One of the first decisions a new business makes when setting up online booking is also one that's easy to get wrong by default: whether clients pay nothing at booking time, a deposit, or the full amount upfront. There's no universally correct answer -- it depends heavily on your service's price point, how far in advance people book, and how much a no-show actually costs you.
No payment at booking -- lowest friction, highest exposure
This is the simplest option for a client: book, show up, pay when you see them, exactly like calling ahead used to work. It removes every bit of friction from the booking flow, which matters most for low-cost, high-frequency services where the barrier to booking needs to stay as low as possible.
The tradeoff is obvious: nothing stops a no-show, because nothing was ever at stake. This works fine when a missed slot costs you little (a quick service, a short appointment, a business with enough walk-in demand that one gap doesn't hurt), and works poorly the moment a no-show represents real blocked time you can't easily fill.
A deposit -- the middle ground that fits most service businesses
A deposit asks for commitment without asking for the full amount upfront, which keeps the booking flow low-friction while still giving a client something to lose by not showing up. This is the right default for most appointment-based service businesses -- hairdressers, therapists, consultants, anyone whose time is the product and whose no-show cost is a lost hour, not a lost sale.
In ScheduloApp, deposits are set per business (Settings > Payments) as either a flat amount or a percentage of the service price. A percentage scales naturally with your price list -- a 20% deposit is proportionate whether the service is £30 or £300 -- while a flat amount is simpler to communicate if most of your services sit in a similar price range.
Full payment upfront -- right when the service itself is the product
This makes the most sense when what you're selling isn't really "an hour of someone's time" but a fixed, consumed thing -- a workshop seat, an event ticket, a rental slot, a prepaid package. Here, a no-show doesn't cost you a reschedulable hour; it costs you an actual unit of inventory that's now gone regardless of whether they showed up. Asking for the full amount matches that reality, and clients booking this kind of service generally expect to pay in full anyway, the same way they would buying a ticket to anything else.
Matching the policy to the service, not the whole business
The same realization from team-member picking applies here: this doesn't have to be one setting for your entire business. A salon can reasonably run deposits for colour and cut appointments (longer, higher-value, genuinely painful to have cancelled last-minute) while leaving a quick patch-test or consultation at no payment at all, since there's nothing meaningful at stake there either way.
A quick way to decide
Ask yourself what a no-show for this specific service actually costs you:
- Nothing much (you'd easily fill the slot anyway, or the service is cheap and quick) → no payment required.
- A real, but reschedulable, block of time (the normal case for most appointments) → a deposit.
- An actual unit of fixed inventory (a class spot, an event, a rental) → full payment.
Start wherever your highest-value or most frequently no-showed service sits, rather than trying to set one perfect policy for everything at once.