thread Re: deposit for appointments in Appointments & Bookings

Deposit instead of full payment for Appointments?

TourOperator — Mon, 01 Dec 2025 20:01:27 GMT

I want to use Square Appointments to book my tours. I have been using YouCanBook.me and then using Square Invoices to bill tour clients for their 50% deposit, which results in a lot of manual data entry. I would prefer that clients use Square Appointments and be able to have them pay 50% instead of the full amount.

I suppose I could price everything at half price and say 50% DEPOSIT but that seems really kludgy.

And could we have some way to pass variables in from the calling web page or a web form? Or a way to add custom fields to the booking form? I need to collect info like the number of children and adults in a group. Also some location besides mine, the client's, and a phone number, since we pick passengers up at a number of locations, and they may not know what the pickup point will be.

Re: Deposit instead of full payment for appointments?

Kelly — Thu, 12 May 2016 20:10:41 GMT

Square Appointments will absolutely work for but there are a few things that you should know first!

With Square Appointments, you can require a payment at the time of booking, which would cover your deposit. When using pre-payments, your customers will be required to pay the full price so you will need to set the price for each appointment as the deposit amount. When your customers arrive, you can then charge them the difference.

To set up prepayments, visit Payments and Cancellations in your online Appointments dashboard, and select Require Prepayment.

When your customer books through your Online Booking site, they will be prompted to fill in their name and contact information. As for the additional information, you are able to write in the service description that you require the information and your customers will have a space at check out to enter that additional information.

Re: Deposit instead of full payment for appointments?

wlingram — Fri, 03 Jun 2016 00:57:19 GMT

Question:

If I have it set to "Require Card to book appointment", does the card get charged for the appointment when it occurs?

I want to require the card to book but not take payment upfront. Is that not what happens? Do I still need to invoice the customer to get paid for an appointment??

Is my only solution switching to "Require Prepayment"?? I am scared that will drive my customers away.

Thanks in advance!
- Lee

Re: Deposit instead of full payment for appointments?

PrimpPolish — Fri, 24 Jun 2016 01:57:53 GMT

Lee,

Selecting the option "require card to book appointment" does not collect payment at the time of booking. It simply provides you the ability to enforce your cancellation policy in the event of cancellation or no show. I use this option in my business. I, too, fear that requiring prepayment will drive my customers away.

Can I make my client put a deposit down before scheduling an appointment?

Vanessaocano — Thu, 08 Dec 2016 19:51:05 GMT

???

Re: Can I make my client put a deposit down before scheduling an appointment?

Chad — Sat, 10 Dec 2016 00:21:50 GMT

@Vanessaocano Welcome to the Seller Community and Kudos on your first post! 😀 🎉

This is a great questions and I'm sure other sellers would like to know the answer as well. We do offer Client Prepayment for Square Appointments. With this feature you can require customers to put down a deposit for an appointment.

This can protect you from no-show clients. You can also create a detailed cancelation policy so the customer understands the terms of the appointment deposit.

If you have any other questions, feel free to reply back!

i need to charge a deposit for appointments

Sparkld_NL — Thu, 05 Apr 2018 22:07:01 GMT

hello, i need to charge a deposit fee for appointments when clients book. however , i do not want to charge them a full fee of the services just a fixed deposit rate how can i do this and still alllow my clients to see the actual cost of the services? i cannot set the fixed rate on my services to the deposit fee i need a way to have clients pay for a deposit. is this doable without adding a separate Fixed rate code because if clients dont select that code, it will not require a prepayment. thanks

Re: i need to charge a deposit for appointments

ACAcatering — Fri, 06 Apr 2018 00:45:18 GMT

Is this through the online store?

Re: i need to charge a deposit for appointments

Sparkld_NL — Fri, 06 Apr 2018 00:57:19 GMT

No it is not. The appointment app. Square appointments 🙂

Re: i need to charge a deposit for appointments

puka — Fri, 06 Apr 2018 17:13:34 GMT

Hey @Sparkld_NL - It looks like another Seller had the same question as you so I've merged your post with their thread. Kelly's answer should help get you in the right direction. 🤙🏼

Online Booking/Payments

seriouslyselfie — Tue, 08 May 2018 18:03:15 GMT

I have online booking enabled. Is there a way to take a payment at the time of booking? Such as a deposit? In my business, booked dates are not valid unless we receive a deposit.

