Temple HubOnline pooja booking, without losing the calendar
The worry is never the technology. It is that the moment devotees can book themselves, the temple loses control of who is scheduled, which priest is free, and what was actually paid. Temple Hub puts booking online while leaving all three with you.
The real objection
“We are not letting people book whatever they want”
Fair. Most temples that resist online booking are not resisting the internet — they are resisting a system that accepts a homam for a Saturday morning when the priest is already at a gruhapravesham across town, and tells the family it is confirmed.
So the setting that matters most is the one most demos skip: whether a booking is instant or needs approval. Temple Hub does both, and the temple decides.
How it works
Four steps for the devotee
- 1. Sign in with a passcode
Email address or mobile number, then a 6-digit code that expires in 15 minutes. No separate signup form to fill in first, and no password for an 80-year-old devotee to reset at 9pm.
- 2. Choose the service and date
Archana, abhishekam, homam, sevas and facilities each carry their own price, duration and priest requirement. Dates the required priest is already committed to are blocked automatically.
- 3. Pay now, or hold the date
Card payment online, or — where the temple turns on holds — reserve the date with no payment, with a hold expiry counting down and payment taken when the devotee confirms.
- 4. Confirmation and receipt
Email plus a push notification, and a receipt carrying whatever tax treatment the temple configured for that category.
What the temple keeps
Approval, with a reason on the record
Turn approvals on and a request lands in the Bookings screen marked Awaiting approval. Only Admins and SuperAdmins see the Approve and Reject buttons — not priests, not volunteers, not the front desk. Approving emails the devotee and unlocks Pay Now, and the row reads “Approved · awaiting payment” until they pay.
Rejecting requires a written reason, which is emailed to the devotee with a push notification, and the booking is cancelled. Every decision — who approved or rejected it, when, and why — goes to the audit log. That is the part that matters when a committee member asks six months later why a family was turned down.
Priests
One schedule, not four WhatsApp threads
Assign priests to pujas, sevas and events, and each priest gets a personal schedule of what they are on and when — in the app, on their own phone. The same assignments flow into the Temple Calendar and into finance reporting, where revenue is attributed to the priest who performed the service. Booking a facility at the front desk can add In-Temple priest services to the same reservation, and the calendar blocks any date that priest is already committed to.
Money
Online and at the counter, on one set of books
Bookings taken on the website and bookings rung up at the front desk land in the same queue and the same Finance Dashboard, which can split revenue by source — temple website self-service versus admin front desk — so you can actually see whether going online changed anything. At the counter, staff take cash, card or split tender and reconcile the drawer at end of shift.
There are no per-booking or per-transaction fees. Temple Hub charges a flat monthly fee by household band; putting more bookings online does not increase what you pay.
On tax treatment:a fee for an in-temple public ceremony is treated differently from a fixed fee for a private or at-home ritual, and Temple Hub records the correct treatment per category rather than labelling every booking a donation. The temple sets the policy under Booking Rules → Receipts & Tax.
Getting there
You do not have to open everything at once
The temples this goes well for tend to start narrow: put two or three well-understood services online with approvals on, leave everything else at the front desk, and widen once the office trusts what it is seeing. Approvals can be switched off later — or never. Most temples are live within a single business day, and every plan includes a 30-day free trial.
Try it with one puja first
The 30-day trial gives you every tile and feature, so you can put a single service online with approvals on and watch a real booking come through before deciding anything.