Booking settings define how customers book with you online. Cancellation rules define what applies when an appointment is called off.
Both are part of PRO. Owner and managers may change booking settings; only the owner may change cancellation rules.
The booking settings
- Start times
- The grid appointments can start on: every 5, 10, 15 or 30 minutes. 15 minutes is the default. The same grid applies when dragging in the calendar.
- Short-notice bookings
- How much lead time an online booking needs at minimum. The default is 60 minutes; 0 minutes up to 7 days are possible. 0 means bookable right away.
- Booking horizon
- How far ahead customers can book. The default is 60 days; 1 to 365 days are possible.
Pick one of the four listed values for start times. Other values are currently rejected when saving.
Buffers before and after a service are not a general setting; they belong to the individual service.
There are no booking requests with approval: an online booking is confirmed immediately and appears in the calendar right away. The “confirm bookings automatically” switch currently has no effect.
What can be booked online
A service can only be booked online if your business uses PRO, the service is set to bookable online and at least one person with working hours is assigned to it.
There is no switch that excludes an individual person from online booking. A person's visibility on your public profile only controls whether they appear on the team page.
Deposit or prepayment
What you need
- A set up and activated account for online payments
- Pay at the salon
- The default. Nothing is charged online; payment happens on site.
- Deposit
- Part of the amount is paid online at booking, as a percentage or a fixed amount.
- Full prepayment
- The whole amount is paid online at booking.
You set one rule for the whole business and can override it per service. With several services in one booking: if one of them requires full prepayment, the entire amount is due. Otherwise the individual deposits are added up, at most to the total.
Deposit and prepayment require an activated payment account. Without it, the setting cannot be saved. Customers pay by card or TWINT, and the money goes to your business.
When payment happens online, Stylingcorner holds the appointment for 12 minutes. If no payment arrives in that time, the hold expires and the slot becomes free again. A customer can have at most three such holds open at once.
The “deposit” field in the service editor is left over from an earlier version and does nothing. Real deposits are configured through the payment rule only.
Setting cancellation rules
- Online cancellation allowed
- Whether customers may cancel themselves. If it is off, you can still cancel at any time.
- Free cancellation window
- How many hours before the start customers can cancel free of charge. The default is 24 hours; 0 to 720 hours are possible.
- Rule for late cancellation
- Full refund, keep the whole amount paid, keep a fixed amount, or keep a percentage.
Stylingcorner generates the text customers see before booking from your setting. You do not have to write it yourself, and it is available in every supported language.
There is no separate no-show fee. Also keep two things apart: the cancellation rules here decide what is charged. The free-text cancellation note on your Marketplace profile explains it to customers in your own words and has no financial effect — but on PRO it has to be filled in before you can publish your profile.
Why a change is never retroactive
At the moment of booking, your cancellation rules are stored as a copy attached to that appointment. From then on exactly that copy applies to it, even if you change your rules later.
This protects both sides: customers know what they agreed to, and you do not have to reconcile a rule change with old bookings. New bookings pick up the new rule immediately.
What happens on cancellation
- If nothing was paid online, nothing is charged and nothing is collected — regardless of timing.
- If your business cancels, an amount paid online is always refunded in full.
- If the customer cancels within the free window, the amount is refunded in full.
- If they cancel later, your rule for late cancellations applies. At most the amount actually paid can be kept.
Customers can cancel right up to the appointment; after the window, only the financial consequence changes, not the possibility. Before cancelling, Stylingcorner PRO shows you a preview with the calculated amount.
If a cancellation leads to a refund, only the owner may trigger it. If payment did not go through Stylingcorner but was cash or your own terminal, you refund it yourself and record that here.