Deposits and advance payments

If your business suffers from frequent no-shows (customers who book and never turn up) or offers expensive services where a no-show hurts, you can require a deposit up front. The customer pays online, and the payment confirms the booking automatically.

When to turn deposits on

tpago is the only way to collect

To collect online you need three things:

1. The Online payments with tpago module turned on for your business. It’s Paraguay only, comes at no extra cost and we switch it on by request; new businesses start without it. Ask for it from More features in the dashboard menu, with Ask to turn on (it reaches us on WhatsApp; see More features). Until it’s on, the dashboard doesn’t show the Online payments (tpago) menu entry, the Online payments (deposit / prepay) section in Settings or each service’s deposit.
2. A Bancard/tpago merchant account in your business’s name, with your credentials. The money goes to that account, not to Citauno.
3. The “Accept online payments” checkbox ticked in Settings.

Setting up tpago

Go to Online payments (tpago) in the dashboard menu:

1. Enter the four credentials Bancard/tpago gave you: public key, private key, commerce code and branch code.
2. Copy the payment confirmation (callback) URL the screen shows and register it in the tpago panel. Without that step, payments are charged but the booking never confirms itself.
3. Save and tap Test connection: it validates your credentials against tpago without saving them. Not required, but worth doing.

There is also a sandbox mode for testing without moving real money.

No Bancard merchant account yet?

You can apply with the Bancard adhesion form: fill it in online, download the PDF and send it to your Bancard contact, noting that it’s to integrate with Citauno. Since Citauno is already integrated with Bancard’s platform, mentioning it speeds up onboarding.

Until you have tpago, leave “Accept online payments” off and use the Manual confirmation mode: the booking comes in pending, you arrange the deposit by transfer, and you confirm it by hand from the dashboard. It’s more work, but it works from day one.

Turning advance payment on

Two different things live on the same Settings screen, and they’re often confused:

• The Confirmation mode (Auto / Manual / Deposit required), which decides whether a booking comes in confirmed or pending.
• The “Online payments (deposit / prepay)” section, which is what actually defines how much money is charged at booking time.

The second one is what makes the pay button appear. The Deposit required mode charges nothing by itself: a booking with no deposit to pay comes in pending, just like with Manual. And a booking that does owe a deposit comes in pending until it’s paid, whatever the mode. In Settings, section “Online payments (deposit / prepay)”:

1. Tick “Accept online payments”.
2. Under “What to charge at booking”, pick one of the four options:

3. Save.

A different deposit per service

Each service’s form has a “Deposit for this service” block with four options: Use business setting (the normal one), Percentage of price, Fixed amount and No deposit.

It covers the common case: a general policy of “Optional”, with a mandatory deposit only on the two or three expensive services. If a booking mixes services, each line contributes its own share and the total deposit is the sum.

What the customer sees

1. They book normally (service → professional → time → details).
2. On the confirmation screen a green box appears with the amount and the pay buttons:
   • If there’s a deposit and it’s less than the total, they see two buttons: “Pay deposit Gs. 45.000” and “Pay total Gs. 150.000”.
   • If the policy is full payment, they see a single button for the total: “Pay Gs. 150.000”.
3. They tap it and go to tpago’s payment page.
4. They pay there.
5. tpago notifies Citauno, the booking flips to confirmed on its own, and the customer gets the confirmation email.

That same payment box reappears on the booking’s link and on the booking’s detail page inside the customer’s account. If they’ve already paid the deposit, it reads “Your appointment is confirmed. You can pay the remaining Gs. 105.000 whenever you like”, with a single button for what’s left: “Pay Gs. 105.000” (amounts always render with the currency’s own format, whatever the interface language).

The payment confirms the booking even if your confirmation mode is manual: the payment is the confirmation.

What happens if they don’t pay

• The booking stays pending.
• It holds the slot on the calendar in the meantime.
• It’s rejected automatically after 24 hours. Citauno checks pending bookings once an hour. Once 24 hours have passed since the booking was made and what has been paid still doesn’t cover the deposit, it rejects the booking, releases the slot and sends the customer the cancellation email with the reason “The deposit was not paid in time, so the time slot was released.” In practice that happens between 24 and 25 hours after booking.

Two details of that rule:

• The 24 hours count from the booking, not from the appointment. If someone books a slot a few hours away and doesn’t pay, the booking stays pending until the window runs out, even after the appointment time has passed: deal with those yourself.
• Bookings are only rejected while your business can collect online (the module on, “Accept online payments” ticked and your tpago account working). If you turn online payments off, the ones waiting on a deposit stay pending for you to confirm or reject.

You can still release one yourself before the 24 hours are up:

1. Review the pending ones under Bookings (or on the calendar).
2. Reject or cancel the ones that weren’t paid.
3. The slot is freed and the customer gets the cancellation email.

Cancellations and refunds

What you do today to return a deposit:

1. Cancel the booking in Citauno (to free the slot and notify the customer).
2. Issue the refund out of band: from your Bancard/tpago panel, or by bank transfer to the customer.
3. Note what you returned wherever you keep your books. In Citauno the payment will keep showing as collected, because that’s what happened on your side.

Since there’s no automatic refund, your cancellation policy is what sets expectations. Write it in Settings, in the Cancellation policy field: it’s free text the customer reads in two places — on your public page, in the “Cancellation policy” card in the side column, and when cancelling from the email link, inside the amber box of the confirmation dialog. It does not appear in the booking summary. Be plain about it, for example: “Cancel more than 4 hours ahead and we’ll refund your deposit by transfer within 48 hours. Under 4 hours, the deposit is not refunded.”

The balance they pay on arrival

When the customer has paid only the deposit, a balance stays open.

• The customer can pay the balance online with the same button, from their booking detail.
• If they pay you at the counter (cash, QR, card, transfer), you track that payment outside Citauno: Citauno only records online payments through tpago.

Where to see the money

The money settles into your tpago account, so the detail of each charge (date, amount, fee, refunds) is in your Bancard/tpago panel. That’s the statement you reconcile against.

In Citauno you see the payment’s effect on the booking: it turns confirmed once the deposit or the full amount lands. If you have the Analytics module (also on request), the “Deposits collected” card adds up the deposit-type payments in the selected period; it shows up once there has been one.

Fees

Bancard/tpago charges a per-transaction fee according to your merchant contract — check with them, because it varies by industry and volume. Citauno adds no fee of its own on top of what your customers pay: the money settles directly into your tpago account.

Common problems

Good practices

1. Start with a small deposit: 20-30% is standard. Asking for 100% up front hurts conversion.
2. Write your cancellation policy before turning deposits on, and be specific about how and when you refund.
3. Review pending bookings daily: that’s what stops an unpaid booking from blocking a slot.
4. Warn your regulars before you start asking for deposits.
5. Reconcile weekly: your tpago statement against the bookings that were confirmed by a payment.

What you’ve got now

• tpago configured, tested, and with its callback URL registered.
• Your charging policy defined at the business level and, if needed, per service.
• Clarity on what Citauno does by itself (collect and confirm) and what stays on you (refunds, cash balances, clearing pending bookings).

What this guide closes

That completes Citauno’s advanced workflows. For the exhaustive detail of every form and option, head to the Reference guide.