Take deposits for bookings

A deposit is money the customer pays up front to confirm an appointment. Once you require one, customers pay it at the end of the booking flow, and the appointment isn’t confirmed until they do.

You set your deposit policy in Settings → Booking Settings → Deposit.

Require a deposit

1. Open Settings → Booking Settings.
2. In the Deposit card, turn on Require deposit for bookings.
3. Choose how the deposit is calculated:
   • Percentage — a share of the appointment total (0–100%). For example, 20% of a AED 200 booking is a AED 40 deposit.
   • Fixed Amount — a flat figure in your currency, the same for every booking.
4. Set the Payment Window — how long a customer has to pay the deposit before the unpaid booking is automatically cancelled. The default is 2 hours.
5. Select Save Settings.

Once saved, any customer booking online sees the deposit at the Payment step and pays it through Stripe to confirm.

What the customer is charged

• The customer pays only the deposit at booking. The rest — the balance — is collected at or after the visit.
• If you offer loyalty points or packages and the customer applies them, the deposit due is reduced accordingly before checkout.
• The deposit is charged to the customer’s card through your connected Stripe account.

Configure before Stripe is connected

You can set up your deposit policy at any time, even before Stripe is connected. The controls stay editable and your settings are saved — they simply don’t charge anyone until you connect Stripe and switch on Enable Online Payments. Until payments are live, a banner reminds you that the policy will take effect once payments are connected.

Waive the deposit for one appointment

When you book an appointment yourself from the admin side — for a regular, a phone booking, or a special case — you can skip the deposit for that appointment without changing your overall policy:

1. Start creating the appointment.
2. In the payment options, choose No deposit — confirm immediately.
3. Optionally add a short reason for your records.

The appointment is confirmed straight away with no deposit charged. This only affects that one appointment; your booking-wide deposit requirement stays in place.

Deposits and your policies

Requiring a deposit is what unlocks your cancellation and no-show rules — both act on the deposit:

• The refund ladder decides how much of the deposit a customer gets back when they cancel, based on how much notice they give.
• Your no-show policy decides how much of the deposit you keep when a customer doesn’t show up.

If you turn off Require deposit for bookings, the cancellation and no-show controls are disabled, since there’s no deposit for them to act on.