Understanding deposits
A deposit is a type of purchase rule that applies to appointments and events. It requires clients to pay part of the service’s total cost before they can book the service. You can set this requirement when creating or modifying an appointment or event.
When a deposit is required for a service, clients can choose to either pay the deposit or pay the total price when booking. If a client pays the total price, the deposit isn’t required. If a client pays the deposit amount, the service will appear as paid on the client’s attendance history. A Purchase Option indicating that a deposit has been paid will appear on the Passes & Memberships page of their client profile.
What you can do with deposits
Deposits offer several benefits for your business, such as:
Protecting your services against possible losses from clients cancelling or no-showing and ensuring that only committed clients book your services.
Creating a reservation system for your appointment and events that require your clients to pay a deposit in order to reserve their spot.
Highlighting your high-value services by requiring a deposit to book some services but removing this requirement for others.
Providing flexible payment options by setting either a flat amount or a percentage of the total price to act as the deposit.
Key tips
Reconciling payments
To reconcile payment for a deposit, see Reconciling payment for an Appointment or Event for which the deposit has been paid.
Because services appear as paid when the deposit has been paid, we recommend keeping track of all clients who pay deposits. This will make it easier to reconcile the outstanding payments.
Disclosing deposit requirements
When a service requires a deposit, we recommend disclosing this in the description of your service, along with your refund policy or a link to your refund policy.