How to take online payments for appointments and classes

Offer only the methods you can actually handle. Card online, bank transfer with a QR code and cash on site cover almost every customer, but each behaves differently: when the money arrives, what it costs and who checks it.

A new customer booking a one-off treatment is a natural fit for card payment. Regulars who come every month often prefer to pay on site or by transfer. You don't have to pick one: the customer chooses from the methods you turn on, in the order you set. When you enter a booking by hand, you can also choose Card on site if you have a terminal.

If you accept card payments through Resovu, you pay Stripe's actual fee plus the Resovu fee for your plan: 1% on Free, 0.5% on Starter, 0.3% on Professional, 0.2% on Business and 0% on Enterprise. QR bank transfers and cash carry no Resovu fee. Both card fees are deducted from the payment itself, so no separate bill arrives.

Stripe's fee depends on the card (standard, premium or from outside the EEA) and on the currency. At the moment of payment it is withheld at the rate of the most expensive card. On the 2nd of each month you get a statement of all fees, and anything withheld above Stripe's real fee comes back to you in one transfer.

Example: a €60 massage paid by card on the Starter plan. The Resovu fee is €0.30. Stripe's fee is deducted from the same payment, and its exact amount is listed in the monthly statement. The rest goes to your connected Stripe account and reaches your bank about a week later. Plan prices are on the pricing page.

A transfer suits customers who don't want to type in card details and businesses that want no fee per payment. After booking, the customer sees a QR code with the amount and payment reference and pays from their banking app in a few seconds.

The QR format follows your business country: QR Platba for Czech businesses, PAY by square for Slovak ones and EPC QR for euro payments in the SEPA area. Elsewhere the customer gets the IBAN, amount and reference as text. Transfers work on every plan, including Free, and don't need Stripe.

The catch is that Resovu doesn't see your bank account. When the money arrives, you open the booking and click Paid. If unpaid bookings should be released on their own, turn on Require payment up front and set how long to hold the spot, from 0.5 to 720 hours (24 by default). A booking made on Friday at 18:00 with a 48-hour hold has to be paid by Sunday 18:00, otherwise it is cancelled and the customer gets an email.

If you take deposits (for services from the Business plan), the customer can also pay just the deposit by transfer: turn on Take the deposit by bank transfer. Such a booking is never cancelled automatically after the deadline: you get a notice that the deposit hasn't arrived and decide yourself. The money may simply be stuck over a weekend, and cancelling a customer who has already paid would only cause trouble. The payment reference tells you which booking a transfer belongs to.

Ask for a deposit when a no-show would leave a long, expensive gap; ask for the full price when there is nothing left to settle on site. Three set-ups are common:

• Deposit – part of the price paid at booking, by card or by QR transfer. Example: 30 % of a €120 colouring is €36, and the remaining €84 is paid at the salon. Deposits for services are available from the Business plan.
• Full price by card – the customer pays everything on Stripe's payment page. The booking waits as Pending; if nobody pays within 30 minutes, the slot is released. Works on every plan.
• Full price by transfer – Require payment up front holds the slot until your deadline. Also on every plan.

Classes and courses with a fixed number of places are a good fit for full payment, because a place freed an hour before the start is hard to sell again. For a regular haircut, a deposit or no prepayment at all is often enough. The deposit is counted from the price after discounts, and a fixed deposit never exceeds the price.

Set your cancellation rules before the first payment comes in, because refunds follow them automatically.

You set a cancellation deadline in hours. From the Professional plan you can add tiered fees, for example 48 hours = 0 %, 24 hours = 50 %, 0 hours = 100 %. A €100 booking paid by card and cancelled 20 hours before the start then costs €50, and €50 goes back to the card on its own. Stripe usually gets the money to the card within 5–10 business days.

A fee can only be kept from money paid online in advance. Cash and transfers you return yourself, from your own account. If you'd rather keep the money in the business, turn on Issue credit for timely cancellations in Settings → Booking (Starter plan and up): a customer who cancels in time gets a personal discount code worth what they paid, valid 180 days by default.

Yes. Card details are typed into Stripe's payment page, never into your website or into Resovu. Stripe is certified as a PCI Service Provider Level 1, the strictest level in the card industry, so you neither store nor process card numbers.

Disputes are what stays with you. If a customer disputes a payment with their bank, the amount is held from your Stripe account until the bank decides, and Stripe's dispute fees are the business's cost. You prevent most of them with clear cancellation terms and a business name the customer recognises; when a refund is fair, give it quickly. Card payments run through Resovu's Stripe account, so if a dispute does come, Resovu answers it in Stripe and asks you for evidence: the booking detail, the confirmation email and proof that the customer came.