This is the deposit taken while a customer is booking online, not a deposit added later to an invoice. It's collected online at booking time regardless of how the rest of the balance is paid, so it protects against no-shows on jobs you haven't even started yet.
The business-wide default
Booking Forms › Settings › Money collected at booking
Set a Deposit default of None, Fixed $ or Percentage. This applies to every service that doesn't set its own rule — it's the fallback, not an override.
Money collected at booking: the deposit default, tax rate and label, and whether pay-later on site is allowed.
Per-service deposit
Services › Edit service › Deposits & Scheduling › Deposit
| Option | What it does |
|---|---|
| Use default | Follows the business-wide deposit default. This is the fallback for any service you haven't set explicitly, including ones created before this setting existed. |
| No deposit | Never requires a deposit for this service, even if a business default is set. |
| Fixed amount | A flat amount in your currency. A fixed deposit never exceeds the price it's applied to. |
| Percentage | A percentage of the service's price. |
With Fixed or Percentage chosen, also set Collected: At booking (charged when the customer books) or At quote confirmation (charged once you confirm the final price on a Request + Estimate order).
Orders with more than one service
When several services are booked together, each contributes its own deposit against its own share of the price — a service that takes 25% adds 25% of just that service's total, and a service with no deposit rule adds nothing. A fixed deposit never exceeds its own service's price, and if any service in the order is due at booking, the whole order's deposit is collected at booking.
Refundable / security deposit
This is a separate, optional setting on the same tab: extra money held on top of the price, not applied toward the total. Set it as Fixed or Percentage with your own label, such as "Security deposit". It isn't subtracted from the invoice — you give it back or keep it from the job's Invoice afterwards, at your discretion. When an order has more than one service with a refundable deposit configured, only the single largest one is charged, not all of them added together.