Hoppy Appointments gives you flexible ways to handle payment for every service. Whether you want customers to pay in full upfront, leave a deposit, or book completely free, the payment settings control exactly what happens after someone picks a time slot.

This guide explains every payment option, when each one appears, and how each choice affects the customer-facing booking flow.

By the end, you’ll know how to set up:

• 💰 Pay to Book — full payment through Shopify checkout
• 🆓 Book without pay — free bookings without any order being made
• 💸 Partial payments / deposits — collect a deposit now, charge the balance later
• ✅ Automatic vs manual booking confirmation
• 📋 Waitlist behavior for fully booked slots

⚠️ Before You Begin

Payment settings are configured per service, inside the Payment tab.

Before changing payment options, make sure:

• The Hoppy Appointments app is installed
• You have at least one service created
• The service is connected to a Shopify product (the product’s price becomes the booking price)

💡 Every service can use different payment rules. A paid consultation and a free discovery call can live side-by-side with completely different setups.

💰 Payment Type

The first decision in the Payment tab is how customers pay for the service.

Pay to Book

When Pay to Book is selected, customers must complete payment through your regular Shopify checkout before the booking is finalized.

• The customer picks a date and time, fills in the booking form, and is redirected to Shopify checkout
• The booking is created with an abandoned status until payment is confirmed
• Once Shopify confirms payment, the booking is updated to Booked (or needs approval if manual confirmation is enabled)

This is the best choice when you want secure, upfront payment and automatic confirmation tied to checkout 💳

Book without pay

When Book without pay is selected, customers confirm their booking without entering any payment information.

• The customer picks a date and time, fills in the form, and sees a confirmation screen immediately
• No checkout step is required
• The booking is created as Booked or needs approval right away

This is ideal for:

• Free services
• Discovery calls or consultations
• Appointments where customers pay in person
• Bookings handled through a separate invoicing system

ℹ️ You can switch between Pay to Book and Book without pay anytime — nothing else about your service changes.

✅ Confirm / Decline a Booking

Below the payment type, you control whether bookings are accepted automatically or reviewed by your team first.

Automatically accept bookings

New bookings are confirmed instantly.

• For paid bookings → confirmation happens after successful checkout
• For free bookings → confirmation happens immediately after the form is submitted

Do not automatically accept new bookings

New bookings are placed in needs approval status and must be reviewed manually.

• The customer receives an on-hold email instead of a confirmation
• You accept or decline the booking from the Bookings page
• For paid bookings, the customer is still charged at checkout — but the appointment is only finalized after you approve it

⚠️ Important:

Bookings that require approval must be accepted within 24 hours, or they are automatically declined. Make sure someone on your team is monitoring new requests 👀

💸 Partial Payments (Deposits)

ℹ️ This card only appears when Pay to Book is selected.

Partial payments let customers secure their appointment with a deposit instead of paying the full amount upfront. The remaining balance is collected later.

This is useful when you want to:

• Reduce no-shows without asking for full payment immediately
• Make high-value services more accessible
• Lock in a commitment while allowing final payment closer to the appointment date

Enable Partial Payments

Turn on the partial payments toggle to unlock the deposit settings.

Once enabled, the following options appear:

Deposit Amount Type

Choose how the deposit amount is calculated.

Percentage

The deposit is a percentage of the total booking price.

• Example: 30% of a $100 booking = $30 deposit
• If the booking price changes, the deposit scales automatically

Fixed amount

The deposit is a fixed dollar amount.

• Example: $25 regardless of the booking total
• Useful when you want a predictable, consistent deposit for every booking

⚠️ The deposit can never exceed the total booking price. If a fixed deposit is larger than the booking total, the app adjusts it automatically.

Partial Payment Method

Choose how Shopify collects the deposit and stores the remaining balance.

Selling Plans (Recommended)

Selling Plans create a Shopify subscription-style plan attached to your service variants.

• The customer pays only the deposit at checkout
• Shopify securely stores the customer’s payment method as a mandate
• You can charge the remaining balance manually from the Bookings page
• Shopify can also auto-charge the balance after a set number of days

This is the recommended option because the payment method stays on file, making balance collection simple and automatic.

Draft Order

Draft Orders create a manual invoice for the deposit amount.

• A Shopify Draft Order is generated for the deposit
• The customer is redirected to the Draft Order checkout URL
• The remaining balance is collected later by sending a new Draft Order invoice from the admin

This option works well if you prefer to invoice customers manually or your setup doesn’t support Selling Plans.

Auto-Charge the Remaining Balance

ℹ️ This option only appears when Selling Plans is selected.

Enable this option to specify after how many days Shopify should allow you to collect the customer's remaining balance following the initial deposit.

Available Setting

• Charge the remaining balance after checkout → Enter the number of days after the customer's initial payment before the remaining balance becomes available to collect.

The value is always measured in days, as Shopify only supports day-based intervals for Selling Plans.

Once the customer completes checkout, Shopify securely saves their payment method. After the configured number of days has passed, you can manually collect the remaining balance by clicking Charge remaining balance or by sending an invoice from your Shopify Admin. You do not need to collect the payment on the exact day you specify—it simply becomes available from that point onward.

Example

If you set 7 days, Shopify will save the customer's payment method at checkout, and you can begin collecting the remaining balance seven days after the deposit was paid.

Give the Option to Pay Fully or Just the Deposit

Enable Allow full payment to let customers choose between:

• Paying the full amount now
• Paying only the deposit now

If this option is disabled, all customers must pay the deposit.

When enabled, a checkbox appears on the storefront booking form so customers can pick their preferred option.

