Run the booking. Run the day.
Cardinal Hub is conference center software that carries an event from first inquiry through payment, then hands every department its slice of the day, automatically.
Designed with a university conference center in the DMV.
The bookings pipeline. One inquiry travels from Submitted to Confirmed, picks up a rush flag on the way, and the department digest goes out. Illustrative demo data.
Intake lives in PDFs and email, so nothing is queryable.
Revenue reporting is a spreadsheet somebody rebuilds every month.
The event day runs on a printed sheet and a radio.
Cardinal Hub is the conference center platform that does not stop at the booking.
Conference centers run on a stack that was never designed to work together: PDF intake forms, an Excel revenue tracker, a scheduling system that only shows room availability, and a printed run sheet handed to staff on the morning of the event. Cardinal Hub replaces that stack with one system.
Pipeline, approvals, conflict aware calendar, dual pricing, catering and setup capture.
Stripe card and ACH, checks, purchase orders, and cost center journal export for internal departments.
Department scoped morning digests and a live run of show board on any phone, no app install.
From first inquiry to the last turnover.
Six parts of one system. Competitors end at the banquet event order PDF. Cardinal Hub owns the execution of the event day.
Every inquiry enters one pipeline and moves through nine states.
Draft, submitted, pending approval, approved, confirmed, in progress, completed, cancelled, rejected. Coordinators create bookings on behalf of client organizations, so nothing waits on an outside party to set up an account.
Each booking carries its dates, spaces, catering items, setup configuration, vendors, documents, and full change history in one record.
Buildings, spaces, menus, and two prices on everything.
Buildings, spaces, capacities, features, photos, and categories, all editable by an admin without a developer. The menu is managed the same way: categories, items, dietary tags, and pricing models. Every price is versioned with an effective date, and each booking stores the price at the time of booking, so historical reporting does not shift when you raise rates.
Universities charge their own departments differently than outside clients. Cardinal Hub stores an internal price and an external price side by side on every space and every menu item. The right rate applies automatically based on the client organization type. No parallel rate sheet, no manual discounting.
Routing that follows your policy, not the other way around.
Every booking routes for coordinator approval by default. Requests inside the lead time threshold (14 days out of the box) flag as rush and escalate to a second approver, with an optional rush fee.
Events with alcohol, outdoor amplified sound, 200 or more attendees, or external hosts follow a multi stage path: coordinator, then director, then risk.
Five methods in one ledger.
Stripe card, Stripe ACH, check by mail, purchase order with net 30 invoicing, and cost center journal for internal departments. Invoice PDFs generate with remittance instructions and PO numbers.
Internal charges export monthly as a CSV your finance office imports directly into Banner or Workday.
Build the report, or just ask the question.
Pick a metric (revenue, booking count, attendees, utilization, lead time, cancellation rate), a dimension (space, category, department, client, event type, period), and a date range, then export to XLSX or PDF.
Or type the question: “How much did we make on lodging from April 23 to October 30?” Cardinal Hub restates its interpretation before it runs, so you always see what it actually queried.
This is the part no one else ships.
Admins define internal departments (Catering, Physical Plant, AV, IT, Security, Parking) and declare what each one owns. Cardinal Hub filters every confirmed event down to that department's slice: Physical Plant sees table counts, linen, stage, and turnover windows, and never sees dietary breakdowns. Catering sees headcount and meal times, and never sees AV gear lists.
Each department gets a morning digest every day and a week ahead digest on Mondays, by email, to individuals or a shared inbox. No account required to receive one. From the digest, one tap opens the live run of show board: a mobile web view of today's events in time order, with auto generated task checklists, live turnover countdowns, and a Blocked button that escalates a problem to the coordinator instantly and attributably. It is a link, not an app store download, which matters when half the floor staff on a given Saturday are temps.
Scheduling tools stop at the room. Sales tools stop at the PDF.
Marked only where it is true of Cardinal Hub today. Partial means available in some products in the category, often as an add on.
| Capability | Cardinal Hub | Legacy campus scheduling | Hospitality sales tools |
|---|---|---|---|
| Day of operations layer | ✓ | No | No |
| Department scoped distribution | ✓ | Partial | Partial |
| Internal vs external dual pricing | ✓ | Partial | No |
| Cost center journal export | ✓ | Partial | No |
| Natural language reporting | ✓ | No | No |
| Single tenant data isolation | ✓ | Varies | Shared |
| Implementation timeline | 6 to 8 weeks | Typically months | Weeks to months |
Single tenant. Your data, your instance.
One isolated database and application instance per customer, hosted by us or in your own cloud account.
Technical specificationsHide
Priced by the venue, not by the seat.
Three tiers. Every one is a single tenant instance with its own isolated database, daily backups, and a full audit log. Founding customers lock their rate for the term.
Core
For a single venue getting off spreadsheets.
- Up to 20 bookable spaces
- Up to 5 staff accounts
- Booking pipeline, approvals, and calendar
- Space and menu catalog with internal and external pricing
- Client and cost center records
- Manual report builder with XLSX and PDF export
- Email notifications
- RJ Autonomous managed hosting, daily backups
Professional
Everything in Core, plus the parts that make the day run.
- Unlimited spaces and staff accounts
- Day of operations layer: departments, responsibility scoping, morning and weekly digests, live run of show board
- Stripe card and ACH, invoice PDFs, purchase order workflow
- Cost center journal CSV export for Banner or Workday
- AI report queries, free text intake, and coordinator assist
- Multi stage approval workflows
- Priority support, 1 business day response
Campus
For multiple venues, multiple buildings, or a central scheduling office.
- Everything in Professional
- Multiple venues or buildings under one instance
- SSO federation and calendar integration as scoped work
- Custom reports and finance system integration
- Named implementation lead and quarterly review
- Optional customer hosted deployment in your own cloud account
Every tier is one conference center instance with its own isolated database. Annual pricing shown by default. Monthly billing is available on Core and Professional.
Pricing questions.
Is this per user?
Do clients need licenses?
What about payment processing fees?
Can we start on Core and move up?
What happens to our data if we leave?
Six to eight weeks, typical.
Loading your real spaces, menus, and rates is the work that makes the first demo land and the pilot event run. We do it with you.
- 01Discovery and data load
We load your buildings, spaces, menu, rates, and cost centers into your instance.
- 02Configuration
Branding, lead time policy, approval thresholds, tax and fee rates, event types, departments.
- 03Staff training
Two sessions: coordinators and admins first, then department leads on the run of show board.
- 04Pilot event
One real event runs end to end, inquiry to digest to board, with us watching.
- 05Go live
The old intake form points at Cardinal Hub. Spreadsheets retire.
What the university IT review will ask.
FERPA aware attendee handling
Attendee data is scoped to the booking and the departments that need it.
No PCI scope
Payments are handled by Stripe. No card data touches Cardinal Hub.
Full audit log
Append only, on bookings, payments, price changes, and configuration: who, what, when.
Soft delete everywhere
Nothing is destroyed by a user action.
Export everything on demand
A ZIP of JSON and XLSX, any time, no ticket.
SOC 2 path post launch
Single tenant isolation and daily backups today; SOC 2 is on the roadmap, not attained.
See it on your spaces.
We load your rooms, your menu, and your rates into a working instance before the demo. You see your own conference center, not a sandbox.
- Built with a university conference center in the DMV as the design partner, on real spaces, real menus, and real cost center billing.
- For university conference centers, college event and scheduling offices, and independent venues running 100 or more events a year.
- One page overview: download the PDF.