Set Up Customer Prepayment for Square Appointments

With customer prepayment, you can easily manage your cash flow by requiring customers to prepay for fixed-price services when they book online. You can enable customer prepayment from your online Square Dashboard and the Square Appointments appor on Square Register. Any payments accepted this way are transferred according to your transfer schedule.

You can accept any US-issued and most non-US-issued credit, debit or prepaid cards with a Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, UnionPay or JCB logo for prepayment. The maximum prepayment transaction size is $5,000. Note: Clients can use Square Gift Cards as a prepayment method.

Set a Payment Policy for Booking Online

With Square Appointments, you can select from three payment options for booking online: No Requirements to Book Appointment, Hold a Card for No-Show Protection and Require Prepayment.

No requirement to book is the default option. Clients will not see your cancellation policy during booking or in their appointment notifications if you select this option.

Require full prepayment and Hold a card for no-show protection require you to create a cancellation policy. You can also require clients to save their card on file if you select either of these options. For prepayment, your cancellation policy should specify how you refund your clients in the event of last-minute cancellations or reschedules. Learn more about creating your cancellation policy.

Note: If you are not activated to accept card payments with Square, you will be required to verify your identity before you can enable this feature. This process should be completed by the account holder. Learn more about what’s required to sign up for Square Point of Sale.

To enable customer prepayment from your online Appointments Dashboard:

1. Visit Settings > Payments & Cancellations.

2. Click Require Prepayment > Define your cancellation policy. Your customers will be required to agree to your policy before booking online.

3. If you’d like to require that clients save the card inputted as a card on file, toggle on “Require a card on file for future payments.”

4. Click Save.

To enable customer prepayment from the Appointments app:

1. Tap the three horizontal lines and pull up your navigation bar.

2. Tap Settings > Online Booking.

3. Tap Accept Online Payments.

 To enable customer prepayment when using the Appointments app on Square Register:

1. Tap on the down arrow and navigate to Online Booking.

2. Tap Square Booking Site > TapAccept Online Payments.

3. Tap Require Prepayment.

Learn more about managing services and pricing options.

You can also accept customer prepayment when you create an appointment from your calendar if you have your customer’s card on file.

Manage Appointments with Customer Prepayment

When your customers prepay for services from your online booking site, the payments will appear in your Square balance and be transferred to your linked bank account. Learn more about linking and editing your bank account.

If a customer needs to cancel or reschedule a prepaid appointment, they must contact you directly to do so. Any changes made to a prepaid appointment after it is booked will not be reflected in your reports and will require a manual refund if needed.

If you decline an appointment, a refund will be automatically issued back to the original payment card and your customer will be notified. You can decline an appointment at any time. Refunds for cancellations exceeding 60 days from the date of booking must be issued outside of Square. Learn more about processing refunds.

Fees

Learn more about Square Appointments subscription plans and which processing rates apply to prepayments: Square Appointments pricing.

Learn more about setting up your cancellation policy with Square Appointments.