Our guide to checking out clients and processing payments covers a straightforward checkout. This article covers everything else — the discount, the customer paying half now, the payment you keyed in wrong, and the refund.
The cart
When you check out a booking you'll see three figures:
Total — what's owed, after any discount.
Left to pay — what's still outstanding as you add payments.
Change Due — appears when a payment exceeds what's owed, so you know what to hand back.
Applying a discount
Discounts are applied in the cart, before you take payment.
Open Set Discount.
Choose a Discount Type — Percentage or Fixed Amount.
Enter the Discount Percentage or Discount Amount.
Add a Reason — optional, but see below.
The Total updates immediately, and payments are taken against the discounted figure.
💡 Always record a reason. It's the difference between a discount you can explain and one that just looks like money missing. When your sales figures are down and you're working out why, "20% — first visit offer" tells you something; a blank field tells you nothing. It also makes discounting visible, which quietly discourages the habit forming.
👀 Percentage or fixed? Percentage scales with the service, so it stays fair across a price list. Fixed amounts are better for a specific promotion — £10 off a first visit — where you want the same value regardless of what they book.
Splitting a payment
A customer can pay with more than one method — part card, part cash, a voucher plus the balance. There's no limit.
Choose the first Payment Method: Cash, Card, Bank Transfer or Voucher.
Enter the Amount — this doesn't have to be the full total.
Click Add Payment.
Watch Left to pay, then repeat with the next method until it reaches zero.
Click Complete Booking.
Each payment can carry a Note — useful for a voucher number or a bank reference.
When they're not paying it all today
If the customer is paying some now and the rest later, add what they've paid and use Save (unpaid) rather than Complete Booking.
The payments are recorded against the booking and the balance stays outstanding. Come back to it when they settle up, add the final payment, then Complete Booking.
👀 Deposits already paid count automatically. If they paid a deposit when booking, it's already recorded — you're only collecting the balance.
Fixing a mistake
Keyed in the wrong amount, or picked the wrong method?
Before you complete the booking: click the bin icon next to the payment to remove it, then add it again correctly. Nothing has been charged to a card at this point unless you took a card payment, so there's nothing to reverse.
After you've completed it: a card payment needs a refund (below). A cash or voucher entry recorded by mistake is a bookkeeping correction — contact support if you need a completed booking's payments adjusted.
💡 Get into the habit of checking Left to pay reads zero before clicking Complete Booking. It's the quickest way to catch a mistyped amount.
Refunding a payment
Refunds are issued from the booking's payments list.
Open the booking and view its Booking Payments.
Choose to refund the payment.
Confirm at Are you sure? — the warning is accurate, you cannot undo this action.
The payment's status changes to Refunded.
👀 Only card payments can be refunded through Styler. Refunds are processed by Stripe against the original card transaction, so there's nothing for us to reverse on a cash, bank transfer or voucher payment — you'll need to settle those with the customer directly and keep your own record.
👀 Only paid payments can be refunded. If a payment failed or is still pending, there's nothing to refund and you'll see an error. Check its status first.
If a refund fails, the message usually comes straight from Stripe — it'll say why. The most common cause is insufficient funds in your Stripe balance, which happens when you've been paid out since taking the payment.
FAQs
❓ How long does a refund take to reach the customer?
That's down to Stripe and the customer's bank, typically several working days. It leaves your Stripe balance immediately.
❓ Can I refund part of a payment?
Refunds apply to a payment as recorded. If you took the money as several separate payments, you can refund them individually — another reason to record a split payment as a split rather than one lump sum.
❓ Do discounts show in my reports?
Your Sales figures reflect what you actually took, so a discounted booking contributes the discounted amount. See Using Reports in the Styler Hub.
❓ A refunded payment still shows on the booking. Is that right?
Yes. The payment stays on the record marked Refunded rather than disappearing, so you keep an accurate history of what happened.