Re: Online Booking/Payments

EJ_ — Thu, 10 May 2018 17:13:04 GMT

Hi @seriouslyselfie

I've moved your post over to this existing thread, as a few of your fellow sellers had the same question.

You can require your customers to pay in full for fixed price services at the time of booking, but there's no way currently to have them pay a partial amount.

Re: Can I make my client put a deposit down before scheduling an appointment?

MetroCabSF — Tue, 12 Jun 2018 15:25:31 GMT

We take thousands of reservations a year so appointments is a test however once you confirm an appointment I can not tell if the payment was valid or not!!!

If thier card is not charged for the service at the time of booking, like an airline ticket for example then its totally worthless in our opinion unless there is a way to check on this without having to look in our biz bank acct everytime we schedule to verify ourselves. Feel free to enlighten me.

Re: Deposit instead of full payment for appointments?

MetroCabSF — Tue, 12 Jun 2018 15:53:54 GMT

So when do you see the payment? Obviously it is not when they book! We have appointments schedule and have no idea wth is going on with the payments!

We thought this would work like any other purchase online, once they reserve and pay, a receipt is generated to them and we can tell by looking in daily sales if that transaction went through..... It does not work that way and we are so dissapointed unless we have something set wrong and do not think so. It sucks using two or three different systems back and forth from QB, Google Calender and Square.

Good idea however we are about to change processors because really your funcionality is no good beyond card transactions or emailing an invoice and asking people to pay that way, WHICH makes all that much more data entry which is what we are NOT wanting to do any longer.

Re: Can I make my client put a deposit down before scheduling an appointment?

MetroCabSF — Tue, 12 Jun 2018 17:12:07 GMT

That answer is rated negative zero stars. You can do better than that!

Re: Can I make my client put a deposit down before scheduling an appointment?

Chad — Wed, 13 Jun 2018 22:34:06 GMT

Hello @MetroCabSF, I'm sorry you didn't find my original answer helpful.

If you select Require Prepayment for your Online Booking Site you will see the payment in your Square Balance, as soon as your customer books an appointment. The link in my previous reply outlines this. You can select Require Prepayment option on your Square Dashboard under the Appointments tab. Then select Settings > Payments & Cancellations.

The customer will not be able to book an appointment if the prepayment declines. If you still need help setting this up please feel free to reach out to me.

Re: Can I make my client put a deposit down before scheduling an appointment?

MetroCabSF — Wed, 13 Jun 2018 22:47:02 GMT

That is all taken care of but where do we insert our state taxes? We so no section in settings for this with the online booking?

Re: Can I make my client put a deposit down before scheduling an appointment?

Chad — Wed, 13 Jun 2018 23:06:38 GMT

I'm glad you were able to get that figured out @MetroCabSF! Currently adding taxes on a service is a feature request that we're tracking. Although if you're using Prepayment you could just bake the tax into the price of your service.

If you need help with anything else please feel free to reach out! 😀

Re: Can I make my client put a deposit down before scheduling an appointment?

MetroCabSF — Wed, 13 Jun 2018 23:14:26 GMT

@Chad Thank you for letting us know that this is being worked on.. FYI - you can not up your pricing because then you just pay more into the state every month because the gross earnings are higher!!!! This is not the way you do accounting not to mention the business ethics involved in this answer. Wow

Re: Can I make my client put a deposit down before scheduling an appointment?

Chad — Wed, 13 Jun 2018 23:35:30 GMT

@MetroCabSF well that really depends on how you report your sales tax to the state. If you just export your transaction data directly from Square and send it, then yes you'll end up paying more. When it comes tax's and accounting I recommend consulting a CPA.

If you're concerned about how including the tax in the sale price looks to your customers, you can add "tax included" in parenthesis in the service name. That way the pricing is transparent.

I know that this isn't ideal, but its something we're working on and these are just suggestions for possible workarounds.