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TimelyPay: Cancellation Fees

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Timely’s built-in payment solution, TimelyPay, lets you take payments online and in person, so it’s easy for clients to pay you securely. With a quick set up it helps reduce no-shows by letting you take deposits and charge cancellation fees. You can also sell gift vouchers and manage your payments in one place. There are no hidden costs, just pay the standard processing fees, and once a payment is settled, the money is paid into your bank account the next business day. That means no waiting around for payments to clear.
 

In this article you will learn more about TimelyPay cancellation fees. For more information on TimelyPay, see our help guide Frequently asked questions (FAQs): TimelyPay. 

 

 

Timely tip: with TimelyPay's card capture function, you will be able to protect your revenue by taking cancellation fee payments from a client's saved card. Once you've enabled card capture you'll be able to charge your clients when they cancel outside of your cancellation policy and charge no-shows.

 

 

How to set a cancellation fee

Step-by-step instructions

1 Cancellation fees are found under the online payments page in setup. They are also only available if you are not taking online deposits/payments.

 

2 If you'd like to use a combination of cancellation fees and deposits, set up cancellation fees in online payments to serve as your default policy, then set up deposits for the individual services as required.

 

3 The first thing you'll need to do is to turn on card capture. Turning card capture on will require clients to save their card and agree to your cancellation policy before they can make a booking or payment online with your business. They will need to save their card in online booking even if no deposit is being paid.

 

4 To activate the card capture setting: head to setup > online payments then click the box that says activate card capture.

 

5 Once this is enabled, you can set your cancellation fees. Businesses can set a fixed or percentage of their service for their no-show/cancellation fees.

 

6 The cancellation terms will be detailed based on what has been selected under the cancellation fees and changes policy sections. However, if you want to add any extra comments, this can be added in the custom cancellation terms. You can also choose to hide the default cancellation terms and have a completely custom message, simply select this option in the cancellation terms section.

 

 

How to charge a cancellation fee

Charging no-show or cancellation fees against clients’ saved cards can be done in 2 ways:
 

A When you're cancelling an appointment, you will then remove the appointment from the calendar after it’s been cancelled.

 

B When you’re editing an appointment, once you select did not show, you can charge a no-show/cancellation fee, but the appointment will not be removed from the calendar.


How this works

If a staff member chooses to charge a fee, Timely pre-populates the fee with the amount set by the business owner, and they can only charge a fee that is equal to or less than this amount. You will then see when and which policy the client has agreed to, so staff members are confident that they can charge them a fee. If the staff chooses to charge the fee, they will be taken to the checkout flow, so they can use the client’s saved card to charge it.
 

Timely note: please make sure you are selecting the saved card option if you wish to charge the card the client has added. If you choose any other option it will not automatically charge this card and you will need to manually take payment in your business.


Once a fee is charged, Timely will automatically send the client an email about it, and also give an option to the staff member to send an SMS in case they want to send them a personalised message about it. This SMS is taken from your SMS allowance.

 

 

Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

  • How can I capture cards from offline bookings?
    You can do this by going to the client file and clicking Add Card.  You can find more information on saving cards in store here: Saving Credit Card Details In-Store with TimelyPay. You can also direct clients to the My Cards section of the Client Login, which will allow clients to save a card without making a booking.
     
  • Who has access to charging no-shows/cancellation fees?
    All staff members who have access to raising a sale will be able to charge fees too. However, only business owners will have access to set how much they want to charge, and staff members can only charge a fee that is equal to or less than this amount.
     
  • What happens if a saved card does not have sufficient balance?
    We will prompt the staff member to send an online payment link to the client or select another payment method instead if the payment fails.

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