Payment at booking is a filter, not a convenience. Deposits vs full price, what Bookafy will not do (no PayPal, no stored card for no-show fees), and how to switch it on without killing your bookings.
Taking payment at the moment of booking changes who your customers are. That’s the real reason to do it — not the cash flow, and not the convenience.
A free booking link is an invitation to browse. A booking link that asks for a card is a filter. The people who won’t get their wallet out are, with unnerving reliability, the same people who don’t turn up. If your no-show rate is the thing keeping you awake, this page is the fix — and it’s a blunter fix than most vendors admit.
You set a price against an appointment type. When someone books that type, they pay by card before the slot is confirmed. Card processing runs through Stripe, which is on the Pro plan ($7/user/month, billed yearly). Money goes into your Stripe account, on Stripe’s usual payout schedule, minus Stripe’s usual processing fees — that relationship is between you and Stripe.
| Approach | Do it when | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| Charge the full price at booking | Fixed-price services with a known duration: a 60-minute consultation, a coaching session, a class-style 1:1. | It suppresses bookings. That is a feature if you have too many tyre-kickers, and a bug if you’re trying to grow. |
| Charge a deposit | The service price varies, or the amount is large enough that people want to see you before they commit. Salons, contractors, most home services. | You set the appointment’s price to the deposit amount and collect the balance in person. It’s a straightforward technique, but you are managing the balance, not the software. |
| Charge nothing at booking | Free consultations, sales calls, anything where friction is your enemy. | Your only defence against no-shows is the reminder, and the reminder is not as good as a card. |
The deposit is what most service businesses land on, and the reason is behavioural rather than financial: a customer who has paid $20 turns up for reasons that have nothing to do with $20.
Plenty of software markets “no-show protection”. Read what it actually means, because there are two very different things wearing the same label:
So a Bookafy no-show policy has to be enforced at booking, by taking a deposit or the full amount. If your business model depends on charging people who didn’t turn up, you need a tool built around card-on-file, and it isn’t this one. Better to know that now.
Decide your cancellation rule before you switch payments on, and write it in plain words on the booking page:
And a technical note worth having before you automate anything: Zapier has no cancellation or reschedule trigger for Bookafy. If you build a Zap that invoices, or emails “thanks for coming”, it will fire for someone who cancelled and it will never learn otherwise. Build cancellation handling on the API and webhooks, or keep the money side manual in Stripe, where you can see it.
| Not available | What to do instead |
|---|---|
| PayPal as a checkout option | Card via Stripe, or pick a different tool. |
| A stored card you can charge after a no-show | Take the money at booking. That’s the mechanism. |
| Invoices, quotes, accounting | Stripe for receipts; push data into QuickBooks or Xero via Zapier if you need the books to match. |
| Packages, memberships, class passes (“buy 10 sessions”) | Genuinely not a feature. If you sell blocks of sessions, look at a class/membership platform. |
| Tipping, retail products, a till | Bookafy books appointments. It is not a point-of-sale system. |
| Payment on the Free plan | Payments start at Pro. Free is $0, one user, no payments, no SMS, no calendar sync. |
Bookafy’s Free plan is $0 for one user with unlimited appointments. The 7-day trial of Pro+ needs no credit card.
Yes. You set a price on an appointment type and the customer pays by card through Stripe before the slot is confirmed. Payments are on the Pro plan ($7/user/month, billed yearly).
No. PayPal is not a checkout option. Card payments run through Stripe. If PayPal is a hard requirement for your customers, Bookafy is not the right tool.
Yes, in practice: set the appointment type price to the deposit amount and collect the balance in person. This is what most salons, contractors and home-service businesses do.
No. There is no stored card to charge after the fact. A no-show policy has to be enforced at booking, by taking a deposit or full payment up front.
Refunds are issued in Stripe. Set a clear refund window on your booking page — for example, full refund if cancelled more than 24 hours ahead — and allow free rescheduling inside it.
No. Bookafy has no packages, memberships or session passes. If you sell blocks of sessions, you need a class or membership platform instead.
If you are still working out which tool you need, start with the overview: appointment scheduling software — what it does, what it costs, and when you should buy something else.
Also useful: every Bookafy integration, in three honest lists — what is native, what needs Zapier, and what we simply do not do. And the pricing page, where the feature matrix is the real answer to “is that on the free plan”.
