Money Matters · October 8, 2026

Card Tips Without the Awkward Screen

The screen swung round at the desk asks a client to choose a tip while the person who did the work watches. Card tips do not need that moment.

A client finishes, walks to the desk, and you swing a screen round. Three percentages, a custom button, and the person who did the work is standing right there. Whatever they press, they press it with you watching, and that moment is part of the visit they take home.

Card tips do not need that moment. The tip can happen on the client's own phone, before the visit or after it.

Two moments, neither of them at the desk

Booked gives a client two places to tip.

At booking. If you take a deposit or full payment, tip options appear on the payment step and go on the same card charge.

After the visit. The confirmation page, the one linked from the client's confirmation email, shows a tip box once the appointment is over. That happens when you mark it complete or when its end time passes. This is the one that catches the client who did not decide until they saw the result at home.

The presets show the dollar amount next to each percentage, worked out from the service price, so nobody does arithmetic on a phone. The defaults are 15, 20 and 25. On a $60 service that reads $9, $12 and $15. You can change the three numbers and choose whether to allow a custom amount.

A post-visit tip is between $0.50 and $500, once per booking. The client confirms with the email or phone on the booking and pays on Stripe's own page. No account needed.

Which moment suits your work

For a cut or a blowout, either works. The client knows what they are getting and a tip at booking is ordinary.

For a tattoo, a tip at booking is a tip before a line is drawn. The post-visit box fits session work better, and it only helps if the client knows it is there. The same goes for a long color correction, where the result is the whole point.

What it costs you

Booked takes no fee on a tip. The card rate of 3.75% + 45¢ applies to the deposit or prepayment itself. On a $40 deposit that is $1.95, and the tip on top carries no Booked fee.

Tipping needs card payments switched on, which is a Pro feature, and payouts showing Ready. The setting lives in Dashboard → Profile and applies to every location under your brand.

The money is yours to pass on

Tips land in your payout account, the same one your deposits go to. Booked does not run payroll or split commission, so getting a stylist's tip to the stylist is your job. Payment records live in your Stripe dashboard, not in the Booked customer export.

If your staff are employees, federal law sets the floor:

• You cannot keep any part of an employee's tips. That includes owners who manage the shop. (US Department of Labor, Fact Sheet #15)
• Card tips are due by the regular payday. You cannot hold them while you wait on a payout. (Fact Sheet #15)
• Employees who receive $20 or more in tips in a month report them to you in writing by the 10th of the next month. Card tips you pass on count. You use that report for withholding. (IRS Topic 761)
• A compulsory service charge is not a tip. Under both rules it is wages.

State law can be stricter than either. Check yours before you switch tipping on.

If you rent chairs, the arithmetic changes. When a renter's clients book through your page, their tips land in your account. Agree in writing how and when you hand them over, the same way you settled the rent itself.

Say one line at the door

The post-visit box works when the client opens the confirmation page. One line at goodbye does it:

If you want to leave a tip, it's on your confirmation link.

Then stop. No screen, no pause, no hovering.

Some shops would rather clients tipped in person, and leaving tipping off is a real choice. If you do not take card payments yet, the card-on-file or deposit decision comes first, because the at-booking tip only appears when a card is charged.

When you are ready, turn on tipping.

This week

The next client out the door hears one line and nothing else.