Take one on the bookings you cannot refill the same morning. Leave the rest of the book alone.
Grooming is the vertical where deposits get over-applied, because the advice is written for people whose product is a fortnight. When a two-week stay falls over on 20 December, nothing refills it. When a full groom falls over at 8am, you have a waiting list, a phone, and four hours to use them. Those are not the same risk and they do not deserve the same rule.
Price the risk, not the booking
The number worth protecting is not the price of the groom. It is the price of the groom multiplied by the chance you cannot resell the slot.
A $120 full groom on a Wednesday that you refill nine times out of ten is costing you about $12 of expected loss. A deposit on that is administration you are doing for free, and the owner who now has to enter a card to book a bath they have had twenty times is the owner who starts phoning instead, which puts the booking back on you.
Change one thing and the sum changes completely. A first-time client who has never walked through the door does not come with a nine-in-ten record, because you have no record. A four-hour de-matt booked into a Saturday cannot be refilled by a bath and tidy, because nothing in the waiting list is four hours long. Those two are where the money is.
So the honest shape is a short list rather than a policy: new clients, the long jobs, and the days you cannot rebuild. Everything else stays deposit free until it gives you a reason not to be.
A percentage does the wrong thing to a groom book
Petboost gives you a percentage from 5% to 95%, or a fixed dollar amount. Boarding usually wants the percentage, because the bookings vary from one night to fourteen and the protection should vary with them.
Grooming usually wants the flat amount. Your services sit inside a narrow band, so a percentage that feels right against a $75 puppy tidy is loose change, and the same percentage against a matted doodle is big enough that the owner rings three other places. A fixed $30 reads as a booking fee. A shifting number reads as a price, and owners argue with prices.
Know what the deposit is actually holding before you set it. If the customer cancels later than your notice period allows, you keep your cancellation-fee percentage of the deposit already paid and the rest is refunded, and the unpaid remainder of the booking is never charged. On a $30 deposit with a 50% fee, that is $15. You are not protecting the slot with that. You are recovering the cost of the phone call, which is a reasonable thing to want, as long as you know it is what you bought.
Anything you add on the day sits outside it too. A deposit is taken when the booking is made, so the surcharge you add at the table for a coat worse than booked lands in the balance you collect afterwards, alongside the rest.
Set a deposit on the services that need one
Put a flat deposit on the long jobs and the first visits, and leave the bath and tidy without one.
- Open Services, then Manage on the service and Manage Service.
- On Pricing & Payments, switch on Deposit to override the business default.
- Choose Partial deposit, set Deposit type to Fixed amount, and enter the amount.
- To opt a service out of a business default instead, choose No deposit.
- Select Publish Changes, tick the box in Before You Publish, then select Publish Changes.
Your business default lives under Settings then Pricing & Payments. Each service can disagree with it, and No deposit is a service-level option, so the usual shape is a light default with the bath and tidy opted out, or no default at all with the de-matt and the first-visit consultation opted in. Card on file and payment methods covers how a card gets saved and how to ask for one.
The alternative most groomers should use instead
The alternative is the one worth a longer look. Pre-hold funds places a hold for the appointment total 72 hours before the appointment and charges nothing. If you cancel or mark a no-show and charge the fee, it comes out of the hold. For a book full of regulars who would find a deposit insulting and a no-show fee reasonable, that is a much better fit, and it protects the whole booking rather than a slice of it. Only one applies to a given booking, so it is a choice between them and not a stack.
Either way the card has to exist. Staff cannot key one in, so it arrives through the owner's portal, an online booking, or a membership signup. On an appointment with no card, tap Send SMS on the No card on file alert and the owner gets a link straight to the add-card form.
Before you act: deposits, refunds and cancellation fees are commercial terms between you and your customer, and this is general information rather than legal or financial advice. Check your own terms and your obligations under Australian consumer law before you change them.