A no-show is not a gap in the diary. It is a slot you turned other people away from, and for a four-hour job it is most of a day’s takings.
A deposit changes who turns up, because a customer who has paid something has made a decision, and one who has only picked a time has not.
01 A deposit, the full price, or nothing until they arrive
The amount is set per service rather than per business, which is the setting that matters: put a deposit on the all-day ceramic coating and leave the fifteen-minute beard trim frictionless.
A deposit can be a fixed amount or a percentage. Whatever is taken up front comes off the balance automatically, and the amount still owed is shown to the customer at booking and to you on the appointment.
02 Three rails, whichever you already use
Stripe, PayPal and Square all work as booking rails, with your own account and your own credentials. Money goes to you directly; it does not route through us on the way.
Card details never reach our servers. The customer is handed to the gateway and comes back with a result, and the payment is only recorded when the gateway’s signed webhook confirms it — not when the browser returns, which can be faked or simply lost when someone closes the tab.
03 Money taken at the counter counts too
Cash, a card machine, a bank transfer or a cheque are recorded against the appointment the same way an online payment is. The day’s takings are one number rather than three, and the appointment’s status follows the money automatically.
Part payments are ordinary: take fifty now and the rest on the day, and the balance is tracked without anyone doing arithmetic.
04 Tax, both ways round
Tax can be inclusive — the price on the page is the price paid — or exclusive, added at the end. Which one is right depends on where you trade, and getting it wrong changes what you owe.
Rates can differ by service, so a treatment taxed differently from a product is not a problem.
05 Refunds, and what they undo
A refund through Stripe goes back through Stripe. Refunds are recorded against the original payment, so a partly refunded appointment reports correctly rather than looking either fully paid or unpaid.
A refund also reverses what the payment triggered: commission is clawed back proportionally, and loyalty points awarded on the sale are taken back, clamped so a balance can never go negative.
06 Discounts that behave predictably
Coupons apply before surcharges, gift cards are redeemed against the balance, and prepaid packages cancel the service line before tax is worked out. The order matters: applied the other way round, a business ends up charging tax on money nobody paid.
Every figure on an appointment comes from signed price lines rather than being recomputed later, so an invoice raised in December still says what the customer agreed to in June.
Questions
- Do I need a Stripe account, or do you handle it?
- Your own account, on all three rails. The money is yours and arrives on the gateway’s normal schedule; we never hold it.
- What happens if the customer closes the tab mid-payment?
- The slot is held while the payment is outstanding and released by a sweep if it never completes. The booking is confirmed by the gateway’s signed webhook, so a closed tab does not lose a payment that actually went through.
- Can I take a deposit in person and the rest online?
- Yes. Payments of different kinds can sit against the same appointment, and the balance updates as each is recorded.
- Is there a per-transaction fee from VoltsBook?
- No. You pay your gateway’s fees and nothing on top.
