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Sidedoor

Customer sandbox

The sandbox is a separate copy of your Sidedoor account for trying things out, especially payments, without touching your live venues or messaging real guests.

What it is

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The sandbox runs the same software as your live account, with your own venues, settings, menus, rules and booking history copied in. There’s no separate password to remember: you open it straight from your live account.

Getting there

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Open the sandbox from inside your live client portal: click your business name at the top of the screen to open the operator menu, then choose Open sandbox (the amber flask icon). It opens in a new tab, or in your phone’s browser if you’re using the business app, and signs you in as yourself, in the account you were just working in, with no extra sign-in step.

A hint under your business name reminds you it’s a test copy that resets every Sunday. Once you’re in the sandbox, the same menu switches to Back to live, taking you straight back to your live account. A banner also stays on screen the whole time you’re there, so you always know you’re in the sandbox and not live. Going straight to the sandbox control panel without opening it this way shows a message pointing you back to your live portal’s operator menu.

New team members can open the sandbox from the operator menu as soon as they’re added, no waiting for the next reset.

To try the guest side, open sandbox.thesidedoor.co ↗ and sign in with your normal guest login, the same one you use live.

The Sunday reset

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Guest data is anonymised

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Guest names and contact details are anonymised each time the sandbox resets, so no real guest can be reached from it. The exception is your own team: if a staff login shares its email address with a guest account, that guest account keeps its real details, so the team member can sign in and book as a guest to try the full booking flow.

Test payments, not real ones

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Card payments in the sandbox only go through with a Stripe test card, for example 4242 4242 4242 4242 with any future expiry date and any CVC. No real money moves, and these test payments never show up on your venue’s own Stripe dashboard. Any guest account belonging to a team member already has this test card saved, ready to use. Deposits, refunds and payment history inside Sidedoor otherwise work exactly as they do live.

Emails, SMS and push

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An email only reaches the sandbox if its address belongs to one of your staff logins; every other address is silently skipped, so a test booking never lands in a real guest’s inbox. To see a confirmation email, book or buy using a staff email address. SMS and push notifications are never sent from the sandbox.

What’s switched off

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A few things are deliberately off in the sandbox:

  • Aimy, your portal assistant.
  • Till/POS integrations.
  • Marketing campaigns and journeys.
  • Scheduled reports to your team (daily reservation summary, End of Day (Z) report, weekly report, monthly review).
  • Forecasting and the rest of the Analytics rollups.

Your plan, add-ons, billing and payment method can’t be changed from the sandbox either; trying shows a message that they’re managed in your live account.

Testing your widgets

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A widget embedded on your own website still points at your live venue, so a visitor there books live, not in the sandbox. To test a widget safely, open its Show widget code inside the sandbox control panel and use the embed code or link shown there, a separate sandbox version that only talks to your sandbox venues.

Guest app testing is browser-only

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The native Sidedoor app on a guest’s phone always talks to your live venues. To test the guest side of a booking in the sandbox, use a web browser rather than the app.

Private and unlisted

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The sandbox isn’t listed anywhere public, and search engines don’t index it. There’s no marketing site on it: going to sandbox.thesidedoor.co takes you straight to sign in.

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