Charge the whole course at enrolment. Reserve deposits for the intake that starts more than a month out, where you are asking a family to commit to a Tuesday they cannot yet see in their diary.
A course is not a booking that repeats. It is one product delivered in instalments, and the instalments are not interchangeable. Week three assumes week two happened. That single fact is why the money behaves differently here than it does on a groom or a daycare day, and why advice written for appointments gives you the wrong answer.
A seat is only sellable until the course starts
Work out what a dropout costs and the policy writes itself.
Six weeks at $300 with eight seats is $2,400 of revenue for a course that costs you the same in hall hire and instructor hours whether six dogs turn up or eight. Lose one family in week two and you cannot sell that seat, because nobody wants to join a class that has already covered recall. You have lost $300 from a course whose costs have not moved at all.
Compare that to a groom. A cancelled groom is a gap you refill from the waiting list by lunchtime. There is no waiting list for week two of a six-week course.
That asymmetry is the whole argument. The right time to collect is the last moment the seat is still worth something to somebody else, which is the day enrolment closes. After that you are holding a promise, not an asset.
Where a deposit does earn its place
There is one case where asking for everything up front costs you enrolments, and that is the course you publish early to fill it.
Puppy school is the clearest example. Owners book in the week they collect the puppy, and the class that suits an eight-week-old starting in three weeks has to be advertised now. Asking a family who picked up a puppy yesterday for the full six weeks in one hit is a real barrier, and a partial deposit that holds the seat is the difference between a full class and a class of four.
Then decide what happens to it, and say so when you sell the place. A deposit that is refundable up to the first lesson is a booking fee. A deposit that is not is a commitment. Both are defensible. What is not defensible is deciding which one it was after somebody asks for it back.
Size it against the seat rather than the course. On a $300 intake, $75 is enough that a family checks the dates before they pay it and small enough that they pay it from a phone standing in a vet waiting room, which is where most puppy-school enrolments actually happen. The balance then falls due when the course starts, which is when the owner is committed anyway.
Set the enrolment deposit on the course template
A course takes its deposit from its course template, on the template's Pricing & Payments tab.
- Open Courses, then Manage on the course and Manage Template.
- On Pricing & Payments, switch on Deposit to override the business default.
- Choose Pre-pay in Full, or choose Partial deposit and set the Deposit type and the amount.
- Select Publish Changes, tick the box in Before You Publish, then select Publish Changes.
Partial deposit takes a percentage or a flat amount, and No deposit opts the course out of a business default. A flat figure works better than a percentage on courses, because your intakes are all the same length and the number is easier to say out loud.
Getting the money and the seat to agree
Publish the course, then open enrolments. Staff enrol from Courses, and owners can only enrol themselves when the template has Online booking switched on, on its Booking Settings tab, so a course you are filling by phone stays off the public list until you are ready. Publishing courses covers the scheduling step and the availability check that catches an instructor who is not free on week four.
Enrolment creates an appointment for every session at once, and the course invoice sits on lesson one. That is the part worth watching, because a card that declines there does not stop the pet appearing on the other five lessons. The roster shows the payment state, and you either chase the card or void that invoice and cancel the enrolment. Voiding alone leaves the pet enrolled.
Capacity behaves the same way. Each enrolment takes one place across the whole course rather than per session, so a family with two puppies takes two seats and the class fills at six families rather than eight. Decide whether your class size is dogs or households before you publish, because the number you type is dogs.
Before you act: enrolment terms, refunds and cancellation rights are commercial terms between you and your customer, and this is general information rather than legal advice. Check your own terms and your obligations under Australian consumer law before you set a non-refundable deposit.