Pakka

Customers book on WhatsApp, in Hindi. You approve 'Yes' with one tap. The advance goes to your own UPI id — this software records but never touches your money. Booking, approval, advance, and a confirmation the moment your bank tells you it arrived, all in one place.

Built for sports venues — the examples below are grounds, courts, cricket. The same pattern fits any appointment-based business that takes an advance before the slot: clinics, salons, coaching classes, rental equipment. Edit venues.js to describe your own business instead of a turf.

Don't want to run your own? pakka.online is the hosted version.

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Before you start

You need three things:

1. A spare phone number that has never had WhatsApp on it. A cheap prepaid SIM is fine. It must be able to receive one SMS or one phone call. I recommend getting a new SIM card.

Do not use your existing WhatsApp Business number. Putting a number on the API removes the WhatsApp Business app from your phone and takes your chat history with it. There is a way to run both on one number, but Meta only offers it to its partner companies.

2. A Facebook account. A personal one is fine. Nothing gets posted.

3. Somewhere to run it. Render costs about ₹600/month and is the path below. Any other server that can run Node with a real HTTPS certificate works.

Fork it first

Fork this repository to your own GitHub account (one button, top right). Do this before the Meta steps — everything from here on, including editing venues.js, happens in your fork, and it's the one that actually deploys.

git clone https://github.com/YOUR-USERNAME/pakka
cd pakka
node test.js

You should see a list of PASS lines ending in 21/21 passed. That is the booking flow running end to end with WhatsApp faked out. No account, no internet, no keys.

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Step 1 — Create the Meta app

1. Go to developers.facebook.com and log in with your Facebook account.
2. My Apps (top right) → Create App.
3. It asks what you want to build. Choose the option for business / Other → Business if it offers a two-stage choice.
4. Give it any name. This name is internal and customers never see it.
5. On the app dashboard, find WhatsApp in the product list and click Set up.

Meta will create a test number for you automatically. Ignore it.

Step 2 — Add your real number

1. On that same API Setup page, click Add phone number.
2. Fill in a display name (customers do see this — use your venue's name), your category, and your number.
3. Choose Text message or Phone call for verification and enter the code.

Now copy two values from the API Setup page and paste them somewhere:

What	Where	Looks like
Phone number ID	under the "From" dropdown, after you select your number	109xxxxxxxxxxx — about 15 digits
WhatsApp Business Account ID	on the same page, often labelledWABA ID	another long number

Step 3 — Get an access token

1. Go to business.facebook.com → Business settings (gear icon).
2. In the left menu: Users → System users.
3. Add → give it any name → role Admin → create.
4. With your new system user selected, click Assign assets.
5. Choose WhatsApp accounts (not Apps, not Pages) → tick your WhatsApp Business Account → turn on Full control → Save changes.
6. Click Generate new token.
7. Pick the app you created in Step 1.
8. Set Token expiration to Never.
9. Tick exactly these two permissions:
   • whatsapp_business_messaging
   • whatsapp_business_management
10. Generate, then copy the token immediately. It is shown once and never again. If you lose it, generate another. It starts with EAA.

Keep it somewhere for a moment — Step 5 puts it in place.

Never paste a token into a file in the repo. A fork of a public repository is public. Everything private — your token, your WhatsApp number, your UPI id — goes into Render's environment in Step 5, and never into git.

Step 4 — Describe your venue

Open venues.js, in your fork, and edit it directly — name, hours, grounds, rates, how much advance you take. Nothing in there is private, so it's safe on a public fork.

Five fields stay blank in the file on purpose, because those five are private. Set them as environment variables instead, locally for now and in Render in Step 5 (the table there names each one).

Then check they actually work:

node check.js

It fails in seconds if a value is wrong, rather than leaving you to find out when nothing sends.

Prefer answering questions to hand-editing?

node check.js --interview

Same live checks, then asks about your hours and rates and prints everything ready to paste — the five env values, and a venues.js block for the rest.

Commit what you edited: git add venues.js && git commit -m "my venue".

Step 5 — Make a server

Meta will only deliver messages to a public address with a valid HTTPS certificate. Your laptop does not qualify.

