Hotplate

Hotplate help

As soon as you get some orders through Hotplate, you’ll have money available to withdraw to your own bank account. You can see a record of all your transactions and as well as the total amount you have available to withdraw in the 

 tab on the left side of your Hotplate portal

Follow the prompts at the top to set up the connection to your bank through our partner, 

 You’ll be taken to another site (that’s ok!) and brought back when the process is complete.

Depending on your bank, you may be able to select how fast you want the payout to arrive. If you don’t see a menu with options, then skip this step.

You may also be asked to log in again with your phone number. This is an added layer of security to make sure its really you withdrawing the money!

When will I see the money in my bank account?

Depending on your bank and how much you have available to pay out you will see some or all of the following options to payout:

Keep in mind that missing a cutoff time can potentially delay your payout longer than you might expect. For example, if you initiate a payout on Friday afternoon/evening, you won't receive it until Monday evening.

How to get the money you earned out of Hotplate

How to withdraw earnings from Hotplate (payout)

While credit, debit, and Apple Pay transactions are our 🍞 and 🧈, you can now have customers pay you outside of Hotplate with cash, Venmo, and Zelle! These are called external or off-platform payments.

Click the pencil icons to provide payment instructions, so customers know exactly how and where to send payment.

At checkout, external payment methods appear right below Card and Cash App. If a customer picks one of these, the instructions are displayed on the order confirmation page along with a 

 button for your customer to hit once they've paid.

, depending on whether the customer has clicked 

Once you've checked that you received the cash / Venmo / Zelle payment, click 

Payment Instructions are required! This helps make sure you get paid.

You’re responsible for collecting and confirming payment from customers

Refunding these orders through Hotplate is unsupported and you’ll need to issue refunds or resolve any payment disputes using the chosen external payment method.

 on the order receipt for book-keeping and consistency.

 there is no payment processing fee for external payments since they take place outside of Hotplate.

 The Hotplate fee still applies to orders with external payments, and it will be 

. Customers will still see that fee calculated on their order receipt and included in the amount they owe you.

If you’ve changed the default split of fees, the full Hotplate fee will still be deducted from your payout balance, but the customer will pay you their portion of it. For example:

If your customer pays 100% of the Hotplate fee (default) and the fee is $1 on an order, $1 is taken from your payout balance and given to Hotplate, and your customer pays you $1 in cash, Venmo or Zelle.

If you split the fee 60/40 with your customer, and the fee is $1 on an order, $1 is taken from your payout balance and your customer pays you $0.40 in cash, Venmo or Zelle.

Can I turn cash/Venmo/Zelle on for a specific event only?

Right now, you can only enable external payments for your entire storefront, not specific Events. You can always choose to enable this setting, publish and run an Event, then turn it off after, but you can’t have different settings for Events running at the same time.

If you don't want to enable external payments from everyone, you can always create a 

 and accept cash or another payment method for it outside of Hotplate. The manual order will appear on your Prep and Packing tabs, but it will still be up to you to keep track and collect the payment from your customer.

What if a cash/Venmo/Zelle customer doesn't show up?

No-shows are no fun! Since these payments happen outside of Hotplate, you’ll be responsible for collecting the payments, and chasing down customers who order but don't show up. You can consider adding a note in your Payment Instructions that states you’ll only produce orders with payment sent ahead of the pickup time.

No, once a cash/Venmo/Zelle order is placed, you cannot remove it.

Can I refund a cash/Venmo/Zelle order with money in my payout tab?

No, since these payments happen outside of Hotplate, there’s no way to send a refund and it’s up to you to manually send refunds through the chosen platform or resolve any payment disputes.

Can gift cards be purchased with cash/Venmo/Zelle?

No. This is for your protection! Since payments happen outside of Hotplate, it would be too easy for someone to buy a gift card, not send you the money, then use the gift card for a future Event.

How to accept cash, Venmo, or Zelle

Looking to cancel a customer’s order? You’ll just want to issue a refund then close their order ticket. 

You can issue a partial or full refund to customers straight from your Hotplate portal in just a few clicks. Here’s how:

Choose to refund a dollar amount or specific items

Decide if you would like to restock items once refunded, and if you’d like to remove the order from your prep and pack tab.

Here’s a quick looping gif to walk you through that process:

How to refund customers

Every state and county has different rules about when you should collect sales tax, but Hotplate makes it easy to set separate rates based on pickup locations or menu items.

There are 3 kinds of tax rates you can set on Hotplate:

 - applies to all items sold in your store

 - applies to items ordered to a specific pickup location

 Hotplate helps you collect the right amount in tax, but we do not report or send the collected tax to your state. 

If you have any questions about which items are taxable or when and how to report collected taxes to the state, we recommend reaching out directly to your tax professional or state tax offices. Sometimes even a simple Google search of “Sales Tax + [COUNTY NAME]” will get you some quick answers.

If you sell in different locations that have different local tax rates, you can add custom tax rates to each pickup location. This custom rate will apply to all items in orders that use this location. Your global rate will continue to apply in locations that do not have a custom tax rate set.

