How do I take booking deposits?

Switch on booking deposits on What guests pay — per person or per booking — set the amount and minimum party size, and add tiered amounts by party size.

Switch deposits on in the Deposit section of Settings → Payments and deposits → What guests pay — customers then pay a deposit by card when they book online, and the money goes straight to your connected Stripe account.

Deposits are Available on Plus plan and above, and the owner must connect Stripe first (connecting is owner-only) — the Require deposits switch stays off until your Stripe connection can take payments. Only Owners and Admins can open the page.

Switching deposits on

Go to Settings → Payments and deposits → What guests pay and find the Deposit section.
Switch on Require deposits. A pop-up explains that this adds a deposit and refund clause to the terms your customers agree to when they book — click Turn on.
Set the amount, and whether it's Per person (the default — charged for every guest, e.g. 4 guests × £5 = £20 deposit) or Per booking (one deposit for the whole booking, whatever the party size, e.g. £20 a booking). The row is called Amount per person or Amount per booking to match. Leave it at £0 and no deposit is collected — the page warns you.
Set the Minimum party size. Only parties this size or larger pay a deposit; set it to 1 to charge on every booking.
Set when the money comes back, in Cancellations and refunds on the same page — see When do customers get their deposit back?
Click Save changes.

Require deposits applies every day. Rules for particular days and times are in Deposit: when you ask for one, which also lists the dates with a deposit of their own (Event deposits, set on Special dates) — see How do I take deposits only on busy days or special dates?

Different amounts for bigger parties

Switch on Tiered deposits by party size to charge different amounts by party-size range. It seeds three example rules (parties of 1–4 → £5 per person, 5–8 → £10, 9–99 → £15), listed under Your party-size rules — each rule has Min, Max and an amount, plus Add rule for more. The amounts follow your per person or per booking choice.

Things to watch:

Tiered rules override the standard amount.
The first rule a party size matches decides what they pay; where ranges overlap, the page warns you.
A party bigger than every rule pays your top rule's rate, so no booking slips through without a deposit.
A party size inside your range that no rule covers pays no deposit — the page warns you about gaps like that.

Where it applies

Online — asked for on your booking page and website widget.
Your team — never taken automatically: when a booking you add needs one, you're offered a payment link to send.
Walk-ins and the Waitlist — never asked for one.

Once a deposit is paid, a customer can make their party smaller online, but to make it bigger they need to contact you.

When rules meet

Only one payment is asked for per booking: "Pay in full beats a deposit; a deposit beats a card to hold." (Dishes paid for while booking come first of all.) Where pay in full applies, those bookings pay in full instead of leaving a deposit, and a booking that pays a deposit is never also asked to save a card for no-show protection — the deposit covers the no-show risk. See What can customers pay when they book?

What the customer sees

The deposit is charged immediately at booking — a card payment step (Apple Pay and Google Pay supported) appears before the booking is confirmed. It isn't a hold: the money arrives in your Stripe account right away, and refunds follow your cancellation policy. To see what a particular booking would pay, use What a booking pays at the top of the page — see What can customers pay when they book? (What guests pay).

If your plan changes to one without deposits while Require deposits is on, customers aren't asked for one; the switch can still be turned off.

Related: When do customers get their deposit back? · How do I take deposits only on busy days or special dates? · How do pay-in-full bookings work? · What does the customer see when paying a deposit or saving a card?