💡 Important:

If your booking form has no custom questions, the form auto-submits and the customer never sees the deposit/full-payment checkbox. In that case, the default deposit option is used.

To give customers a real choice, add at least one custom question to the booking form.

Multiply by Selected Quantity

ℹ️ This option only appears when Draft Order mode is selected and the deposit type is Fixed amount.

Enable this to multiply the fixed deposit by the number of units booked.

• Example: A $20 fixed deposit × 3 booked slots = $60 deposit

For Selling Plans, Shopify handles quantity multiplication automatically, so this setting is not needed.

📋 Waitlist

The Waitlist card lets customers join a waiting list when your slots are full.

• Enable waitlist → turns the waitlist feature on for this service
• Show waitlist when a slot is fully booked → displays a Join waitlist button directly on time slots that have reached their booking limit

ℹ️ Waitlist requests do not collect payment. When you propose a new time and the customer confirms, the normal paid or free booking flow runs based on the service’s payment settings.

Waitlist is not available for Bundle services.

💡 For a full walkthrough, see the Waitlist documentation.

🛒 How Each Payment Option Behaves on the Storefront

Book without pay — customer flow

1. Customer picks a date and time
2. Customer fills in the booking form
3. Customer clicks Confirm
4. Booking is created immediately
5. Customer sees the success screen

No checkout, no redirect, no payment collected by the app.

Pay to Book (full price) — customer flow

1. Customer picks a date and time
2. Customer fills in the booking form (or it auto-submits if there are no custom questions)
3. The service variant is added to the Shopify cart
4. Customer is redirected to Shopify checkout
5. Customer completes payment
6. Shopify confirms payment and the booking is updated

The booking only becomes confirmed once payment is verified.

Partial payment with Selling Plans — customer flow

1. Customer picks a date and time
2. Customer chooses deposit or full payment (if allowed)
3. The service variant is added to the cart with the Selling Plan applied
4. Customer completes checkout and pays only the deposit
5. Shopify stores the payment mandate
6. The remaining balance must be charged manually later.

Partial payment with Draft Order — customer flow

1. Customer picks a date and time
2. Customer chooses deposit or full payment (if allowed)
3. A Shopify Draft Order is created for the deposit amount
4. Customer is redirected to the Draft Order checkout URL
5. Customer pays the deposit
6. The remaining balance is collected later through a new Draft Order invoice sent from your admin

⚠️ Important Notes & Limitations

• Partial payments only work with Pay to Book. If a service is set to Book without pay, the Partial Payments card is hidden.
• Paid bookings start as abandoned. The booking record is created when the customer submits the form, but the status stays abandoned until Shopify confirms payment through the webhook.
• Manual approval still collects payment. For paid services with manual approval, the customer pays at checkout, but the booking remains needs approval until you accept it.
• Free bookings skip the cart entirely. There is no order created in Shopify for free bookings.
• Partial payments are not supported in Shopify POS. The POS extension supports Pay to Book (adds the full amount to the POS cart) or Book without pay only. Deposits cannot be collected through POS.
• Selling Plans require compatible product setup. Selling Plans attach to the service’s Shopify product variants. If you change variants after enabling partial payments, save the service again to keep everything in sync.
• Charge timing uses checkout date. For Selling Plans, the charge timeline starts from when the customer completes the deposit checkout — not from the appointment date.
• Draft Order deposits use manual invoices. You must send the remaining balance invoice yourself from the Bookings page when using Draft Order mode.
• Live prices are always respected. The app fetches the current Shopify variant price when calculating deposits and remaining balances, so stale prices are never used.

💡 Common Use Cases

Free consultation

• Payment type → Book without pay
• Automatic acceptance → On

Result: Customers book instantly with no payment step.

Paid service with full upfront payment

• Payment type → Pay to Book
• Partial payments → Off
• Automatic acceptance → On

Result: Customers pay the full amount through Shopify checkout and the booking is confirmed automatically.

High-value service with 50% deposit

• Payment type → Pay to Book
• Partial payments → On
• Deposit type → Percentage, 50%
• Partial payment method → Selling Plans
• Allow full payment → Off

Result: Every customer pays a 50% deposit to secure the booking. You collect the remaining 50% manually or through auto-charge.

Flexible deposit or full payment

• Payment type → Pay to Book
• Partial payments → On
• Deposit type → Percentage, 25%
• Partial payment method → Selling Plans
• Allow full payment → On
• Booking form includes at least one custom question

Result: Customers can choose to pay 25% now or the full amount upfront.

Manual approval for paid bookings

• Payment type → Pay to Book
• Automatic acceptance → Off

Result: Customers pay at checkout, but the booking stays needs approval until you review and accept it.

🛠️ Where to Manage Payments After Booking

Once bookings start coming in, you can manage payment actions from the Bookings page.

For bookings paid with a deposit:

• Selling Plans mode → Charge the remaining balance or send the order invoice
• Draft Order mode → Send a remaining balance invoice to the customer

These actions appear automatically in the booking row when a deposit has been paid and a balance is still due.

🎉 Final Result

Once your payment settings are configured:

✅ Customers know exactly what to expect at checkout
✅ Paid bookings flow securely through Shopify checkout
✅ Free bookings are confirmed instantly
✅ Deposits reduce no-shows while keeping bookings accessible
✅ Remaining balances can be collected manually or automatically
✅ Approval workflows give you control over every booking
✅ Your payment rules match how you actually run your business 💼

With the right payment setup, your appointment booking experience feels professional, flexible, and easy for both you and your customers ✨

Updated on: 20/08/2026