Accurate booking fees and structured time-slot logic transformed Arham’s platform into a predictable service ecosystem.
With Shipturtle’s booking architecture, the marketplace is now ready for thousands of vendor-managed time slots across Indonesia.
The Infrastructure Behind Indonesia’s Service Booking Marketplaces
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TL;DR (too long; didn't read)
• Founder Arham runs an Indonesian multi-vendor service marketplace where customers pay a booking fee online and the remaining amount in cash to local providers
• Commission calculations were breaking because the platform treated booking fees like full product prices
• Vendor emails, customer confirmations, time slots, and booking dates were missing critical data
• Shipturtle corrected commission logic, realigned tax rules, and structured booking attributes for email and WhatsApp deliveries
• The team requested a vendor-facing interface for publishing time slots along with Enterprise API access for deeper workflows
A Founder Who Turned Island Activities Into a Unified Marketplace
When Arham first imagined building a marketplace for Indonesia’s tour and activity providers, he wanted more than a tourism site. He wanted a system that could bring independent operators together. Diving instructors, local guides, boat operators, ATV owners, trekking specialists, all offering bookable services through a central experience.
But this model had a twist many founders underestimate.
Customers would not pay the full amount online. The marketplace collected only a booking fee while the remaining payment happened in person.
To customers, this flow needed to feel natural.
To vendors, it needed to be crystal clear.
To the platform, it needed to be harmonious.
Instead, cracks appeared fast.
• Commissions didn’t match the actual booking fee
• Emails lacked time slots and vendor contact details
• Vendors struggled to understand what booking they were fulfilling
• Shopify’s structure treated services like products and erased booking context
Arham wasn’t dealing with a design issue.
He was dealing with a data architecture problem.
Why Service Booking Marketplaces Break Without Context
Ecommerce platforms think in terms of products, prices, and quantities.
Service booking marketplaces think in terms of time.
A proper booking system must carry:
• The date
• The time slot
• The provider name
• The booking fee
• The amount payable in cash
• The customer’s contact information
• The service location
• The session duration
Without this, confirmations feel empty, and providers are left guessing what the customer actually booked.
In Arham’s early setup, Shopify treated a 7 AM dive session and a 12:30 PM dive session as the same SKU.
To Shopify, these were identical.
To the real world, they are entirely different events.
This mismatch explains why:
• Vendor emails had no time slots
• Customer confirmations lacked essential details
• WhatsApp notifications looked incomplete
• Vendors often had to call the customer to verify timing
It wasn’t a workflow issue.
It was a structural one.
When Commission Logic Fights the Payment Model
Arham’s intended payment flow was simple.
• Customer pays a booking fee online
• Provider receives the remaining payment in cash
• Marketplace earns a fixed commission percentage
• Taxes apply only to the booking fee
But Shipturtle inherited the order directly from Shopify, where the full price was recorded. This caused a chain reaction.
The system mistakenly:
• Calculated commission on the full service value
• Included taxes inside the commission
• Synced the wrong totals into notifications
• Double-charged commission in some cases
• Displayed mismatched values compared to Shopify’s checkout
The marketplace felt inconsistent and hard to trust.
Arham didn’t need new features.
He needed correction at the root of the logic.
Rebuilding the Foundation: Booking Fees Done Right
Shipturtle restructured everything around the actual business model.
Commission Logic Realigned
• Commission applies only to the booking fee
• Full service price is excluded from payouts
• Taxes are applied correctly
• Shopify totals and Shipturtle totals now match
• No more strange mismatches or double charges
Booking Attributes Made Accessible
• Time slot is now stored as a booking attribute
• Booking date is clearly passed to email templates
• Vendor dashboards display the full booking context
• Customer confirmations finally feel complete
Vendor Notifications Rebuilt
In case Shopify Flow misses a trigger, Shipturtle prepares fallback data for:
• Vendor name
• Vendor phone
• Booking time
• Booking date
• Customer information
• Booking fee and cash due
The system now speaks the language of real-world service delivery rather than SKU logic.
The Missing Link: Vendor Time-Slot Publication
During the conversations, one major need surfaced.
Providers needed a way to publish availability.
