Set up card guarantee rules

Card guarantees let you hold a guest's card on file without taking payment at booking. If a guest cancels late or does not show up, your team can choose whether to charge the saved card.

Card guarantees vs deposits#

• Deposits — Paid upfront at booking and shown on the reservation for your team to deduct from the bill.
• Card guarantees — No charge at booking. A card is saved securely and fees are only charged if staff choose to apply them later.

Creating rules#

1. 1

   Click Add Rule

   Choose Card guarantee. A card is saved and charged only for a late cancellation or no-show.

2. 2

   Choose when it applies

   Set weekly recurring days, a date range or a specific date, plus optional hours, experience and party size.

3. 3

   Choose Charged as

   Per guest multiplies the fee by the party size; Per booking is one flat amount.

4. 4

   Set your fees

   Add a Late cancellation fee, a No-show fee, or both. Set each to 0 to disable that fee type.

5. 5

   Save

   A new rule is active. Use the switch on the saved rule to turn it off.

Rule conditions#

Card guarantee rules can match bookings by:

• Schedule — Weekly recurring, date range or specific date
• Time window — e.g. Friday and Saturday evenings
• Party size — e.g. groups of 3 or more
• Experience — e.g. only your Sunday Roast service period (shown when you have service periods)

When several rules could apply, a rule set for the booking's experience (service period) wins first. After that the most specific rule wins: Specific date, then Date range, then Weekly recurring. If two rules are equally specific, the newer rule is used. A matching deposit is used instead of a card guarantee.

Late cancellation cutoff#

The late-cancellation fee only applies when staff cancel a booking after its cancellation cutoff. By default that's your Guest Edit/Cancellation Cutoff in Settings → Reservation Policies, but each rule can set its own Cancellation cutoff (for example 2 days before, for a set-menu evening). The cutoff is saved onto each booking when it's made.

How it works for guests#

When a booking matches an active card guarantee rule, the guest completes a secure Stripe card-save step before the reservation is confirmed. No payment is taken at this stage.

• Online widget bookings — The guest saves their card in the booking flow.
• Staff-created bookings — When your team adds the booking with Require card guarantee on, the save-card link and QR code appear straight away, and the link is emailed to the guest if you entered an email. Later, open the reservation and click Save-card link to copy, open, email or show the QR code again.

Charging fees#

Fees are never charged automatically. Your team decides whether to charge when updating the reservation:

• Cancel reservation — If a saved card is on file and the cancellation is after the cutoff, you can charge the late-cancellation fee or release the card without charging.
• Mark as no-show — If a no-show fee is configured, you can charge it or choose not to charge.

If a charge fails, open the reservation details to retry the charge or mark the fee as not charged. The guest is emailed when a fee is successfully charged.