A payment doesn't look right

Missing payments, pending bookings and amounts that do not match.

Nearly every payment question is one of five things: the booking has not caught up with the payment, a deposit makes the amount look wrong, no card was taken, a refund is in flight, or a payment cannot be tied to an appointment.

Start on the booking itself

Open Booked › Bookings and click the appointment. The Payment section records what happened to the money.

• 1Status — Paid in full, Deposit paid, Refunded, Chargeback — disputed or Payment pending. Once settled it locks: the Payment dropdown in Service becomes a read-only pill.
• 2Amount paid — what was really taken, often a deposit rather than the price. Cash marked by hand shows an em-dash — the state without a figure.
• 3Method — a card charge, or Recorded manually for cash. Both show the same green Paid badge in the list, so this is the only way to tell them apart.
• 4Refund payment — always a full refund; for part of the money use Settings › Payments.

No Payment section means no money is attached — normal for an unpaid booking. Record cash with the Payment dropdown, which sits under Service.

The booking says unpaid but the customer has paid

Payments are tied to appointments by the reference stamped on the charge. When that link is lost, the booking sits there looking unpaid. Sync payments repairs it.

• 1Sync payments — matches recent card payments to their appointments, sets the state and amount, moves a paid but still-pending booking to Confirmed, and flags disputes.
• 2Pending, no payment badge — a real appointment holding the slot, with no money matched to it. This is the row to investigate.
• 3Chargeback — the customer’s bank has pulled the money back. Answer it under Chargebacks & disputes on the Payments tab.

You rarely need the button: the routine runs quietly whenever you open Bookings. So if a booking still reads unpaid, syncing again will not change it — and it fails silently. Two causes cover nearly all.

• The customer never finished paying. The appointment is created before the card step appears, so closing the tab at the payment screen leaves a real booking holding the slot with no money against it. If no charge appears under Your money › Transactions, it never happened.
• Your reference contains digits. Matching reads the numbers in the reference, so a prefix like 12345- latches on to the prefix instead of the appointment number. Keep digits out of the Prefix and Suffix.

The amount does not match the price

A £45 appointment showing £10 paid is usually correct. Deposits cascade — service beats category, category beats the site default — and live in Settings › Booking rules, not the Payments tab.

You cannot correct a mismatch by editing the price: Booked will not save below the amount already taken, nor mark a paid booking unpaid. Refund first, then reprice.

No card payment was taken at all

If nothing is charged for any booking, the cause is in Settings › Payments, not in one appointment.

• The licence is not active. The tab reads Activate your licence to take payments; press Go to Licence.
• Setup never finished. Balances, transactions, payouts and disputes stay hidden until verification completes, so a half-done account looks like an empty tab. Press Complete verification.
• Another provider is selected under Use a different provider instead (advanced), so customers see no card step.
• Payments are paused. The booking form quietly stops asking for cards and bookings arrive unpaid. Only support can lift it.

A refund the customer says has not arrived

Check the money’s own record before promising anything.

• 1Payments tab — Save settings does nothing here. Every control on this tab saves itself the moment you use it.
• 2Search — matches the reference, customer name, email, last four card digits and the amount — useful when a customer only knows what they paid.
• 3Refund — offers Full, Half or Custom up to whatever is still refundable, so a payment can be returned in stages. A Part refunded row still leaves the appointment reading Paid in full.

Refunded or Part refunded means the money has left your balance and takes a few working days to reach the customer’s statement. A row still reading Succeeded was never refunded.

• Nobody emails the customer. A Booking refunded template exists under Customisation › Notifications, but nothing sends it. Tell them yourself.
• A refund does not cancel the appointment, which keeps its slot until you change the status. Nor can it be undone — there is no Mark as unpaid afterwards, and your processing fee goes back to the customer, not to you.
• A disputed payment cannot be refunded. Appeal does not open the response form — it scrolls down to Chargebacks & disputes, where you click Respond.

A payment with no appointment against it

The Appointment column links back to the booking. When a payment belongs to nothing, the booking was usually deleted — deletion is permanent and leaves the payment behind — or the prefix contains digits, or it is a course paid for once.

The list holds only the twelve most recent payments, with no date range, status filter or export. For older ones use Payments on your Booked account website, which covers every site and adds Export CSV. If the customer does not recognise the charge, check Bank statement name: an invalid value saves blank without warning and your account default is used.

When to contact support

Two things you cannot fix yourself: payments paused or payouts on hold, and verification that will not clear. Send the booking reference, the appointment date and time, the customer’s name, the amount, the last four card digits, the status word beside the payment, and what you have already tried. Check one thing first — only accounts with permission to open Booked’s settings see the payments area, so a colleague reporting the problem may not see the screen you describe.