Deposit instead of full payment for Appointments?

[TourOperator]

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.

[Kelly · Accepted solution]

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. 

[Kassi_]

Hey there, @Ruzannaa - 

There is a new setting available under Appointments where you can add a flat cancellation fee instead. 

Go to Appointments > Payments & Cancellations > Booking with No-Show Protection. 

That is where you can make the selection. 

Please let me know if you have any other questions. 

[Ruzannaa]

Deposits and no show it is a way different things

[mikecianci]

I agree. I'm in the photography business and would like to  have a deposit option for my clients when they are booking their appointment. This thread has been around for over 4 years now and we still don't have a proper "deposit" function like other booking sites? Come on square! Workarounds are not what we're asking for. 😎

[jocem]

when a client is trying to book an appointment , I want them to put a non refundable deposit on all appointments before they can book to secure there spot. the deposit will go towards there final appointment price but I want to cover myself for a no-show fee I have in place aswell. How do I set that up on my account?

[ashc]

Hi @jocem!

I'd recommend checking out these Support Center articles on:

Prepayment for Appointments 

& 

No-Show/Cancellation Policy

[arickrtattoos]

Hi! I'm wondering if there is any way, in Square booking, or in a booking app in the Square app marketplace, that would help with this. (I'm a tattoo artist, for reference, so you can understand why I'd want this.)

Workflow I want:

1. Customer selects date and time for appointment.

2.Customer pays $50 deposit (NOT entire appointment cost up front).

3. Preferably have the 'notes' section not an optional field, so they are required to fill it out.

4. Customer submits appointment request, and then I either approve for decline it.

Workflow I currently have:

1. Customer uses regular square booking to request an appointment

2. Customer has to go to online store, select listing called appointment deposit, pay for it.

3. I have to go into their appointment request, manually put in the payment amount for the deposit as a discount to their total due, then approve their appointment (or sometimes I have to hunt them down and ask them to pay the deposit).

The current workflow I have is entirely clunky and requires a list of instructions at the top of my booking page that looks terrible. I'd like to get rid of it, since about 40% of people don't read it and try to book without a deposit anyway, and just have a workflow that forces them to do what is needed in order to book an appointment. 

[Kassi_]

Hey there @arickrtattoos -

Thank you for reaching out with your feedback!  I would be happy to tag this as a Feature Request for our Product Team. 

As a workaround in the meantime - you have the option to add No-Show Protection (custom amount) to the appointment for the $50 deposit you were wanting. Below is a screenshot of what it would look like: 

[jaybre02323]

Kassi, 

DId you request this as a feature request? WHat is the status?  Deposits have been requested by the community since 2016. 

Workflow I want:

1. Customer selects date and time for appointment.

2.Customer pays $50 deposit (NOT entire appointment cost up front).

3. Preferably have the 'notes' section not an optional field, so they are required to fill it out.

4. Customer submits appointment request, and then I either approve for decline it.

[Kassi_]

Hey there, @jaybre02323 - 

This feature is available for your Appointments. It's labeled as Customer Prepayment. 

Here is a Support Article with more information and how to get this set up. 

Please let me know if you have any other questions.

[jaybre02323]

@Kassi_ 

Do you work for Square?  As others have mentioned since 2016 on multiple threads. Pre-Payment is not what we are asking for.  This  Customer Prepayment does not have the functionality we are looking for.   Since 2016, sellers have been asking for deposits.  Deposits due upon booking.   Deposits that are automatically deducted from the final price of services. 

If you work for Square, ask them to check the seller community forums and note this has been asked/suggested multiple times since 2016. 

[Kassi_]

Yes I do, @jaybre02323. My apologies I had just focused on your post & misunderstood what you were looking for. 

I completely understand the business need you're looking for when it comes to deposits for you appointments. Unfortunately, this is still considered a Feature Request. I would recommend adding this to our Ideate Board for our Product Team. 

Once you do, a Community Moderator can add those older threads so it can show how long sellers have been looking for this particular feature. 

[Bubblebed1]

It’s been added since 2020 I believe or even earlier 

[jhs440]

hi @jaybre, 

What would deposits do that a pre-payment feature cannot support for your use case? Can you please elaborate? 

[jaybre02323]

Deposit with other sites 

100 bill 

50 deposit

50 customers owes on same bill. 

SQUARE: 

100 bill

50 pre-payment

50 manual deduction. Different bill.  Don't know who has outstanding deposits. 

[Bubblebed1]

The difference is in your question. One is a pre-pay and one is a deposit. Prepay means you pay for the service/items/etc up front. Deposit means you pay a certain amount amount. For example I required my client to put 50% for the services they booked in order to make an appointment. 

[jhs440]

@Bubblebed1  got it. does Square Appointments not let you do "partial prepayments"? I would assume that would solve the issue if that was automatically comprised in one bill.

[Bubblebed1]

It’s lacking a lot of features for the same price of other softwares. The only thing I like about square is their equipment. I got the same processing rate from Vagaro and there are others that have even lower rates. 

[arickrtattoos]

So @Kassi_ , I've implemented the nature you mentioned, and it's definitely helped solve the problem I was having. However it's created an entire new set of issues. 

1. So, the client books the appointment, shows up, we get all done, and I go to check them out. From my tablet, I have no way to add a balance onto that appointment for them to pay the rest. It tells me "You cannot update items and services on a paid appointment." Yes, I can always open a new appointment for them, and just do it there, but from a statistical and reporting point, that really kind of messes things up.

2. Because the appointment is considered already paid, when the appointment time, according to the calendar, is over (So if it's a 1 hour appointment from noon to 1, it would be over at 1) the appointment automatically gets marked as completed and 'greyed out' on my calendar, which is super frustrating because at that point I can't edit it at all anymore. 

[Kassi_]

@arickrtattoos - 

Ah I see! At this point, I would recommend reaching out to our Appointments Team on these follow-up issues you're seeing. 

They would be able to walk you through the best path, so we don't create more issues. 

Thank you!

[branchout]

So, since Square STILL hasn't figured out a way to help those of us who charge deposits (that will then be discounted from the final cost of the service), here is how we work around that for now. It's a little clunky, and doesn't have the full integration and tracking I'd like, but I hope this helps some of you.

We have an Item named "*service* Deposit", with variations for the different amounts we charge for deposits. The customer can pay for it in the studio after their consultation, or we send them an Invoice for that item.

Then, we have a Discount set up named "Deposit Paid" with the dollar amount left blank, so the amount they paid as a deposit can be entered as a discount to their checkout.

The annoying thing about this is that since we charge different deposit amounts, the only way to verify how much to enter for the Deposit Paid discount (other than asking the client, which isn't very professional), is to go into their customer profile and check their sales history BEFORE reviewing and checking out their appointment. So that's a pain. It also skews the tipping percentage at the end, because for some reason Square calculates tips based on the net sale, not the gross, so in instances where the client's deposit covers most or all of their service, they have to use the custom tip option and try to do their own math to tip appropriately. 

Another issue is that it's a LOT of work to track all of the deposits to figure out which clients have deposits outstanding, who haven't followed up to actually book an appointment, or haven't used their deposit yet but are still "active" and waiting until their last appointment to apply it (our services sometimes require multiple sessions).

Some kind of customer management feature that tracks deposits separately from their other sales, and automatically adds the option to apply their deposit to their appointment checkout would be FANTASTIC.

[BestVOYImages]

Thank you for this!  It is sad that a payment processing site does not offer the ability to take deposits when scheduling appointments.