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. 

[Bubblebed1]

It’s so stupid that they don’t. Their booking system lacks a lot of things for the same monthly charge I paid Vagaro. If you don’t need forms and deposit use them. I find their interfaces sucks as well. The only thing I like is their payment system.

[Harlyquin]

I agree with this. There isn't a clean way to charge a deposit. I use square invoices as well, and there is a toggle option for "take a deposit" on there under "payment schedule", it is a variable percentage setting or flat amount... so, Square already has the payment processing code written, it just isn't integrated into this platform, for some reason. 

It would be cool if someone could add that feature. I could use deposits too. 

[Sparkld_NL]

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 

[Vanessaocano]

???

[Chad]

@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! 

[MetroCabSF]

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.

[MetroCabSF]

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

[Chad]

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. 

[MetroCabSF]

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?

[Chad]

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! 😀

[MetroCabSF]

@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 

[Chad]

@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. 

[MetroCabSF]

@Chad Yeah the idea is never to pay more taxes than needed. On invoicing and POS it configured and works great but whats the point of being able to fix price and streamline for purchase which is awesome if that feature is not optional the whole thing is not useful to any business that is required to pay monthly state taxes... So to make this complete it should be added, you have it on all the other forms of payment. 

[MetroCabSF]

@Chad Chad we have an account and are familar with business. We just need to be able to collect it using appointments on prepayments nothing other until then its not useful.

[danielaanthony]

Okay so that is where I messed up by not selecting pre payment. So then when do I recieve a payment if i didnt select prepayment. I had a customer come in for their appointment but I still never recieved a $50 deposit for when they booked. I dont understand. Or can I go back now and change everything to prepayment and the deposits will show up? Any help will be great. Thanks

[danielaanthony]

Okay so where did my deposits go because i didnt select pre payment. I have booked 6 appointments with a $50 deposit for each client that books. I never saw any of those deposits yet. 

[Chad]

Hello @danielaanthony! For the 6 appointments did you have your customers book with no show protection?  

Or did you create a service called deposit for your Online Booking site? 

[danielaanthony]

I created a serrvice called 50 deposit. I takes the customers card info. but it never charges them. I also added the no show policy for $20. What am I doing wrong. I need the system to pre charge the $50 deposit up front to make the appointment. Thanks

[Chad]

@danielaanthony thanks! That gives a clear picture into what's happening. 

So the solution you're looking for is the Require Prepayment option. This will require the customer to pay the $50 dollar deposit when creating an appointment on your Online Booking site. You'll receive the funds as apart of our Next Business Day Deposit Schedule. 

What happened with your prior appointments was that a customer booked an appointments and entered their card for the no-show protection, but they weren't charged because prepayment wasn't turned on. If this isn't enabled you would take the payment in person after their appointment was complete. 

I hope this helps clear things up! If you still have questions please feel free to reach out to me. 😀

[danielaanthony]

Okay and I did do that now so I am in hopes it all works out. Thanks Chad.

[ElisiaDannielle]

Im sorry, I am new to the online booking. I’ve tried to go through the thread to get an answer but I’m still confused. I need a charge to be applied to the client for booking fee to schedule an appointment. I understand we need the “prepay” option to be selected, but I need to know how I can apply just a set $50 fee that will charge them for the prepay option and not the full charge for the service. When they come in for the appointment and complete the service, I will charge them the amount of the service minus the deposit fee.