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Prepayment lets customers pay for menu items when they book — a tasting menu, a festive set menu, or an event ticket. You secure the revenue upfront and the kitchen knows exactly what to prepare.
You must connect a payment provider (Stripe, Payzone, or CMI) before enabling prepayment. A shift can use either prepayment or a deposit, not both.
Prepayment is on the General tab. Enable Prepayment to reveal the options.
It’s also the mode that creates the least friction with customers: the menu is paid in full at booking, so there’s no card hold to release (whose delay depends on the customer’s bank) and no deposit to remember to deduct from the bill. See Customer friction in practice.

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Optional or required?

Turn on Prepayment mandatory to require every customer to pick and pay for a product to complete their booking. Leave it off to offer prepaid products as an option.

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Add your products

Add the menus or items customers can prepay for. Products come from your product catalog (Settings → Products) — that’s where you edit a product’s name, description, and price; the settings below only control how this shift sells it:
Set a capacity per day to cap how many of a product can be sold each day — useful for limited menus. If a product has variants (e.g. vegetarian / meat), you can set a capacity per variant so each option has its own limit.
Set a minimum delay so a product can only be ordered a certain number of hours ahead — for example a tasting menu that needs 48 hours’ notice to prepare.

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Refunds & late cancellation

Turn on Refundable prepayment to let customers cancel for a refund up to a deadline. Set the late cancellation threshold in hours, measured either before the reservation or after creation — after that point the prepayment is kept.
When prepayment is requested, the customer has a limited window to pay before the booking is cancelled. You can set different windows for same-day and future reservations, in minutes (5 minimum) or in hours. If it isn’t paid in time, the reservation is automatically cancelled.

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FAQ

What’s the difference between prepayment and a deposit? A deposit is a single amount that secures the booking (often refunded). Prepayment sells actual products — set menus, tickets — that the customer chooses and pays for. A shift uses one or the other. How is this different from extras? Prepaid products are the main offer (often the whole point of the booking). Extras are optional add-ons layered on top, like a bottle of wine. The same product can’t appear in both.