How do I take booking deposits?

Switch on per-person booking deposits, set the amount and minimum party size, and add tiered amounts by party size.

Switch deposits on from Settings → Payments & deposits → Deposits — customers then pay a per-person deposit by card when they book online, and the money goes straight to your connected Stripe account.

Deposits are Available on Plus plan and above, and the owner must connect Stripe first (connecting is owner-only) — the Require deposits switch stays off until your Stripe connection can take payments. Only Owners and Admins see this page.

Switching deposits on

• Go to Settings → Payments & deposits → Deposits and open the Customer deposits card.
• Switch on Require deposits. A pop-up explains that this adds a deposit and refund clause to the terms your customers agree to when they book — click Turn on.
• Set the Amount per person. It's charged for every guest in the party (e.g. 4 guests × £5 = £20 deposit). Leave it at £0 and no deposit is collected — the page warns you.
• Set the Minimum party size. Only parties this size or larger pay a deposit; set it to 1 to charge on every booking.
• Choose your Cancellation policy and deadline — see When do customers get their deposit back?
• Click Save changes.

Different amounts for bigger parties

Switch on Tiered deposits by party size to charge different per-person amounts by party-size range. It seeds three example rules (parties of 1–4 → £5 per person, 5–8 → £10, 9–99 → £15) which you can edit — each rule has Min, Max and Per person fields, plus Add rule for more.

Two things to watch:

• Tiered rules override the standard Amount per person.
• A party size covered by no rule pays no deposit — the page warns you about gaps and about overlapping rules (where ranges overlap, the first matching rule wins).

What the customer sees

The deposit is charged immediately at booking — a card payment step (Apple Pay and Google Pay supported) appears before the booking is confirmed. It isn't a hold: the money arrives in your Stripe account right away, and refunds follow your cancellation policy. A booking that takes a deposit is never also asked to save a card for no-show protection — the deposit covers the no-show risk.

If you'd rather charge the whole per-person price at booking instead of a deposit, that's pay-in-full — its own page in the same settings group. Where pay-in-full applies, it takes priority: those bookings pay in full instead of leaving a deposit.

Related: When do customers get their deposit back? · How do I take deposits only on busy days or special dates? · How do pay-in-full bookings work? · What does the customer see when paying a deposit or saving a card?