Pricing, deposits and paying in full
Charge nothing, take a deposit, or take the whole amount up front — per service.
Every service carries one price and one rule about how much of that price is taken when the customer books: nothing, a deposit to hold the slot, or the whole amount. The rule is set once for the whole site, then overridden for a category, then for a single service.
Set the price on the service
Open Booked › Business › Services, click the service you want, and stay on the General tab. Price is what one person pays for one appointment. The currency symbol beside the box comes from Settings › Region & currency › Currency, so if it is showing the wrong symbol, change it there rather than typing it into the price.
Prices are stored to two decimal places, and a blank box saves as 0.00 — the service is then offered to customers as free. The price appears on the customer's service card, in the running summary as they book, and on the confirmation screen. The confirmation email lists the service, when, where and who instead — the price is available there as the {booking_price} merge tag if you want to add it.
Changing a price later does not touch appointments already in the diary. The figure is copied onto each booking at the moment it is made, so an existing appointment — and anything that quotes its price back to the customer — keeps the amount that was agreed.
Services
The General tab of a service: price (1), how much is taken online (2) and the figure that goes with it (3).
- 1Price — what one person pays for one appointment. The symbol in front of it follows your currency setting; a blank box saves as £0.00 and the service shows as free.
- 2Deposit — the payment mode: Use category default, No deposit, Percentage of price, Fixed amount or Full amount (100%).
- 3Percentage (%) — appears only for Percentage of price. Choose Fixed amount instead and the box changes to Amount (£). The other three options need no figure at all.
Choose what the customer pays online
The Deposit dropdown is where all three payment behaviours live, despite the name. Here is what each one does to a £45.00 travel health consultation.
| Deposit setting | Charged when they book | Left to pay at the visit |
|---|---|---|
| No deposit | Nothing — no card step at all | £45.00 |
| Percentage of price — 30 | £13.50 | £31.50 |
| Fixed amount — 10.00 | £10.00 | £35.00 |
| Full amount (100%) | £45.00 | Nothing |
Full amount (100%) sits in the deposit list but is not a deposit — it charges the whole price up front, and the customer is told they are paying in full. Whatever you choose, the amount taken is held between zero and the service price, so a Fixed amount of £60 on a £45 service charges £45.
Where a deposit setting comes from
Booked reads the deposit from three levels and stops at the first one that has made a decision: the service, then its category, then the site-wide default. That is why the service dropdown's first option is Use category default and the category's first option is Use global default — those mean "carry on down the chain".
The hint under the service's dropdown tells you what it would inherit if you left it alone, in plain words: "Its category holds a 30% deposit — override it here?", "Global default: 20% deposit — override it here?", or "This category has no deposit. You can require one just for this service." Read it before you change anything — most of the time the inherited answer is the one you want.
- Set the site-wide rule firstIn Settings › Booking rules › Deposits, turn on Require a deposit when customers book, pick a Deposit type, enter the figure, then press Save settings.
- Override a whole category if it needs itIn Business › Categories, open a category and change its Deposit, then press Save category — useful when travel health needs securing but ear care does not. Categories are edited in an inline form, not a full page.
- Override a single service lastIn the service's General tab, move Deposit away from Use category default and press Save service — switching tabs saves nothing on its own.
Configure how Booked works.
The site-wide default that every category and service inherits.
- 1Settings › Booking rules — deposits live on the Bookings tab, not the Payments tab. The booking references and bank statement name are here too.
- 2Require a deposit when customers book — off by default. Until it is on, every service that says Use category default takes no payment.
- 3Deposit type — Percentage of price, Fixed amount or Full amount (100%), exactly as on a service.
- 4Deposit percentage (%) — becomes Deposit amount (£) for a fixed sum, and disappears for Full amount (100%). Nothing here is stored until you press Save settings.
Until a payment method is set up, the Deposits card is replaced by "To take deposits you first need to set up payments — a deposit has to be collected somewhere." with a Set up payments button. The card also unlocks once you save keys for one of the other providers — but only Booked Payments actually charges a card, so with any other provider the booking completes and no card step appears. The per-service and per-category overrides are not locked at all, so it is possible to put a 30% deposit on one service, have the customer told "A £13.50 deposit secures your appointment", and then never be asked for a card.
What the customer sees at checkout
The wording changes with the mode. With a deposit set, the details step reads "A £13.50 deposit secures your appointment. The £31.50 balance is due at your visit." With Full amount (100%) it reads "The full £45.00 is due now to confirm your appointment." With no deposit, the button shows the full price and the trust line reads No card needed.
The details step of the booking form with a 30% deposit in force.
- 1Running summary — lists the choices made so far, then Total, then Deposit due today underneath it, so the customer can see both numbers before committing. The price itself only appears as the total.
- 2The deposit sentence — spells out what is taken now and what is owed at the visit. It is generated from the resolved deposit, so it always matches the override you set.
- 3Confirm booking — carries the amount being charged. The card step follows, headed Secure your booking, with Deposit due today or Amount due today above the card fields. It is not one of the numbered steps in the rail — it appears after the appointment has been created.
If a customer reaches the payment screen and closes the tab, the appointment stays in your diary marked unpaid and the slot is still held. Nothing flags it: the row carries no Paid or Deposit paid badge in the Bookings list, so that is what to look for when a slot appears taken by someone who never paid.
Free services and £0 prices
A service priced at £0.00 never produces a card charge, whatever the deposit settings above it say — so a free NHS-funded review sits safely alongside paid private appointments with a site-wide deposit switched on. Setting a deposit on a free service achieves nothing.
Group bookings, courses and same-visit add-ons
Each of these changes the booking total, and none of them changes the deposit in the way you might expect.
- Group bookings save the appointment at price × number of people — three flu jabs at £15 is a £45.00 booking, and the customer sees "3 people · £45.00 total". The deposit, though, is worked out on one person's price. Even Full amount (100%) collects only £15, and the booking reads Deposit paid rather than Paid in full. Collect the balance in store.
- Courses take one payment for the whole course. Visit 1 carries the entire price and every follow-up is saved at £0.00, so the payments list shows a single charge covering several appointments.
- Same-visit add-ons each keep their own price on their own appointment row, but nothing is charged online for them. Only the main service's deposit is taken, so the extra appointments are effectively pay-on-the-day even though the confirmation screen shows a combined total.
Appointments you add by hand in Calendar or Bookings start from the service's own figures: picking the service fills in Price and Length (minutes), and both can be edited on that one booking — handy for a goodwill discount without touching the service itself.
Where the money shows up afterwards
Open an appointment that has been paid and its Payment section shows the status, the amount paid and the method — Booked Payments — card or Recorded manually. The statuses are Paid in full, Deposit paid, Payment pending, Refunded and Chargeback — disputed. The Bookings list shows these as small badges reading Paid, Deposit paid or Refunded, and the Dashboard counts them under Payments alongside the Taken this month and Paid online tiles.
In Analytics, Expected revenue is the value of the appointments booked and Taken revenue is what has been collected online — its hint reads "paid online so far". A business running 20% deposits should therefore expect a permanent gap between the two. The gap does not close when the balance is handed over in the shop: the only manual option on a booking is the Unpaid / Paid (cash / in person) dropdown, it records no amount, and on a booking that already shows Deposit paid it is locked to a read-only pill anyway.
Allow for one more quirk: because a course puts the whole price on visit 1, every follow-up appointment counts as a £0.00 booking. The money is not spread across the visits — it all sits on the first one.