Prepayment for bookings - how to cut no-shows and what happens to a deposit

A client who paid 300 hryvnias upfront shows up. A client who booked in Direct and vanished does not always. Prepayment is not there to earn on no-shows but to avoid them.

Prepayment is available on Start and above. It needs the salon's own acquiring connected: LiqPay, Monobank, WayForPay, RozetkaPay or Hutko. The money goes straight to your account; BeeSection does not touch it.

Three kinds of payment before a visit

Prepayment. Part or all of the service price. At the visit it counts towards the bill: services for 2500 ₴, prepayment 500 ₴, 2000 ₴ to pay.

Deposit. A sum the client puts down to hold the time. It counts towards the bill at the visit in the same way.

Booking fee. A fixed amount for the booking itself, say 100 ₴. Also counted towards the bill at the visit.

For most salons prepayment is enough. A booking fee makes sense where the service price becomes known only after a consultation.

How to issue a payment

In the booking card you create a payment link: enter the amount and the kind of payment. The amount cannot exceed what the client still owes for this booking: the system will not let you issue 1000 ₴ for an 800 ₴ service. If the booking already had an unpaid link, it is cancelled and only the latest one is valid.

Send the link to the client through any channel: Telegram, Direct, SMS. The client pays by card on the payment provider's page.

After payment the booking is marked paid on its own, from the provider's notification. The payment is posted to the cash register at once, and the client gets a message about it. There is nothing to check by hand or copy from a bank statement.

What happens at the visit

When the client arrives and you open a visit from the booking, the prepayment carries into it automatically and is not posted to the cash register a second time. The visit shows the total, how much is already paid and the balance. If the client pays the rest in cash or by card, you take the balance as a regular payment.

If the visit total ends up smaller than the amount paid, the difference is returned through a refund in the visit: the system does not do this by itself and does not show a "to refund" line. So keep a deposit no larger than the minimum service price.

The payment history stays in the client card: you can see when and for which booking they paid.

If the client did not come

Mark the booking with the "no-show" status rather than deleting it. Then:

• reminders for this booking stop;
• the no-show counter in the client card goes up;
• the prepayment stays in the history.

What to do with the prepayment after a no-show is your decision. The booking policy can set a no-show fee and a late cancellation fee: the deduction then follows a rule rather than a guess. Write your rules on the booking page and in the message with the payment link: a "nobody warned me" dispute costs more than a prepayment.

What amount to start with

Not the full one. A prepayment of 20-30 % already filters out those who booked "just in case" and does not scare off those who really intend to come. A full prepayment makes sense for services with expensive materials bought for a specific client.

After a month, check the no-show report for the change in their share. It usually drops several times over, and after that the prepayment amount can even be reduced.