At the bottom, look for a section labeled 

The custom rate will now appear in your list of locations, helping you remember that a different rate will be used for all orders for this location:

Some items may be taxed differently under your local tax laws, so you can set up specific rates per menu item. If a menu item has a custom rate, it will be used at checkout to calculate taxes instead of any location or global tax rates.

Setting a custom tax rate for a menu item works the same as for a location. Start by creating or editing a menu item and scroll to the 

 section. Additionally, items can be set to 

, which means that no taxes will be calculated for the item at checkout.

Similarly, items with custom tax rates (or set as tax exempt) will clearly display these custom settings in the menu item selection list:

I have several rates set - which one will apply? 

Setting multiple rates sometimes gets messy or confusing, but you can remember that only one tax rate will apply per item. The system will first check for an item rate (or exemption), then location rate, then global rate. Here’s what we mean:

If the item is marked "Exempt," no taxes will be applied.

If the item has a custom rate, it will be applied. No other rates (location or global) will be applied.

If no custom rate is set for the item, the custom rate for the selected location at checkout will apply. The global rate will not be applied.

If neither the item nor the location has a custom rate, the default global tax rate (set in your account settings) will be used.

Imagine you’re managing orders for two pop-up events with varying tax requirements for the Downtown and Suburban pickup locations. The global rate for your store is 5% tax on items (assuming the item isn't tax exempt).

For this event, you're selling three types of items: Gourmet Sandwiches, Bottled Beverages, and T-shirts.

 don’t have a specific tax rate, so they follow the tax rate based on the location they’re sold.

The Downtown Location has a location tax rate of 8.25%. Here’s how the tax rates will apply:

:  Since this item is marked as tax-exempt, no tax will be applied, even though the Downtown Location has a custom rate, and even though you have a global rate of 5%.

: With no custom rate on the beverage itself, the Downtown Location’s rate of 8.25% will apply.

: Even though the Downtown Location has a rate of 8.25%, the T-shirts have an item rate of 7.5%. This means that customers will be charged 7.5% tax on this item.

The Suburban Location doesn’t have a custom location tax rate, so items here will use the global tax rate (5%) unless specified otherwise.

: Since this item is marked as tax-exempt, no tax will be applied, even though the Downtown Location has a custom rate, and even though you have a global rate of 5%.

: Since there’s no custom rate for this item or the location, the global tax rate of 5% will apply.

:  The custom item rate of 7.5% will still apply, regardless of location.

setting custom rates by location, menu items, and exemptions

How to set sales tax rates 

With Hotplate, you can easily create codes to give your customers either a percentage or dollar amount discount off their order.

Here are some situations we commonly see chefs create discount codes:

 encourage customers to order from you again by printing a thank you card with a discount code and including it with each order.

 easily gift your friends, family, or loyal customers with some money off their order

 offer exclusive discount codes to your social media followers and you could see your following grow!

 from which the discount code will work (not an option for Event discounts). You can also add an 

 for the discount code to work. If you want the code to apply to any order size, set this to $0.00.

 if you want to limit the number of times in total the code can be used.

Restrict the code to first time customers

 if you want to limit the number of times a customer can use this specific code.

Once you have some discount codes, they will be visible on the 

Scheduled discount codes with a start date is in the future

Codes that have Expired (codes with an end date that have passed)

Codes that have been "Exhausted", meaning the 

You can click on each code to see details on it’s settings and how much it’s been used. That info panel will look like this: 

How to create discount codes

We know just how hard our chefs work and we want to give your customers the opportunity to show their appreciation through tips. By default, tipping will be turned on for your storefront and customers will be asked if they want to add a tip as they check out. The default suggested amounts are 10%/15%/20% of the order subtotal.

Some chefs operate a tip free business or want to suggest different tip percentages than our default. We’ve got you covered! Here’s how to adjust your storefront’s tip settings:

 on the left side of your Hotplate portal

 on or off, and select the suggested tip percentages

How to turn off or adjust tip suggestions

If you’ve processed dollars over a certain threshold in 2024, you will receive a form 1099K from Hotplate. This is essentially a summary of all the payments you processed through your Hotplate storefront.

In accordance with the IRS, you will only receive a form 1099K if you processed more than $5000 in transactions through Hotplate. Certain states also have lower thresholds, including:

Illinois (IL): > $1,000 and 4+ separate transactions

Your tax information will be collected through our secure payment partner, 

. Look out for an email from Routable asking you to confirm your personal information (Form W9). After that is submitted, you should receive an emailed 1099K 

Please note that if you submit your tax information in the last week of January, you are likely to get a delayed 1099K in early February.

If you have any issues or questions, email us at 

 and we’ll be happy to help! Please remember that our team can help with technical questions, but you should consult your accountant for any tax related questions.

When will I get my 1099 tax form?

Knowing how much you paid in Payment Processing or Hotplate fees can help with personal reporting or tax preparation. To see a report of these fees, you’ll want to first download your transaction history for the required period. Here’s how:

Filter for the date range you are looking for

 on the right hand side to download a CSV of your Transaction History

Open the spread sheet and scroll to the far right. You’ll see fees will be broken out into 4 columns.

Programs like Excel, Google Sheets, or Numbers usually automatically calculate the sum of all the cells you highlight, so simply highlight the correct column to see the total fees.

Look for these columns in your downloaded report: 

Payments and Payouts