Help  ›  No-shows and card holds

No-show cover

Most venues take bookings with no card at all, and that is the default. If no-shows are costing you, you can ask diners for a card when they book and charge a fee if they do not turn up.

How it works

1. The diner books as usual, then is taken to Stripe to save a card. Nothing is charged. The card is held, not billed.
2. The booking is confirmed once the card is saved. Until then it holds the table for twenty minutes, so a diner who abandons the card step does not block anyone.
3. If they do not show, you decide whether to charge the fee. Nothing is ever charged automatically — not by a timer, not by a rule. A person presses the button.

Setting it up

Open the menu (the cog) and choose Payments.

1. Press Connect Stripe. You are taken to Stripe to sign in or create an account; it is free and takes a few minutes. The money goes to your Stripe account, not ours — we never hold it.
2. Back in Thezi, under Card holds, per service, enter the fee in pounds per person for each service you want covered and press Turn on. Lunch can be uncovered while dinner is £10 a head.

Card holds stay off until Stripe has finished checking your account, which can take a day. The Payments screen says when they are live.

What the diner sees

Before they book, the page says a card will be asked for and what the fee is. On the confirmation, the same again. No surprises — a fee nobody was told about is a dispute, not income.

Charging or waiving

On any booking with a card held you see Charge £— and Waive fee.

• Charge takes the fee from the held card. If the card declines, you are told and nothing else happens.
• Waive records that you decided not to charge. It is worth pressing rather than leaving it, because it answers "did anyone look at this?" later.

Either way the decision is written down with who made it and when.

Refunds

Refunds are done in your own Stripe dashboard, by you. We do not touch your money in either direction without a person deciding to.

Turning it off

Turn off on any service stops asking for cards from then on. Bookings already holding a card keep it until they have happened. Disconnect Stripe ends our access at Stripe's end as well as ours; you can also revoke it from Stripe under Settings → Authorized applications.

Still stuck? hello@thezi.app reaches a person, usually the same day.