Collect a deposit at booking time

Take a partial or full prepayment from a customer the moment a booking is confirmed. The deposit is collected through a payment gateway (Mollie or Stripe, routed by OpenConnector), and Shillinq materialises an accounts-receivable invoice for the deposit so it flows straight into your books.

Goal

Reduce no-shows and chargeback risk by securing a deposit up front, with the invoice and refund handling done for you.

How deposits work

A deposit is stored as a DepositPayment record. It moves through a small lifecycle:

State	Meaning
Draft	Created, no payment requested yet.
Pending	A payment link was sent; awaiting the customer and the gateway.
Authorized	The payment cleared. An AR invoice is created automatically.
Captured	Funds settled into your account.
Failed	The gateway rejected the payment. The reason is shown for follow-up.
Voided	The booking was cancelled and the deposit refunded; a credit note reverses the invoice.

Shillinq never stores card numbers or tokens. Only the gateway's opaque payment reference is kept on the record.

Configure a deposit rule

Deposit rules are set per booking type (for example "Studio Portrait Session"). A rule defines:

• Type — percentage (for example 50% of the booking price) or fixed (a set amount in euro cents).
• Due offset days — how many days before the event the deposit is due. If the event is sooner than that, the deposit is due immediately.
• Refund policy — automatic_on_cancellation to refund the moment a booking is cancelled, or operator_approval to queue a refund request for review.

When a booking with a deposit rule is confirmed, Shillinq computes the deposit amount, the VAT split (21% standard NL rate by default), and the due date, then creates the DepositPayment and the customer payment link.

Take a payment

1. Confirm the booking. Its state becomes Pending payment.
2. The customer receives a confirmation e-mail with a Complete payment link.
3. The customer pays via iDEAL (Mollie) or hosted checkout (Stripe).
4. The gateway confirms asynchronously. Shillinq marks the deposit Authorized, creates the AR invoice, and advances the booking to Confirmed.

If a confirmation webhook is delayed or lost, a background reconciliation runs every five minutes and checks the gateway directly, so a paid deposit never stays stuck on Pending.

Manage deposits

The Deposits overview lists every deposit with its booking, amount, state, gateway, and due date. Filter by state to find:

• Failed deposits — the error reason is shown so you can ask the customer to retry with another method.
• Pending deposits past their due date — candidates for a reminder.

On a booking's detail view, the Deposit widget shows the current state, the amount, the payment link (while pending), and a link to the AR invoice.

Cancel and refund

When you cancel a booking that has an authorized or captured deposit:

• With automatic refund policy, Shillinq initiates the refund through the gateway and creates an AR credit note that reverses the deposit invoice.
• With operator approval, a refund request is queued for you to approve first.

The customer is notified that the refund was started.