The card-on-file no-show fee

1. How it's different from a deposit

The two are mutually exclusive. Turning one on under Deposits & no-show protection automatically turns the other off.

2. Setting it up

• Go to Settings, then Booking rules, and open the Deposits & no-show protection tab.
• If Stripe isn't connected and verified yet, do that first, from the Stripe connection card at the top of that tab. Card on file can't be chosen until your Stripe account can take payments.
• Under Deposits & no-show protection, choose Card on file.
• Set a fee amount: a fixed figure, or a percentage of the total for appointment businesses.
• Optionally add tiered fees, covered below.
• Save.

At the moment of booking, your customer's card is saved with a zero-dollar charge. Nothing is taken from it yet.

3. Charging the fee

A team member can only charge the fee once a booking has actually been marked cancelled or no-show, never while it's still confirmed or pending. This stops a fee amount being suggested against a booking nothing has actually happened to yet.

• Open the booking. Once it's cancelled or a no-show, a Charge no-show fee button appears, showing the amount.
• Click it. A dialog opens (Charge the no-show fee), pre-filled with the suggested amount.
• Choose Full amount or Custom amount.
• Confirm, and the card is charged immediately.

If a previous attempt was declined, the button reads Retry charge instead, and it can be tried again, for example after asking the customer to update their card details.

4. Tiered fees by notice given

You can optionally set up several fee tiers based on how much notice a customer gave. For example, a smaller fee for cancelling with a day's notice, and the full fee for a genuine no-show.

A tier set as a percentage is a percentage of your no-show fee amount, not of the booking's total price, and is always capped so it can never suggest more than that fee.

Each tier applies when a customer cancels with less notice than its own window; if more than one matches, the tightest one wins. A genuine no-show, where the guest never cancelled at all, always uses your strictest tier. Leave this empty and your flat fee amount is suggested every time.

5. Why a charge might fail

Because the customer isn't present when the fee is charged, their bank can decline it, or ask for a verification step the customer isn't there to complete. Gaplessly can't retry this automatically. It shows the error from your Stripe account and leaves the button live so your team can try again later.