UK Timely HITT: Lock in your Christmas bookings with deposits
It’s the time of year where appointments are in high demand - everyone wants to get in before Christmas! Start securing your appointments with deposits using TimelyPay and you’ll reduce no shows and kick cancellations to the curb, as well as some other lovely little treats! 🎁
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The wonderful world of deposits 💰
Deposits are a great way to get real commitment from your client and ensure that you’re not out of pocket if they cancel (especially if it’s too late to fill the spot). If you don’t want to ask for full payment you can request a partial deposit, which might seem a little less scary. Deposits don’t just have to be online – you can ask for deposits for appointments that are booked in the salon by creating a deposit from the calendar.
You might feel a bit unsure about taking deposits because you don’t want to lose any bookings, especially when you’ve spent a big chunk of the year with the doors closed! Think about it this way; your time is at a premium now and your loyal clients will understand. The only clients you might lose are the ones who are more likely to cancel late, or not show up at all!
How do deposits work?
Online: When clients are booking their appointment online, they’ll be prompted to pay a deposit. Once the payment goes through, the appointment is confirmed! When the customer arrives for their appointment, a manual payment can be applied to the invoice so that the customer only pays the remaining amount.
Instore: If your client is booking in your salon, you can just open the appointment you want to add the deposit to and click the ‘Add deposit’ link. If your client is booking over the phone, you can send them a link to pay the deposit online. Easy!
Get jazzed about these benefits!
If a client has paid a deposit, they’re more likely to turn up, and your (late) cancellations will reduce 🎉
Another bonus is that because the client has paid some of the total bill already, they’re more likely to spend a little bit more with you in the salon! This is the perfect way to upsell your retail products or treatment upgrades and add ons.
Sounds ace! How do I get started?
You need to set up a payment gateway like TimelyPay before you can set up deposits. But fear not! Our TimelyPay is easy as pie to set up, and then you’ve got all the other amazing benefits too! Learn more about TimelyPay.
Once you’ve got our payment gateway set up you can decide to take a deposit as a percentage of the service amount, or just a random amount. You can then choose to set that for all services or per service. It’s very common within the industry to take a percentage per booking, usually 50%.
If you do get a late cancellation or no show you have the option to take some or all of their deposit as a cancellation/no show fee against that appointment. Don’t worry, we can walk you through this here.
The help guides below will also show you everything you need to know!
Set it up in Timely:
Payment gateway: Setup > Add-ons
Deposits: Setup > Online payments
Help guides:
How to set up your payment gateway
Taking online deposits
Using a client deposit
TimelyPay Bonuses! 🙌
If you’re not set up with a payment provider or if you’re looking for a little extra protection and competitive transaction rates, it’s time to get TimelyPay! It’s super easy to set up (some people have it up and running in less than 2 minutes!) and because it’s ours, we give it the Timely magic that makes it market-leading and incredibly innovative.
You can use TimelyPay to take online payments for gift vouchers and online deposits, as well as in-salon payments. Best of all, manage all of your transactions in Timely; no more having to remember passwords and log in to other accounts to check your online payments!
TimelyPay also gives you the option to activate our card capture feature, where a client will be prompted to log in to Timely and save a credit card when they book with you online. This means more of your customers will be able to pay using cardless payment (🥳), and there are loads of other benefits for both you and your client! Learn more about Revenue protection with TimelyPay.
Super speedy booking
Clients can enter their mobile number and secure pin to bring up their client details and saved card, which means they’re more likely to complete their booking with everything already filled in.
Reduce no-shows by 60%!
Not only does card capture enable the new No-show protection feature we’ll talk about below, but just getting clients to save their card reduces no-shows by 60% 🤑
Cardless checkout for the win
You can also process payments against that saved card so clients don’t have to stop at the front desk!
Easy peasy online payments
If you’re taking deposits, selling gift vouchers online or sending out invoices, all your online payments get so much easier with card capture. Clients’ stored cards are ready and waiting for them next time they pay.
No more duplicate accounts
When clients log in to book with you, their information is all there. This means they won’t use different details to accidentally create a new client record and extra work for you to clean up!
NEW: No Show Protection Coming Soon!
When clients have a saved card on their account and they cancel with late notice or worse, don’t even show up, not only will they be straight onto that naughty list, but you’ll be able to charge them either a percentage or a fixed amount of the total booking – whatever is specified in your cancellation policy.
Once a fee is charged, Timely will automatically send the client an email about it, and also give you the option to send them an SMS, just in case you want to send them a personalised message about it. Learn more about No Show Protection.
Using these TimelyPay features will ensure your time is spent with clients that really value your time, and by taking the pain out of paying, you can get in more service upgrades and even more retail sales too!
Want to know more? Watch our TimelyPay Product Party!
Set it up in Timely:
Activate card capture: Setup > Online payments
Setup TimelyPay: Setup > Add-ons
Help guides:
TimelyPay digital resource pack
TimelyPay Help Guide
