They are switched on per account while we prove them in real service. Ask us on the contact form if you would like them enabled.
You choose which of these to offer in booking settings. Enable more than one and the customer picks; enable one and it is chosen for them.
Pay at the venue
The default, and the one that needs nothing set up.
Customers book without paying and settle in person exactly as they do now — your till, your card machine, your habits. The booking shows the price as to pay at the venue, and marking them attended awards the stamp as usual.
Pay by card when booking
Card, Apple Pay or Google Pay, taken at the moment of booking through a secure checkout.
Card payments settle into your own connected Square account. Loyalty Club never holds your takings. You will need Square connected before you can switch card payments on — the Connect Square button is on the booking settings page.
The full service price is taken up front. There are no deposits and no part-payments: a booking is either prepaid in full or paid at the venue.
Card payments switch themselves off and you get a Card payments stopped alert. Bookings keep working on your other payment routes, and reconnecting on the settings page brings card back. Worth acting on the same day — it is silently costing you prepayments until you do.
Pay with TEDS tokens
Members can prepay from their token wallet at the standard 100 tokens = £1. The tokens land in your business wallet instantly and the booking is confirmed on the spot, even if you normally approve each request — the payment has already happened, so there is nothing to hold.
A member without enough tokens is shown what they are short and offered a top-up rather than a dead end.
Unpaid holds, and how they release
When someone chooses to pay by card, their slot is held while they complete checkout. If they abandon it, you do not lose the evening to a ghost booking.
- 01The slot is held for 15 minutes
Long enough to find a card and get through checkout, short enough that an abandoned attempt is not sitting on your best table.
- 02The hold lapses
After fifteen minutes the time is bookable again by somebody else.
- 03The booking is expired
A sweep runs every fifteen minutes and expires anything left unpaid for more than twenty. It shows in your diary as Expired.
Nothing is sent to the customer when a booking expires — they simply see it as expired in their app and can book again. If they finish paying, the booking confirms itself and appears in your diary as normal.
Refunds
The rule is short, and worth knowing before a customer asks:
| Who cancelled | Refund |
|---|---|
| You | Always automatic, however close to the slot. |
| The customer, outside your cancellation window | Automatic. |
| The customer, inside your cancellation window | Not automatic — they are told to contact you. |
Refunds are always the full amount — card payments back through Square, tokens back to the member's wallet. There is no partial-refund or cancellation-fee mechanism.
Your cancellation window is a setting, 24 hours by default. Widen it to protect prime slots; narrow it to be more forgiving.
Inside the window nothing refunds automatically, but you can always choose to refund a customer who rang with a good reason. Cancelling the booking yourself refunds them in full, which is the simplest way to do it.
If an automatic refund fails — most often because the money has already left your Square balance — you get a Refund needs attention alert with the amount and the booking reference, so it can be settled directly rather than becoming a complaint two weeks later.
Cutting no-shows
Four things actually move the number, in the order they are worth doing.
- 01Reminders, which are already on
Customers get a reminder 24 hours and 2 hours before. The day-before reminder goes to their phone and their email; the two-hour one is a push. Most no-shows are forgetfulness, and this is the cheapest fix there is.
- 02Prepayment
Someone who has paid turns up. Card or tokens both work — and both refund automatically if they cancel in good time, so it is not a trap.
- 03A cancellation window that means something
Twenty-four hours gives you a chance to refill the slot. It also gives the customer a clear, fair rule rather than a vague sense that cancelling is rude.
- 04Marking no-shows honestly
Your no-show rate on the dashboard is only as good as the data behind it. Marking them is also what keeps a no-show from being rewarded with a stamp.
Marking a no-show on a booking you had already marked attended takes back the stamps it awarded, provided they have not been spent on a reward. You have seven days to correct attendance either way.
Reading the money on the day
On the timeline and in the detail panel, each booking shows its price with paid beside it when payment has already landed, or to pay at the venue when it has not. The header chip booked in totals the day's value, so you can see the shape of a session at a glance.
In one sentence
Take nothing up front and settle at the till, or take the full price by card into your own Square account or in TEDS tokens; unpaid holds release themselves within about twenty minutes, you always refund automatically when you cancel, and customers refund automatically only outside your cancellation window.