Refunds and the refund ladder

Refunds in JustBook are built around the deposit. When a customer cancels, how much of their deposit they get back is decided by a refund ladder you set: the more notice they give, the higher their refund. You can also issue a manual refund on any paid appointment from the admin side.

The refund ladder lives in Settings → Booking Policies → Cancellation Policy. It only applies when you require a deposit.

How the refund ladder works

A ladder is a list of rules. Each rule says: cancel at least this many hours before the appointment, and get back this percentage of the deposit. When a customer cancels, JustBook finds the highest tier they qualify for and refunds that percentage of the deposit. Cancel with less notice than your lowest rule and the customer gets nothing back.

Refunds are always a percentage of the deposit, never the full booking total.

Example

With these rules:

• Cancel 48 hours or more before → refund 100%
• Cancel 24–48 hours before → refund 50%
• Cancel less than 24 hours before → no refund

A customer with a AED 40 deposit who cancels three days ahead gets the full AED 40 back. Cancelling the day before gets them AED 20. Cancelling that morning gets them nothing.

Set up your refund ladder

1. Open Settings → Booking Policies.
2. Make sure Require deposit for bookings is on in the Deposit card — the refund rules are disabled without a deposit.
3. In the Cancellation Policy card, select Add Rule.
4. For each rule, set:
   • The minimum hours before the appointment the cancellation must happen.
   • The percentage of the deposit to refund at that tier (0–100%).
5. Add as many tiers as you need. As you build them, a plain-English preview shows exactly how the ladder reads to a customer.
6. Optionally add a Policy Description — free text shown to customers during booking so they know your terms up front.
7. Select Save Settings.

Each rule must use a different hours before value, and refund percentages must be between 0 and 100.

Restore a package session on cancellation

If an appointment was paid with a package, you can return that session to the customer when they cancel. Turn on Restore package session on cancellation in the Cancellation Policy card.

The session is only returned when the cancellation still earns a refund under your ladder — if the customer cancels in a 0% tier, the session is forfeited along with the deposit.

How a customer cancellation runs

When a customer cancels their own appointment from their bookings page:

1. JustBook applies your refund ladder to the notice they gave and shows them the refund they’ll receive before they confirm.
2. On confirmation, the refund goes back to their card through Stripe.
3. Any loyalty points they redeemed on the appointment are returned, and — if enabled — a package session is restored.

The customer sees the refund percentage and amount on their cancellation confirmation. If they cancelled with too little notice to earn a refund, they’re told no refund applies per the policy.

Tips are never refunded by the policy

A tip belongs to whoever earned it, so your cancellation ladder and no-show keep percentage never touch it. Tips sit outside the refund maths entirely: the percentages above apply to what the customer paid for the appointment, not to anything they added as a tip.

When an appointment has a tip on it, the cancel and no-show windows say so — the tip is listed separately from the amount collected, and reads “Tip — Kept by the business”. Selecting Full refund returns the full payment and still leaves the tip alone.

To return a tip, a team member with the Refund Overrides permission ticks Also refund the tip in the override and confirms the amount (the whole tip, or part of it). A tip paid by card goes back to that card; a tip taken in person is recorded so your books stay right, and you hand it back at the branch. Either way it’s recorded on the appointment as a separate, deliberate decision — so a returned tip never looks like a rounding difference inside a bigger refund.

Overriding the policy for one appointment

When a team member cancels an appointment or marks a no-show from the admin side, the ladder (or your no-show keep percentage) is applied automatically. A team member with the Refund Overrides permission (or a one-time override code) can instead set custom amounts for that one appointment — refund more or less, keep a different share, or return the tip. A reason is always required and is recorded on the appointment, so every deviation from your policy leaves a trail.

Issue a manual refund from an appointment

You can refund a paid appointment directly, regardless of the ladder — useful for goodwill, a mistake, or a cancellation you handled in person.

This works on every plan for payments taken in person: returning money you collected at the branch is pure bookkeeping — JustBook records the refund and updates the appointment, no money moves through JustBook. Refunding a card payment made online sends the money back through Stripe and needs a plan with online payments.

1. Open the appointment.
2. Select Refund.
3. Enter what to refund — one amount per part of the payment. The dialog shows a field for each part that still holds money (Deposit, Payment, and Tip), each pre-filled with the full remaining amount and each with its own “up to” maximum. Edit any of them for a partial refund; set a field to 0 to leave that part alone. After a partial refund, the remainder stays refundable — open the dialog again and the maximums reflect what’s left.
   • If a package was used, use Restore package use to return the session to the customer.
4. Optionally add a Reason.
5. Select Refund.

Every payment and refund on an appointment is listed in its Payments & refunds history on the appointment page — one row per movement, with a running collected/refunded/net total. However many charges and refunds a booking goes through, the history is the full story and the net is what you actually hold.

Any loyalty points the customer redeemed are returned at the same percentage as the cash refund — a 50% refund window returns half the points, a full refund returns them all, a no-refund cancellation returns none. Points are treated like any other tender. You’ll see the points count confirmed after the refund.

If you need to deviate — say, a goodwill full points return on a partial refund — the override section on the cancel and no-show dialogs includes a points value to return field alongside the amount fields. Like other refund overrides, it requires the Refund Overrides permission (or a one-time code), a reason, and is recorded in the appointment’s override history. The points returned can never exceed what the customer actually paid in points.

The customer receives a refund confirmation on their enabled channels showing the amount returned (card refunds typically appear on their statement within 5–10 business days). You can edit that message under Settings → Notifications.

How refunds are calculated and paid

• Refunds read the amount that was actually charged. JustBook refunds against the real payment on the record — it does not re-run your pricing or policy to recompute the figure. This is why a manual refund can’t exceed what was collected, and why a customer’s refund reflects what they truly paid, including any loyalty discount that was already applied.
• Card refunds go through Stripe to the customer’s original payment method. Stripe typically takes 5–7 business days to return the money to the customer’s account.
• Refunds only apply to money that was actually collected. A booking abandoned before payment, or a deposit that was never charged, has nothing to refund.
• Refunding a charge on a booking you keep leaves that money owed again. If you refund the deposit — or a balance you already collected — but don’t cancel the appointment, that money has gone back to the customer. The appointment shows Deposit refunded — owed again (or Balance refunded — owed again), and the amount to charge or collect next (card on file, in person, or a payment link) is the full amount now owed, not the old balance-after-deposit. This keeps what you collect accurate to what’s actually been paid, and an already-refunded charge no longer offers a second refund.
• Cancellation and no-show refunds count the same way. Money returned when you cancel a booking or mark a no-show — including an override refund — is recorded against the original payments, so the appointment’s collected total always reflects what you actually kept. If you later undo a no-show, the booking comes back with any refunded money owed again.

Related

• Take deposits for bookings — the deposit is what the refund ladder acts on.
• Connect Stripe to take payments — card refunds require a connected Stripe account.