1. Push the edits from Step 4, if you haven't: git push.

2. Go to render.com, sign up, and choose New → Blueprint.

3. Select your fork. Render reads render.yaml and configures itself.

4. When prompted for environment variables, paste in the five values Step 4 printed or checked:

   Env var	What it is
   WA_PHONE_ID	Meta's ID for your bot's number (Step 2) — not your phone number
   WA_TOKEN	your permanent access token (Step 3) — whoever has this can send as your bot
   WABA_ID	your WhatsApp Business Account ID (Step 2)
   OWNER_PHONE	your own WhatsApp, digits + country code, no + — anything from this number is treated as you, the owner
   VENUE_VPA	your existing UPI id — customer advances land here directly

   Also set WA_VERIFY_TOKEN to any word you invent — write it down, you type the same word into Meta in Step 6.

5. Choose the Starter plan, about ₹600/month.

Step 6 — Connect Meta to your server

1. Back in your Meta app: WhatsApp → Configuration.
2. Next to Webhook, click Edit.
3. Callback URL: https://your-app.onrender.com/webhook (your Render address, with /webhook on the end)
4. Verify token: the same word you set as WA_VERIFY_TOKEN.
5. Verify and save.
6. Now click Manage next to Webhook fields and subscribe to messages. Only that one. Leave everything else off.

Step 7 — Prove it works

1. From your own phone, message the bot's number. It should reply in Hindi.
2. Book something: कल 8 बजे क्रिकेट
3. You, as owner, get a message with ✓ पक्का and ✗ नहीं. Tap ✓ पक्का.
4. The customer gets a payment link. Open it and check it shows your UPI id and the right amount.

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Getting paid without watching for it

The advance goes straight to your UPI id — this software is never in the middle of it. The only question is how the bot learns the money arrived.

Forward the message. Your bank or UPI app already texts you when money comes in. Forward that message to your own bot on WhatsApp. It reads the amount and the reference, matches it against the booking waiting for exactly that sum in the last twenty minutes, and confirms it. The customer is told immediately.

Nothing to install, no account to open, no integration. It works from the first day for every merchant, whichever bank or app they use.

One thing it will not do, deliberately: a customer's screenshot never confirms anything. A screenshot is the payer's claim about their own payment, and apps exist in India that manufacture them. Only a message from your bank settles a booking.

If it cannot match a forward, it says so and changes nothing.

Saying something in your own words

The bot answers customers, but you can speak through it:

you → bot:      राहुल को बोल दो कि लाइट ठीक हो गई
bot → राहुल:    लाइट ठीक हो गई

Use a name, a phone number, or a booking number. If two customers share a name it messages neither of them and asks which you meant — a message on the wrong phone cannot be taken back.

Optional: better Hindi

Set SARVAM_KEY from sarvam.ai in Render's environment variables and three things improve: messy or roundabout messages get understood instead of refused, you can ask your own bot questions like इस हफ्ते कितनी कमाई हुई?, and payment screenshots get read so your confirmation arrives pre-filled.

Everything works without it. The built-in parser handles ordinary bookings.

What it will not do

You cannot message a customer who has not written to you in the last 24 hours. That is WhatsApp's rule for every business on the platform, not a limitation of this software. Inside that window you can say anything; outside it Meta requires a pre-approved template. The bot tells you when this happens rather than failing quietly.

There is no dashboard, no website, no bulk messaging. Everything happens inside WhatsApp, which is the point.

Your data

Everything lives in one file, baari.json, on your server's disk. Open it, read it, copy it somewhere safe now and then. There is no account, no cloud, and nobody to ask.

What it costs

This software	free
WhatsApp Cloud API	free — Meta charges nothing to host it
Messages	free within 24h of a customer writing to you
Render Starter	~₹600/month

Every message in a booking is a reply to a customer who just wrote in, so in normal use Meta bills you nothing at all.

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BSD 3-Clause. See LICENSE. Use it for whatever you like, including commercially.

Built on Pakka by Apoorv Saraogee. If you run this as a service, a credit and a link back are appreciated.