Weddings, proms, bachelorettes, birthdays, bar-crawls. Hourly minimums with 50% deposits, April-June prom spike, overnight bachelorette no-shows, inbound “we got 20 girls, how much tomorrow night?” chaos. We built Stretch on Unlimited Charters — a party-bus-heavy national brand — and the defaults reflect it. Free tier, no card, 60-second signup.
Party bus is a deposit-driven, cancellation-heavy, demand-spiked business. The quote you send at 4pm Tuesday for a Saturday-night bachelorette is competing with three other operators and the customer is going to pick whichever one has the easiest “click here to lock it in” link. If your quote process involves a PDF, a Venmo screenshot, and “just text me by tomorrow” — you lose. The winners are the operators whose quote email contains a signable contract and a card-capture link that locks in the 50% deposit in under three minutes.
Then there's the prom April-June demand spike. In a normal week you dispatch 15 trips. In the last three weeks of April you'll dispatch 60. You don't own 60 buses. You own 12. The other 48 come from a network of subcontract carriers you've built up over years — and keeping track of which carrier accepted which trip, who's been paid, who sent a 20-passenger when the contract said 25 — that's where the margin leaks out. Most CRMs don't have a vendor portal. Ours does, because we built it for exactly this reason.
And the overnight bachelorette. 11pm pickup, four stops downtown, 3am drop-off at a hotel. The bride-side group has been drinking since 7pm. Half of them don't live in your city. The “spot bid” price they got from a competitor was $400 less and they're calling you at midnight asking if you'll match. Driver has a kid at home and his hour-of-service clock is running out. You need a dispatch board that shows you all of this in one glance, SMS the driver can send one-tap to the client, and a payment system that won't let the client walk without the final balance clearing.
And finally: no-shows and chargebacks. “Prom plans changed, we don't need the bus anymore, refund my deposit.” Three weeks after you held the Saturday slot and turned down two other inquiries. If your contract wasn't e-signed with the 50%-non-refundable clause visible, you lose. If it was, you win. The right CRM makes signed contracts the default, not an afterthought.
Pulled from the actual request logs across our own party-bus brands.
Client fills the form, instant price comes back, “Click to sign + pay deposit” link follows. The whole flow takes under 2 minutes from the client's phone. Beats the Venmo-and-text competition every time.
See the quote widget →Invite your subcontract bus partners into the portal. Prom Saturday hits, you auto-publish 24 overflow trips to the network, carriers accept the ones they can run, you pay them 7 days before. No more spreadsheet-and-text-blast chaos.
See vendor portal →The 50%-deposit-non-refundable clause is in bold, right above the e-signature field. Clients sign on their phone, deposit charges automatically, contract PDF emailed to both sides. Dispute defense built in.
See contracts →Auto-text the driver the pickup address 24hr out. Auto-text the group lead when the bus is 15 minutes out. Reduces “where is the bus” calls and drunk-dial-complaints to near zero on Saturday nights.
See SMS features →Set it once: Saturday-night party bus leads go to driver pool A, Sunday morning wedding transfers go to pool B, overflow to subcontract network C. Dispatcher doesn't have to manually route 60 prom bookings in a weekend.
See auto-leads →Your booking.yourpartybusbrand.com with your logo, SSL cert, color scheme and footer. Not a Stretch subdomain. Clients see your brand all the way through signature + payment.
See custom domain →The lead-to-paid lifecycle for a classic bachelorette booking — from inquiry Tuesday to driver paid Monday.
“22 girls, Sat 8pm pickup, 4 downtown bars, hotel drop 2am.”
22-pax party bus, 6hr minimum, $1,195. Signable link out in 60s.
Maid of honor signs on phone, $597.50 deposit clears instantly.
Auto-leads routes to Driver #7. Vehicle locked. Final balance auto 48hr out.
Driver on the way at 7:45. Group lead gets the text, no “where are you” calls.
Gratuity added via addendum. 6am review ask fires. Google 5-star hits Monday.
Owner-operators with 1-2 buses can run comfortably on Pro ($99/mo) — custom domain, contracts, per-day pricing (Saturday rates ≠ Tuesday rates) all unlock there. But the moment you hit prom season or start farming out overflow to subcontract bus partners, Growth ($189/mo) pays for itself in the first weekend. Vendor portal, auto-leads routing, SMS, Zapier & QuickBooks integrations. Scale ($489/mo) makes sense once you're past 25 buses and want the dedicated Fortis merchant. Enterprise is for multi-brand holdcos (we run seven brands on it).
National party-bus-heavy operator, 528K+ city pages, Enterprise tier. Full stack: vendor portal, auto-leads, Fortis Vault, SMS, multi-brand white-label. Our flagship reference brand — this is where the party-bus defaults came from.
Read case study →Regional party bus + limo brand covering BWI, DC, Baltimore, Annapolis. Growth tier. Heavy prom season, big bachelorette circuit, vendor overflow on Saturday nights. SMS is the single most-used feature.
Read case study →Free tier, no card, 25 leads/month forever. Upgrade to Growth before prom season — same data, no re-migration. Or book a 15-minute demo and we'll walk you through the vendor portal that handles your overflow nights.