager in Action
Discover how marinas and boatyards streamline operations with PayCamp's purpose-built tools.