Asking for a deposit on a direct booking: how much, when, and how to collect it

On Booking.com you never have to think about it. The guest hands over card details, the platform enforces the cancellation terms, and you get paid — either by the guest or through a virtual card. On your own website, you are the bank. Someone fills in a form, hits confirm, and the question starts: do you simply let that booking stand, or do you ask for part of the money first?

Anyone trying to grow direct bookings runs into this knot sooner or later. Ask for too little security and you lose nights that never get paid. Ask for too much and you push guests back to the platform where one click is enough. Here is how to strike that balance in practice.

Why a deposit actually works

A deposit does three things at once, and the last one is usually underestimated.

The obvious one: it filters out non-committal bookings. A reservation with no money behind it is an intention. People book in three places at once, decide later, and forget to cancel. Ask for a deposit and that behaviour almost disappears — not because the amount is large, but because a decision has to be made.

The second is cash flow. A booking that comes in during March for August is nothing but a line in your calendar for five months. A 30% deposit turns it into a line on your bank statement, exactly in the period when you are getting the house ready for the season.

The third is the least visible: it gives your cancellation policy teeth. Terms with no money behind them are text on a page. You cannot realistically invoice someone who never shows up — in practice you never collect it. If you already hold 30%, you do not need to claim anything; you simply do not refund. That difference is enormous. How to draft those terms is covered in setting your cancellation policy.

Deposit, damage bond and non-refundable rate are three different things

These three get mixed up constantly, guests included, and that leads to arguments at the door.

A deposit is part of the accommodation price, paid up front. It comes off what the guest still owes on arrival. It is simply your revenue, collected earlier.

A damage bond is not revenue. It is an amount you hold temporarily against possible damage and return in full after a normal stay. It sits outside the room price and is a separate decision with its own practical catches — see asking guests for a damage bond.

A non-refundable rate is something else again: in exchange for a discount, the guest pays the full amount up front with no right to a refund. That is a pricing strategy, not a payment arrangement — worked out in the non-refundable rate.

Practical tip: name them properly in your confirmation email. "Deposit of 30% (deducted from the total)" is clear. The word "prepayment" with no explanation guarantees one guest per season who believes they were charged twice.

How much should you ask?

There is no correct percentage, but there is a logic. The further ahead the booking sits and the harder the night is to resell, the more security you are entitled to ask for.

A workable starting point for a B&B with individual rooms:

• Short stays, close in time (within 14 days): no deposit, or a token amount. The night is still easy to resell if it falls through, and adding a payment step to a last-minute booking costs you conversion.
• Standard bookings further ahead: 20 to 30%. Enough to make the booking real, low enough not to scare anyone off.
• High season, public holidays, events: 30 to 50%. These are the nights you sell at a premium and the ones that hurt most when a late cancellation leaves them empty.
• A whole holiday home, or a stay of a week or more: 30% at booking, balance a few weeks before arrival. With a whole property, a cancellation costs you a full week of revenue, not one room.
• Groups taking several rooms at once: higher, with a tight payment deadline. One person cancelling on behalf of six rooms is an empty weekend.

Whatever you choose, put it in your terms and in your confirmation email using the same wording. Different percentages in different places is the fastest way to be in the wrong later.

When do you collect it?

There are two common models and both are defensible.

Immediately at booking. The guest lands on your payment page and the booking is only final once payment succeeds. Biggest advantage: you never have outstanding deposits. Downside: every extra step in the booking flow costs a small percentage of bookers, especially on mobile.

Confirm now, pay within X days. The guest gets a confirmation with a payment link and, say, five days. Advantage: lower threshold, and you can handle phone or email bookings in exactly the same way. Downside: it needs following up — and that is where it usually falls apart.

If you pick the second model, three things really need to be automatic: a reminder after a couple of days, a second one just before the deadline, and a clear rule about what happens if nobody pays. Manual follow-up survives two weeks; by the third busy weekend you forget.

What if the guest does not pay?

Decide this in advance, not in the moment. The practical rule: if the deposit is still missing after the deadline plus one reminder, release the room and tell the guest in one friendly email. Not out of strictness, but because a blocked room that never gets paid costs you twice — the night itself, and the booking you turned away in the meantime.

State that consequence in the confirmation email from the start ("without payment before [date] the room becomes available again"). Then the later email is not a surprise, and in practice almost everyone simply pays on time.

Setting this up in BedFlow PMS

The point is that you stop thinking about it once it is configured. In BedFlow PMS you set, per property, what percentage you ask and within what period it has to be paid. On a direct booking the guest automatically receives a confirmation containing a payment link; once they pay, the amount is recorded as a payment on the booking and you see the outstanding balance straight away. If they do not pay, a reminder goes out automatically and the booking shows as unpaid in your overview, so you can release it.

Because the deposit is attached to the booking as a payment, your final invoice adds up by itself: total minus deposit is what remains due, with no manual bookkeeping in a separate file. Which payment methods you can enable and what they cost is covered in taking online payments on direct bookings; the settings themselves are described step by step in the manual.

One thing to settle with your accountant: at what moment a received deposit lands in your bookkeeping and your VAT return. That depends on how you invoice, it is not a setting in your PMS, and it is worth getting right once rather than working it out in January.

In short

Ask for a deposit that matches the risk: little or nothing for last-minute, 20 to 30% as standard, more in high season and for whole properties. Call it by its proper name and keep it identical everywhere. Set a deadline, automate the reminder, and decide in advance what happens when nobody pays.

Want to see it working on your own bookings? BedFlow PMS is free to try for 30 days at bedflow.eu — deposits, payment links and reminders included. What it costs afterwards is on our pricing page. No credit card required.