Take booking fees

Owner

Updated 27 September 2026 3 min read

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A booking fee is a payment the patient makes when they book online, to secure their slot. It comes off the price of the treatment, so the patient pays the rest at their appointment. You set a booking fee for each appointment type.

Before you start

You need to be the clinic owner.
Stripe must be connected with Card payments enabled ticked. See Connect Stripe to take payments.

Steps

Open the account menu at the bottom of the sidebar and select Clinic settings.
Under Scheduling, select Appointment types.
Select the edit button next to an appointment type, or select New type to create one.
Enter the full treatment price in Price (£).
Enter the amount to take at booking in Booking fee (£). Leave it at 0 for no booking fee.
Select Save changes (or Create type for a new type).

Then set how cancellations are handled in Booking policy. See Set your booking policy.

What happens next

When a patient books this appointment type online:

Their booking summary shows the Total price and Due today (booking fee), and explains that their card is saved so the clinic can charge a fee if they don’t attend.
They select Continue to payment and pay on a secure Stripe page. The page states your cancellation terms.
Their slot is held for 15 minutes while they pay. The appointment shows as Pending in your diary until the fee is paid.
Once they’ve paid, the appointment is confirmed and the patient gets their booking confirmation, which says the booking fee has been received and comes off the total.

If the patient leaves the payment page without paying, their portal shows the countdown and a Pay booking fee button so they can finish. If 15 minutes pass without payment, the slot is released for others to book.

How cancellations affect the fee

Who cancels, and when	What happens to the booking fee
Your clinic cancels	Refunded in full, automatically
Patient cancels outside your cancellation window	Refunded automatically if you’ve turned on Automatically refund early cancellations. Otherwise the patient is told you’ll normally refund it, and you refund it yourself
Patient cancels inside your cancellation window	Kept. It isn’t refunded, and shows as Kept (late cancellation)

Good to know

Booking fees are taken on online bookings made by patients. Appointments your team books in Clinicify don’t take a booking fee.
You can set the booking fee to the full price. The patient is then told they’ve paid in full with nothing left to pay on the day.
The card saved at booking is what lets you charge a no-show fee later.
If Stripe isn’t fully set up, patients are booked in without paying the fee.
Selecting Confirm appointment on a pending booking confirms it without the fee being paid.
A kept booking fee counts towards Paid so far on the appointment, because the patient paid it and your clinic holds it. A fee that was never paid is not marked as kept.
If a patient finishes paying somewhere they aren’t signed in to your patient portal (another browser, for example), they’re taken to a confirmation page in your portal that doesn’t need them to sign in.

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