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Improve cash flow by collecting deposits against bookings

Feature: Booking deposits

When clients book online, the system charges a deposit to finish the booking flow. The deposit amount can be configured as a percentage of the service price or a flat amount, and the business can choose the services to charge the deposit as well.

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US medspa (New Image Works) charging a deposit

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Spa (Pure Spa, UK) charging full service price using deposits

Should you charge a deposit or make the card on file mandatory for reservations?

  • Chargeback coverage: Guests often dispute no-show charges, whereas it is unlikely that deposits can be disputed

  • Better accountability: When guests pre-pay, they are more accountable to show up for the service whereas charging for a no-show may result in unhappy guests and negative reviews

  • Compliance: When guests make phone bookings, the front desk/call center would have to type in the credit card information thus putting credit card information at risk

After you enable the service-level deposit setting and in Webstore V2, the system prompts the user to pre-pay for online bookings.

Note that when the guest is charged a deposit amount, the system creates a pre-paid card using a separate invoice and adds a payment note on the guest profile so that the staff is alerted to the deposit amount. The deposit amount is not automatically applied to the service invoice.

This functionality is available in both Webstore and CMA.

Customers using this feature collected over 100K deposits in 2022.

Things to consider

  • Collecting deposits for in-store bookings is still manual (book an appointment, create a separate invoice for the pre-paid card, and send payment link).

  • For businesses that do not want to charge deposits for guests who already have packages/memberships, the system allows skipping the charging of deposits as long as the guest has an active package or membership but does not tie it to the specific service being booked.

  • Deposits can currently be used along with cancellation fees/no-show fees. To allow deposit fees, cancellation fees, and no-show fees to be enabled together, reach out to a person from Zenoti.

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