In this guide
A few settings change what a customer actually pays and sees when they book. None are required, but each solves a different problem.
Deposits
A deposit is a small amount charged at the time of booking, set per service as a fixed amount or a percentage under Services → [service] → Payment settings. It filters out speculative bookings before they take a slot - someone who won’t commit a card usually wasn’t going to show up anyway. See Reducing no-shows with reminders and Card Protection for how it compares to the lower-friction alternative, Card Protection.
Service Variants
If your team charges a different price or duration for the same service - a senior stylist’s cut costs more, or takes longer, than a junior’s - a Service Variant lets you set that per staff member instead of creating a duplicate service for each person. Customers see the right price the moment they pick a staff member. Full detail in Per-staff pricing with Service Variants.
Combo pricing
A combo bundles a few services together under one fixed price - a cut and a beard trim for a flat rate, say. Set the bundle’s price under the combo itself rather than per underlying service; that fixed price is what the customer sees and pays, and it takes priority over any per-staff Service Variant pricing on the individual services inside it.
Choosing between them
Deposits and Card Protection are about protecting a slot against no-shows. Service Variants and combos are about pricing the work correctly - by who does it, or by what’s bundled together. They’re independent settings and most businesses end up using some combination of all of them.