Deposits and cards on file
The three things a booking can ask for, what each one actually does, and where the rule is set.
Three settings, not one
Every booking resolves to exactly one of three guarantees. They're different tools and they fail differently.
A card on file moves no money at booking. It gives you something to charge later — it doesn't hold a penny up front.
Deposits are a fixed amount
A deposit is set as an amount, not a percentage of the ticket. If you want a colour deposit to scale with the service, set a different amount on each service rather than looking for a percentage field — there isn't one.
Where the rule comes from
Three levels, most specific wins: an option beats its service, and a service beats the salon. So a salon-wide card-on-file rule can be overridden to a real deposit on colour, and overridden again on the long-hair variant of it.
- Setting a service to Nothing is a genuine opt-out, not "inherit" — it switches a salon-wide rule off for that service.
- Leaving a service's deposit amount at zero means "use the salon's amount", which is why zero doesn't mean free.
- A deposit rule with no amount anywhere in the chain books as though there were no rule, rather than charging nothing and looking like it worked.
When one appointment has several services
Any deposit outranks any card-on-file, which outranks nothing. If more than one service in the booking asks for a deposit, your salon setting decides whether the client is charged the largest one or all of them added up. The default is the largest, on the reasoning that a colour deposit already covers the risk of the visit.
A deposit needs somewhere to land. With no Stripe account connected, Settings marks the rule as needing Stripe — connect it under Settings → Stripe & payouts (opens in a new tab) before you switch the deposit on, not after.
What happens at checkout
A deposit is money already collected toward that appointment's ticket, so what's left to pay at the chair is the balance. Nobody is paying extra — they paid early. That's the sentence worth using when a client asks.
One client at a time
You can require a deposit from one specific client without changing anything for everyone else — see clients you'd rather not rebook.