Accepting deposits on Square Appointments

[gbarachko7]

I would like to have the ability to charge a deposit for online bookings through Square Appointments.  Lately, a good portion of clients do not show up for their appointments. I believe this would decrease the amount of no shows. Either that, or generate some small portion of income from deposits to offset payroll costs.

[Tjbalsamo]

yea i have the same issue.

we charge full price at the time of booking so the issue we run into is that we have to refund clients if the do a late canellation 

[paigenicole0920]

Yea! This would be great to either be to apply a set amount for deposits instead of charging full price like I do or having to go and individually put in the deposit amount. 

so the client for me and my services would pay 50% of the services they selected upon booking online….but then also in square appointments it’s able to keep track of balances owed during check out per appointment…

Kathy booked a full set 100$ 

paid 50$ 

mans during checkout at appointment it shows balance of 50$ still due. 

[essentialnails]

@gbarachko7 @paigenicole0920 @Tjbalsamo Have you tried using No-Show Protection? For a client to book online they have to provide their credit card information before scheduling and you can choose to charge this card later if they no-show or late cancel. Right now my business uses no-show protection and it comes in handy on the occasion that clients don't show up, show up too late for their appointment or cancel within our 24 hour cancellation period. 

You can turn it on by going to: 

Square Appointments -> Settings -> Payment & Cancellations -> Booking with No Show Protection

[gbarachko7]

I have used no-show protection in the past. The people who don't show up never have valid cards. The people who do show up think that entering their card info means that they already paid. 

[Dove09]

Square only allows hold card info (which the client can then remove unknown to us until they no-show us and we lose hundreds of dollars!) Or pay in full. People have been asking for years to allow a deposit to book. It's 2022 and we are still losing money from such a simple feature lessor companies offer. How can we get this implemented correctly? 

I don't want to switch, but the whole reason I pay for this service is to not lose money and it's faulty. 

[britdeshair]

yes!!! I agree- this needs to happen asap

[ASPettus]

Hi! I'm not sure if this would help you, but you do have the option to require pre-payment. You could also send an invoice for the deposit. 

[Nilarem]

This is our workaround for charging a deposit, the problem is at checkout, you have to manually enter the remaining balance. The No-Show policy/cancellation or pre-payment doesn't work as intended. 

 

[sayra]

Thank you, @Nilarem - For providing this example/workaround above. We are sure this will be helpful to other sellers. In the meantime, we will keep this request open to gathering additional requests around this feature for greater visibility and consideration. 

We will make sure to keep you updated if anything changes. Have a good day. 

[Jacky_MBL]

@Nilarem That is our current work around as well.

For checkout, we created a full price variation for every service and a deposit "Discount" for 25% (25% is our deposit amount, inconvenient if your deposits are not the same rate). During checkout we select the full price variation and the deposit discount. This allows the correct numbers to display on the customer's receipt.

In addition to the flat deposit rate and the inconvenience, another downfall of this workaround is that the checkout amount is not recorded as a "Past Appointment" but that probably doesn't bother most people.

Would definitely be nice to have a Deposit Prepayment or Partial Prepayment as a secondary setting to the Prepayment setting. Instead of solely prepaying in full at a flat rate of 100%. Even if the rate remains flat across all services like it is now, if we can adjust the amount to other numbers that is not 100%, it would be nice. 

I can see a problem where Square may have to implement partially completed transactions in addition to categorizing transactions as complete or incomplete.

I am hoping that square implements stronger settings in the future so that training a receptionist can be more hands off.