Deposits
How much deposit to charge for an appointment
There is no reputable public average, on this page, for what a salon or barber should charge as a deposit. None is invented here. Pick an amount you would actually keep, and show that amount before the client pays.
No card to start. The trial is 7 days and includes open bookings, then $39 a month or $390 a year. If it ends with no card, new bookings close until a plan is active.
Educational information, not legal advice.
Start from the empty slot
The useful number is what you keep when that time stays empty. A short service with a similar price, such as a cut, is easier as a flat amount. A service whose price moves, such as color, is easier as a percent of that service. A flat $20 is a different share of a $48 cut than of a long custom visit.
Slotward will not save a deposit above the service price. A flat deposit has to be at least $0.50. A percent has to be a whole number from 1 to 100, and the resulting amount also has to be at least $0.50. Those are limits in the product, not a recommended rate.
The hair salon preset starts a haircut at a $20 deposit on a $48 price, color at 25% of a $150 price, and a kids cut at $15 on a $28 price. The barber preset starts a haircut at $15 on a $35 price, a beard trim at $10 on a $25 price, and a cut and beard at 30% of a $55 price. Change them after the shop exists. They are starting values in the product, not a survey of what shops charge.
Say the refund rule next to the price
The FTC's 1983 Policy Statement on Deception says the Commission finds a practice deceptive when a representation, omission, or practice is likely to mislead a consumer acting reasonably in the circumstances, and the practice is material, meaning it is likely to affect the consumer's decision. The statement lists misleading price claims among practices found misleading in specific cases.
FTC staff's 2013 .com Disclosures guide says disclosures that are required should be clear and conspicuous, and that advertisers should display them before consumers decide to buy, for example before they add something to a cart. It also says a disclosure is more likely to be noticed beside the claim it qualifies, and that a hyperlink used for a disclosure should be labeled so people can tell what it leads to. The guide is staff guidance about advertising. It is not a salon deposit statute.
On a booking page, the facts that change the decision are the deposit amount, whether it comes back, and the hour window. Put those in the same view as the price, before the client pays. A link that only says "policy" does not say the deposit can be kept.
Sentence to put next to the price
Deposit: [amount or percent]. Service price: [price]. Cancel more than [hours] hours before the start and the deposit is refunded. Cancel inside that window, or miss the appointment, and the deposit is kept. If the shop cancels, the deposit is refunded. The window saved when you book is the window for this appointment.
A deposit collected now is not a hold for later
Stripe's documentation on placing a hold, read November 9, 2026, says an online card authorization is usually valid for 7 days. For card-not-present payments, the customer-initiated window in that table is 7 days for Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover. Visa's merchant-initiated window is printed as 5 days, and the footnote says the exact window is 4 days and 18 hours. If the authorization expires before you capture it, the funds are released and the payment status changes to canceled.
Slotward charges the deposit when the client books. It does not store a card to run a second fee after a no-show. The charge is on your connected Stripe account. Slotward does not take a fee out of the deposit. A later no-show fee would depend on an authorization that may already have expired, which is the window in the Stripe table above.
Tattoo sessions are a different page
A custom tattoo session is hard to refill, and the tattoo preset uses a longer cancellation window than the salon and barber presets. That policy is already written up. Use deposits for tattoo sessions. This page does not repeat it.
Questions
Is there a standard deposit percentage?
Not one that this page will quote. Published salon averages were not found in a source worth citing, so none is printed here. Pick an amount you would keep, at or under the service price.
Should the deposit be the full service price?
Slotward allows 100% when that amount is not above the service price. A full deposit is easier to justify on a long visit you cannot resell. A smaller flat amount is easier to explain on a short cut. That is a judgment about your book, not a rule.
Where should the client read the amount?
Next to the price, before they pay, including whether a cancellation is refunded. The FTC staff guide linked above says disclosures belong before the buying decision, not behind an unlabeled link.
Sources
Stripe, the Code of Federal Regulations, and the Federal Register page were read on November 9, 2026. The journal articles are cited by their publication. Pages change. Recheck a live source before you rely on it.
Montgomery Appworks LLC · 9905 S Pennsylvania Ave Ste A, Oklahoma City, OK 73159