Set up and explore payments

Clients cancelling at the last minute or not showing up can impact your business. Which is why Fresha allows you to take upfront payments, a proven way to protect your time and revenue.

This feature makes sure clients commit to their bookings by paying a portion, or even the full amount, ahead of time. It’s loved by thousands of businesses. 

In this lesson, we’ll focus on setting up upfront payments and how it secures bookings and keeps your calendar filled with reliable clients. So, how does it work?

You can set a policy requiring clients to pay the appointment price in part or full when booking. Once the appointment is complete, they simply pay any remaining balance at checkout. If a client cancels late or doesn’t show up, you can keep the upfront payment based on your policy.

Upfront payments are built right into the booking process, so clients can confirm their appointments in just a few clicks. It’s an automated process that handles everything for you, meaning you don’t have to spend time following up with clients.

To get started, head to your Workspace settings and select Payment policy under Payments. Here, you can enable upfront payments and decide how they apply to your services. So let’s request a standard 20% upfront payment for all services to confirm appointments. If it works better for you, you can require the full amount to be paid upfront or customise the amount per service. 

Next, decide whether you want to have the upfront setting apply to all clients or limit it to certain groups, like only new clients.

Now your setup is all done, so let’s see it all in action!

When booking online, clients will see the upfront payment needed to secure their appointment at checkout. They can pay instantly using options like Apple Pay or by entering their card details, keeping the process fast and easy for everyone.

For in-store bookings, upfront payment options will appear automatically when creating an appointment. You can adjust the amount or skip it for certain clients.

Once you save the appointment, clients will receive an automated text with a secure link to confirm their booking with an upfront payment.

When it’s time to check out the appointment, you’ll see the upfront payment clearly logged here, so only the remaining balance needs to be collected.

If a client doesn’t show up, just mark the appointment as a no-show. You’ll see their agreed policy here and can choose to keep the upfront payment or refund it. The same applies if they cancel at short notice too!

Using upfront payments cuts down on no-shows and last-minute cancellations, so you’ll attract committed clients and protect your valuable time. And for the rare cases where a client doesn't show up, you’re covered, you can keep the payments collected. It’s one of the things that makes Fresha the leading choice for running your business!