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When you pay, the money is held rather than passed straight to the supplier. It is released to them after you confirm the work was delivered — or automatically once the release window has passed without an issue being raised. Until then the supplier can see the booking is funded, but cannot draw the money.

Release begins when you confirm delivery. If you neither confirm nor raise an issue, the payment auto-releases after the release window shown on your order — the window is a platform setting, and the exact hours for your booking are stated on the order itself.

Raise an issue on the order before the release window closes. That pauses the release while DadsOrder reviews both sides. Once a payment has been released it can no longer be paused, so raise anything you are unsure about while the order is still open.

Yes. Each booking is tracked and released independently, so confirming your cake does not release your caterer, and an issue with one supplier does not affect the others.

Checkout, the order detail and your invoice each separate the supplier’s price, the customer service fee and any applicable GST before you commit. The all-in figure shown on a listing already includes the service fee — there is no fee added later.

No. Card details are entered with our payment provider and never reach DadsOrder’s own systems.

Yes. Every completed order has a tax invoice showing the GST components, available from the order screen.

A partial refund reduces what is held, and the remainder stays protected under the same terms as before — it is released when you confirm delivery of what was actually supplied, or when the release window passes with no issue raised. The supplier is only ever paid from money you did not get back.

You can buy directly from a supplier’s storefront if they list what you need at a set price, or post a request describing your event and let matching suppliers send you offers. Many people do both — book the cake directly, and take offers for catering.

Suppliers who match your category, date and area can send an offer against your request. You can message them, counter with your own figure, or accept. Accepting an offer creates a funded booking; nothing is charged until you accept.

No. Offers show price alongside the supplier’s track record, and you can compare them side by side. Nothing expires without warning — each offer shows its own expiry.

Ask the supplier in the order’s chat. If it changes the price they send a formal change for you to approve, which shows the original amount, the change and the new total before you agree to it. The held amount is adjusted only after you approve.

Cancellation depends on how close the event is and what the supplier has already committed to. Open the order and start there — the terms that apply to your booking are shown on the order itself.

Every supplier is verified by a DadsOrder administrator before they can trade — identity and ABN are checked by a person, not only by software. Ratings, on-time percentage and completion rate are computed from real orders on the platform, so they cannot be bought or self-reported.

DadsOrder currently serves New South Wales. Suppliers set their own service areas and delivery ranges, so what you see is filtered to who can actually reach you.

Yes, and it is worth getting right. Briefs are matched on the event’s suburb, because that is what decides which suppliers can physically get there. Set the event location when you post — if it is left blank we fall back to your account suburb, which for a wedding across town means the wrong half of the market is asked.

Raise it on the order rather than waiting. An unanswered booking can be offered to other suppliers who can still make your date, and they take it over at the original price — same work, same total, nothing charged again. Your money stays held throughout, and an open issue pauses the release window rather than letting it run out.

Nothing to join, no subscription and no charge for receiving leads. DadsOrder takes a commission on settled sales only — the current rate is shown on the pricing page and in the earnings calculator on the supplier page.

Verification is the one manual step. An administrator checks your ABN and identity, and every final approval is made by a person — automated checks may extract details or flag a mismatch, but they never approve an account on their own. We are not yet publishing a typical turnaround: we would rather tell you the real number once we have enough decisions to measure one than quote a target we have not met yet. You can build your storefront and listings while you wait.

You can build your storefront, add listings and upload photos straight away. Your listings become visible to customers once verification completes.

After the customer confirms delivery, or after the release window passes without an issue. Your earnings screen shows what is held, what has been released and what has been paid out.

A discount of 5–50% on a single open date. We promote that specific date to matching customers, and your standard price list is untouched — it is a way to fill a quiet day without repricing your work.

From completed orders only: customer ratings, on-time percentage, completion rate and repeat hosts. Nothing is editable by you or by us.

The release is paused and DadsOrder reviews both sides, including the photo check-ins and messages on the order. Documenting delivery as you go is the most useful thing you can do — it is what a review looks at first.

Your customer relationships are your own, and nothing stops a customer who found you here from booking you directly in future. The line is a specific one: a booking arranged through DadsOrder is paid through DadsOrder. Moving that particular job off-platform removes the escrow, the dispute process and the payment protection from a customer who chose them by booking here, and neither side can then ask us to help.

With a one-time code sent to your mobile, or with your email and password. The code is the default because it is one step and nothing to remember.

Bookings involve money and a date that cannot slip, so both parties need a reliable way to reach each other. Verification is required once, before your first action.

Every marketing email has an unsubscribe link, and it works in one click without signing in. Transactional messages about your own orders are not marketing and continue regardless.

You can delete your account yourself from Settings. You retype the email address on the account, and we send a confirmation link that expires in an hour and works once — so a phone someone else is holding cannot destroy your account, and neither can a stale browser tab. Deletion is refused while money is in flight: an order with funds held, or an order with a payment page that could still take a card. A held payment has two sides, and erasing one of them leaves the other with a counterparty nobody can contact or refund. Completed orders and their tax invoices are kept without your details, because we are required to hold financial records; the privacy policy lists exactly what stays and why.

What the service needs to work, and analytics only if you agree to them. The privacy policy sets out each category, why we hold it and how long for.

In two optional places, both with consent asked for at the time. A supplier can have a listing drafted from their own photos and a sentence they write; the draft never sets a price, a date or a dietary claim, because those are the supplier’s facts to state and ours to refuse to guess. A supplier can also opt in to assisted triage of a verification document to speed up review — a person still makes every verification decision. Nothing you write as a customer is used to train a model, and neither feature runs without the consent being recorded first.

We record how long pages took to load and respond, grouped by page type and a broad device class — never tied to you, your session or the address you were on. If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track signal we collect nothing at all.