Venue management software for Irish wedding and function venues in a year of two VAT changes

A spring deposit, an autumn wedding: which VAT rate applies?

Revenue treats a deposit or prepayment as a supply at the moment you receive it, and VAT is chargeable on that prepayment in the return for the period. Revenue's guidance on when VAT is due adds that the rate is the one in force when the advance payment is received, where no earlier invoice fixes it.

Now picture a September 2026 wedding. The couple paid a deposit towards the meal in May, when catering was still at 13.5%. The balance for the same meal is paid in August, after the second reduced rate of 9% took effect on 1 July. The deposit and the balance can therefore carry different rates on the same booking.

A spreadsheet with one VAT cell per line cannot show that. Software needs to apply the rate by the date of each payment or invoice and keep a history of what was charged when, so your accountant can follow it at year end.

Invoice every deposit by the 15th of the following month

Revenue's rule on advance payments is that you issue a VAT invoice for each payment received, no later than the 15th day of the month after the month you received it. A venue taking six or seven wedding deposits a week in January, after the engagement season, builds a backlog quickly if invoices are typed by hand.

The fix is boring and effective: the system raises a VAT invoice or receipt the moment a deposit is recorded against a booking, numbers it in sequence and keeps a copy. That gives you a clean trail for every payment and removes the month-end scramble.

Sample venue quote: September wedding at a country house in Kildare

Saturday wedding for 150 day guests and 60 evening guests at a country house venue in Co. Kildare, quoted after 1 July 2026. Prices are illustrative.

• Illustrative prices, not a rate card.
• A deposit is taxed when it is received, at the rate in force then; a meal deposit paid before 1 July 2026 would have carried 13.5%.
• Issue a VAT invoice for each deposit by the 15th of the following month.
• Ask your adviser how an all-in package price is apportioned between room, meal and drinks.

What to test in a demo before choosing venue management software in Ireland

Room hire at 23%, the meal at 9%, the drinks at 23%

Revenue's room-hire guidance puts the hire of a room at the standard rate of 23% in every venue from 1 January 2026, including hotels that used to charge 13.5%. Restaurant and catering services were at the reduced rate until 30 June 2026 and moved to the second reduced rate of 9% from 1 July. Alcohol, soft drinks and bottled water stay at 23% even when served with a meal.

So one wedding package quote can carry two or three rates. If you sell an all-in per-head price, you still need to know how much of it is room, meal and drinks, because the VAT is worked out on each part. Software should hold the package as named components with their own rates and print the customer a single tidy total.

Ask your adviser how your packages are apportioned. Then make sure the system can reproduce that split every time without someone recalculating it.

Day guests, evening guests and the second headcount

Irish weddings often have two guest lists: the day guests who come to the meal and the evening guests who arrive later for the band and the supper. They are different numbers with different menus, and they change on different timetables. Couples usually firm up the meal count first and add evening guests until the week of the wedding.

Venue software has to treat these as two counts on one booking, each feeding its own food order, its own staffing and its own line on the invoice. If the evening count lives in a note field, the kitchen will make sandwiches for last month's number.

eInvoicing is coming in stages, starting with large corporates

Revenue's VAT modernisation timeline starts mandatory eInvoicing and real-time reporting for domestic business-to-business transactions with VAT-registered large corporates in November 2028. Businesses trading cross-border within the EU follow in November 2029, and the EU-wide requirements for cross-border transactions apply from July 2030.

Most wedding venues will not be in the first phase. A hotel group or a venue that bills large companies for conferences should watch it, because Revenue also says businesses must be able to receive eInvoices from suppliers who are required to send them. Choose software you can get your data out of, so a later move to an eInvoicing tool is not a re-keying exercise.

Viewings, wedding fairs and the enquiry that goes cold

Irish wedding venues fill much of their diary from a few busy windows: the weeks after engagements at Christmas and the new year, and the weekends when couples visit wedding fairs. A venue can collect dozens of enquiries in a fortnight and then lose half of them because nobody followed up while the couple was still choosing.

Venue software should log every enquiry with its preferred dates, guest numbers and source, book the viewing into a coordinator's calendar, and remind someone to follow up if nothing has happened in a few days. After the viewing, the date hold and its expiry go on the same record, so the couple who loved the walled garden does not lose their Saturday to a slower follow up.

Track where bookings come from as well. If one fair produces three weddings and another produces none, that is a budget decision you can only make with the numbers in front of you.

Where Venura fits for an Irish venue

Venura is a venue and catering management system built in India and used by venues abroad. It keeps enquiries, viewings and bookings on a calendar that warns on double bookings, produces quotes, invoices and receipts with the VAT rate you set on each line, tracks deposits and balances against each booking, and prints event sheets for the floor and kitchen. Staff get their own roles, and documents go out by email or WhatsApp. It runs on the web and in native Android and iOS apps, in euro.

It suits independent wedding venues, function rooms and small groups. It does not file VAT returns, it does not connect to Revenue's systems, and it is not a hotel property management system. Plans for Ireland are quoted on request after a free 30-day trial; bring a real 2026 wedding with a May deposit and an August balance to the demo.

Venue management software questions from Ireland