How do I charge no-show fees?

Save a customer's card at booking (every day, or only on the days, times and dates you choose) and charge a fee — per booking or per guest, after a reversible safety delay — when your team deliberately mark a no-show.

No-show protection saves a customer's card when they book online — nothing is charged at booking — and lets you charge a fee if they deliberately fail to turn up. Set it up in the Card to hold section of Settings → Payments and deposits → What guests pay.

It's Available on Plus plan and above, needs Stripe connected (connecting is owner-only), and only Owners and Admins can open the page.

Switching it on

• Go to Settings → Payments and deposits → What guests pay and, in Card to hold, switch on Enable no-show protection. A pop-up explains this adds a no-show fee clause to your customer terms — click Turn on.
• Set the No-show fee, and whether it's Per booking (the default — one flat fee for the whole party) or Per guest (a party of four pays four times the fee). Leave it at £0 and protection does nothing — the page warns you.
• Set the Minimum party size — only parties this size or larger are asked to save a card. Set 1 to apply to every online booking.
• Set the Safety delay before charging (0–168 hours; the default is 3). After a booking is marked a no-show, the fee stays pending for this window — re-seating the customer or restoring the booking cancels it. Set 0 to charge almost straight away.
• Switch on Card required to complete booking (below) — without it, no card is saved and nothing can ever be charged.
• Click Save changes.

Only on certain days, times or dates

Under More options in Card to hold:

• Days and times — ask for a card only on the days and times you choose, say Friday and Saturday dinner: click Add day/time rule, pick the day, and leave All day on or set the times. With no rules here, a card is asked for every day.
• Special dates — Christmas Day, Hogmanay or any busy night can hold a card with its own fee and party size, or hold no card that day. That's set with the date's other rules on Settings → Bookings → Special dates (the date's Card to hold); this row shows what's set, with a link there. A special date that holds a card asks for one even when Enable no-show protection is off, and its fee follows your per booking or per guest choice.

"A special date beats your day-and-time rules, which beat your everyday rules."

The two extra switches

• Also charge for late cancellations (default off; in Cancellations and refunds on the same page) — the same fee applies if a customer cancels inside your cancellation deadline, not just when they vanish. It only ever applies to a cancellation made by the customer themselves — a cancellation your team records from the dashboard never charges the customer. This only works once you've set a Cancellation deadline in Settings → Bookings → When people can book, under Cancelling and changing online — with no deadline, every cancellation counts as on time and the fee never applies (the page warns you). A customer cancelling online inside the window isn't charged blind: their manage-booking page shows a Late-cancellation fee applies dialog naming the exact amount, and the cancellation only goes through if they press Cancel and pay the fee (Keep booking backs out with nothing charged). If the booking has no chargeable saved card — or this switch is off — the customer can't cancel online inside the window at all and is asked to call you instead. Unlike a no-show fee, a late-cancellation fee is taken straight away (a cancellation is final, so there's no reversal window). It is never charged on top of booking money you're already keeping.
• Card required to complete booking (default off) — when on, qualifying customers must save a card before their booking is confirmed, on both your booking page and the embedded widget. When off, customers aren't asked for a card at all: their bookings aren't protected and can't be charged a no-show or late-cancellation fee. The section's headline says so — "On, but no card is asked for" — so it's never a surprise. You can't save the page with a card required and a £0 fee (it would block every online booking while charging nothing).

How the fee is actually charged

Switching no-show protection off also stops queued fees whose payment request has not started. Requests already processing are checked with the payment provider; they are not treated as cancelled or unpaid without a confirmed outcome. Completed charges keep their normal refund options. The booking shows when a queued fee was stopped or a payment still needs checking.

Only a member of your team deliberately marking the booking as a no-show and choosing to charge ever arms the fee (the Who can charge it row says so) — the automatic no-show system never charges, and a customer who showed up is never charged. Arming the charge asks you to confirm your password. After the safety delay the saved card is charged and the customer is emailed. If their card is declined, the fee isn't collected — you're alerted so you can chase it manually; it is never retried automatically. A strict fraud rule you set in your own Stripe account (Stripe's Radar rules) can also block the charge — it's treated just like a declined card.

The card is only held while the booking is live. As a deliberate privacy protection, the customer's saved card is released automatically the moment their booking finishes — marked completed or cleared, or cancelled. That means a fee can only be charged by marking the no-show directly: once a booking has been completed or cleared, switching it to a no-show afterwards can't charge anything, because the card has already been released. Marking a no-show itself never releases the card, so the charge decision at that moment works as normal.

Only online bookings are ever asked for a card (your booking page and website widget) — bookings your team takes, walk-ins and the waitlist never are. "Pay in full beats a deposit; a deposit beats a card to hold": bookings that already pay — a deposit or a pay-in-full booking — won't also be asked to save a card; the payment covers the no-show risk, and the fee never applies to a paid-in-full booking. A charged fee can be refunded later from the booking (password confirmation, or a manager's PIN approval).

Related: How do I mark a no-show (and charge the fee)? · When is a no-show fee actually taken? · When can customers book? · What does the customer see when paying a deposit or saving a card?

A failed card refund after a no-show fee

Open Payments → Fee payment reviews (also available on the booking). The review shows money returned by Stripe, completed repayments recorded by your venue, and the exact amount still outstanding. Current and earlier fee payments stay separate.

If Stripe confirms the original refund failed and the money returned to the venue balance, an owner or a manager explicitly granted Record completed no-show fee repayments can record a bank transfer or cash repayment after the customer has received it. Enter the exact completed amount, payment date, a unique transaction or receipt reference, the reason and the customer's agreement. Review the details, then confirm again with your password or an authorised manager's PIN. Do not enter bank details, card numbers or contact information in the reference or reason.

ResoFlow records that completed repayment; it does not send a bank transfer or cash. Partial repayments leave the remaining amount in the review queue. A recorded venue repayment never becomes a Stripe refund, and the original failed refund stays in the payment history. If Stripe later reports conflicting money, the review keeps both amounts visible so you can investigate before any further action.