Per-⁠booking deposits vs deposit pools

Most booking software ties a deposit to one appointment. That works for a single-session piece. It gets messy on a sleeve, where the client thinks of the work as one piece and your records hold a separate deposit for every booking.

Five bookings, five deposits

Take a five-session sleeve with a $100 deposit on each booking. Five deposits arrive at five different times, some by card and some by bank transfer, and each one belongs to its own appointment. Then the artist is out sick for session 3.

By session 4 the client asks how much they’ve paid so far, and the answer is spread across a card processor, a bank statement and whatever note was made when session 3 moved. Nobody did anything wrong. The records are shaped differently from the work.

One pool for the whole piece

A deposit pool sits on the project, not on a booking. The client pays into it, and each session draws from it. Move a session and the money stays where it is. It’s applied when a session is completed, or when you apply it by hand, and until then it’s simply available.

Here is the Sample studio’s koi sleeve for Asha M., five sessions with Dev:

The project shows four figures: Paid in, Applied, Available and Refundable. Asha’s reads $300 paid in, $60 applied and $240 available. When she asks what she’s paid, that’s the answer, on one screen, and her own project page shows her the same Applied and Available figures.

How other booking tools handle it

We read what other booking tools publish about this on September 22, 2026. Mangomint describes collecting a card on file, and DaySmart Body Art describes online deposits on all its plans. Neither describes a deposit that follows a piece across sessions. TattooGenda, which is also built for tattoo, does: it applies a project deposit to any appointment in the project.

The full side-by-side, with sources, is on the compare pages.

When a client stops halfway

The case every studio worries about is the client who stops halfway through. With a deposit per booking, you end up working out which deposits were used. With a pool, the project already shows what’s been applied and what’s still available, so the conversation starts from the same numbers. Whether you keep the rest or refund it is your decision, and your written policy is what you point to.

When a deposit per booking is fine

If most of your work is single-session (walk-ins, flash, small pieces), a deposit per booking is simpler and you don’t need a pool. The pool earns its place on anything longer than two sessions, where a deposit would otherwise be split, carried forward or taken twice.

To try it, create an account and set up your next multi-session piece as a project. If you’re switching tools, we move the deposits you already hold over for you.