Taking a deposit: the simplest way to stop no-shows and non-payers

Three no-shows in a day. An hour each way to a house where the customer's sitting in front of the fire they swore was broken. An £80 service at an empty property, ghosted the moment the invoice goes out. Every self-employed tradesperson has a version of this, and they nearly all share one cause: a booking that took the job but not a penny of commitment.

A deposit fixes more of this than any amount of chasing afterwards. It's not cheeky, it's not unfriendly, and it's completely normal in the trades. Here's how to do it without the awkwardness.

Why it works

A deposit changes the customer's incentive before you've spent a drop of fuel. Someone who's put £40 down turns up, prepares the property, and pays the balance — because they've already got skin in the game. Someone who won't put anything down was always the higher risk, whether they'd have ghosted, no-showed, or haggled at the end.

That's the quiet bonus: the people who object to a reasonable deposit are very often exactly the ones who'd have left you out of pocket. A deposit doesn't just protect the job — it filters the customer.

How much to take

There's no legal rule, just sensible practice. A few approaches that work:

• The materials cost up front. If you're fronting a consumer unit, a tap, or a load of cable, you shouldn't be the one financing it. Materials on deposit, labour on completion is clean and easy to explain.
• A flat booking fee for small jobs — enough to make a no-show cost the customer something (£20–£50 is common for a domestic call-out).
• A percentage on bigger jobs — 25–50% is normal for anything where a cancellation costs you a day you could've sold.

Whatever you pick, make it reasonable — a deposit should genuinely reflect your costs or the slot you're holding, not be a penalty. Keep it fair and it's easy to stand behind.

How to ask without the cringe

The awkwardness is almost always in your head, not theirs. Frame it as part of booking, not a favour you're asking:

"To get you booked in I take a £40 deposit, and the balance is due when the work's done."

That's it. Said as a normal step — the same way a restaurant takes a card for a table or a B&B takes a night up front — it lands as completely routine, because it is. Put it in your booking message so it's there in black and white, not sprung on them later.

Make it stick

Two things turn a deposit from a nice idea into actual protection:

• Take it before the slot is confirmed, not when you arrive. The whole point is that the commitment exists before you travel.
• Say what it covers, in writing. "£40 deposit secures your booking and comes off the final bill" — so there's no confusion about whether it's refundable if they cancel last minute.

This is also the booking step where you capture the things that save you later — the customer's full name and a real billing address, not just a mobile — so that on the rare job that still goes wrong, you actually know who you're dealing with. A booking step that quietly does both — takes the deposit and captures who the customer is — is the difference between the odd write-off and a steady stream of them. That's the gap grafter.ly closes: the customer's details on the job from the start, and a card payment link you can send for the deposit before the slot is confirmed.

The bottom line

You won't stop every no-show or every ghost. But a deposit at booking turns the most common, most expensive ones into a non-event — and it costs you nothing but the half-second of nerve it takes to ask. Ask. The good customers won't blink.