A simple, calendar-like interface that lets them set:
• Date
• Time slot
• Capacity
• Day-of-week patterns
• Duration rules
• Blocked dates
Without this, Arham had to manually configure availability or rely on static inventory.
He asked if Shipturtle could create something similar to global service platforms. A panel where vendors could log in, open calendars, and control exactly when they can accept bookings.
This became the biggest roadmap item for scalability.
A marketplace cannot scale with static availability.
It needs dynamic, vendor-driven time slots.
The Turning Point: When Booking Emails Finally Carried Meaning
Everything changed when Arham saw a test email with complete context.
It displayed:
• The booking date
• The exact slot (for example, 7:00 AM)
• The provider name
• The booking fee
• The remaining balance
• Customer details
For the first time, vendors knew exactly what they needed to deliver.
Customers stopped asking repetitive questions.
The platform did not feel like disconnected workflows stitched together.
It felt like a real booking engine.
Shipturtle as the Infrastructure Behind Service Marketplaces
Even though customers never see it, Shipturtle now powers every essential component of Arham’s platform.
What Shipturtle now handles
• Correct booking-fee commission logic
• Accurate tax flows
• Time-slot and date mapping
• Vendor email and WhatsApp notification attributes
• Calendar-ready data architecture
• Enterprise API access
• Multi-provider service syncing
• A roadmap for vendor-facing time-slot publication
• Dedicated onboarding support
Shipturtle is not the interface customers interact with.
It is the silent infrastructure that ensures the entire ecosystem works reliably.
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84%
of failed service bookings in Southeast Asia occur because the time slot or provider details are missing from confirmations.
Final Transformation: A Marketplace Built for Scale
Arham’s Indonesian service marketplace now operates with:
• Clear booking fees
• Accurate commission calculations
• Complete confirmations
• Vendor clarity and accountability
• Customer trust
• Time-slot logic ready for scaling
• Enterprise-level support for future workflows
What began as a simple idea to bring island activities online has evolved into a structured booking ecosystem.
An ecosystem built on clarity, clean logic, and a data foundation that respects how services actually work.
Arham didn’t just fix a broken workflow.
He created a predictable, scalable system ready for thousands of bookings across Indonesia.
As Arham prepares to scale vendor availability, dynamic time-slot publishing, and deeper service automation, the next step is building a unified scheduling engine across the platform.
Book a demo with us today to architect a service marketplace that grows without breaking.
FAQ's
- Why do service booking marketplaces require structured booking attributes?
Because dates, time slots, vendor details, and booking fees must be captured and passed through consistently for confirmations, payouts, and notifications. - How does clean booking-fee logic improve payouts?
It ensures commissions apply only to the booking fee, preventing inflated charges or mismatched totals between Shopify and the marketplace backend. - Why were vendor notifications missing time slots initially?
Shopify treated services like products and did not store booking context, causing emails and WhatsApp messages to miss key service attributes. - Can vendors now see full booking details inside their dashboards?
Yes. Vendors receive booking dates, time slots, contact information, and fee breakdowns so they know exactly what service to deliver. - What happens if Shopify Flow fails to trigger a notification?
Shipturtle prepares fallback attributes to ensure vendor and customer emails always contain essential booking details. - Why is vendor-driven time-slot publication important for scaling?
A marketplace cannot grow with static availability. Providers must be able to publish and manage their own dynamic time slots to prevent scheduling conflicts. - Does this system support WhatsApp notifications with full booking context?
Yes. Time, date, vendor, and fee attributes are now passed cleanly to WhatsApp templates for clear, actionable updates. - How does Enterprise API access help this marketplace?
It enables deeper workflow automation, advanced scheduling, and customised integrations that are essential for a high-volume service ecosystem.
About The Author
Kali
Working at Shipturtle shows how easily complex ideas can be turned into simple and engaging visuals. It reflects an ability to understand how digital products function and explain them in a way that anyone can grasp without feeling overwhelmed.
This experience also highlights strong problem-solving and clarity in thinking. It shows a talent for taking complicated concepts, breaking them down, and presenting them through clean visuals and clear writing. This makes information easier for people to understand, whether they’re new to tech or already familiar with it.