August 2026: Deposits Land in the Right Column
2 August 2026
Highlights
Deposits are attributed to how they were actually paid
Until now a deposit was bundled into whatever payment settled the rest of the bill, so a $43 card deposit on a $180 appointment finished at the counter in cash was reported as $180 of cash. Your Sales summary now records the deposit against the method it was genuinely taken with — card deposits under Card, cash deposits under Cash — so the payment breakdown reconciles against your card statements and your till. Receipts are unchanged: they already showed the deposit on its own line. This applies to appointments checked out from now on; periods before this update keep the figures you have already reconciled and reported on.
Your client is told when their treatment plan is ready
Publishing a treatment plan now messages the client to let them know, with a link straight to it in their booking portal — until now the plan simply appeared there and they had no way of knowing. Email is on by default and SMS is off; both templates are yours to edit under Settings > Automated messages, like every other automated message. Saving ordinary edits stays silent, so only "Save & re-publish" lets them know the plan has changed.
Checkout stops asking you to charge a bill that is already paid
When a deposit, a gift card, client credit, a package or a full discount has already covered everything, checkout no longer shows four payment methods and a "Charge card" button that would charge nothing. It tells you what covered the bill and gives you one button to complete it. The same applies to a walk-in sale a gift card covers in full.
See cancelled appointments on the scheduler when you need them
The scheduler header now has Filters for status, booking source and tags. Cancelled stays off by default — tick it when you want those appointments on the calendar. A dot means something differs from the defaults; Reset puts them back. Same idea as the Appointments list status filter.
Clients can upload photos and PDFs on intake forms
A new File upload field lets clients send treatment-area photos, ID, or referral letters from the form link — your team sees them on the submission and on the client Files tab.
Services
- NewRequire a consultation or an initial service before a treatment can be booked onlineServices & Bundles
A service (or bundle) can now list prerequisite services — the classic "consultation first, then the treatment" pattern without misusing a membership as a gate. Choose Completed (the prerequisite appointment must be marked Completed) or Booked (any non-cancelled booking counts, including adding both to the same cart). When you list more than one, require Any or All. Online, unmet treatments stay visible but locked with a clear path to book the missing service; your team sees an advisory on the dashboard and can still override. Cancelling the prerequisite later does not retro-cancel a treatment already booked under Booked mode — use Completed when the consult must genuinely have happened.
Online booking
If you ask clients for a deposit or a card on file, a booking waits until they finish that step. Those bookings used to sit on your calendar labelled "Pending Approval" with an Approve button — even with approval switched off — which read as a booking waiting on you when it was really waiting on the client. They now show as Awaiting deposit or Awaiting card, they tell you the booking confirms by itself the moment the client pays or saves their card, and the client gets a message with a link to finish. You can still approve one yourself, and Bella will point out that approving a card hold means there is no saved card to charge if that client later cancels late or doesn't show. Your notifications match: an appointment that is still waiting is no longer announced as "Appointment confirmed". The two new business notifications sit with the rest in Settings → Automated messages, so you can reword them or switch them off, and you can filter your notification bell to just the bookings waiting on a payment step.
Find a time now has an Online booking view — Schedule gaps, minimum notice and your booking window applied — with an Online vs Scheduler count of how many free times clients do not see. Open it straight from Booking policies with Check what clients see (or from Online booking Live preview, and when a team member or service is hidden from online booking). Preview booking flow still walks through messages, payments and notifications after a booking; the two tools answer different halves of what clients experience.
Reports
The Cash, Card, Gift Card, Client credit and Other columns of the Sales summary now attribute an appointment deposit to the tender that actually took it, instead of folding it into the payment that settled the remainder. The columns still add up to the day's total — money has only moved between them, and only for appointments checked out from this release onwards. One thing this does not change: a deposit is still counted on the day the appointment was checked out, not the day the client paid it.
Checkout
An appointment whose deposit, gift card, client credit, package or discount already covers the full amount now shows "Paid in full by the $43.00 deposit — nothing left to collect" and a single Complete checkout button. Previously the payment-method list still appeared with the client's saved card pre-selected and a "Charge Mastercard ····1690" button, alongside a note saying the card would be charged immediately — none of which happened, and whichever method was left selected was recorded as the payment for the whole sale. Create Sale behaves the same way when a gift card covers a walk-in sale in full.
Refunds
Refund Checkout and Refund Deposit have always been separate actions, because they reverse two separate charges. The refund screen capped the checkout refund correctly, but the underlying limit did not — so a refund requested outside the screen could return more than was ever collected at the counter. The limit now excludes the deposit, which continues to be refunded through Refund Deposit.
Forms
The form link in your email or SMS now opens the form itself. Until now it landed the client on a sign-in wall — they had to have an online-booking account and get a code by text before they could answer a single question, which is why so many consent and intake forms were never returned. The link now carries its own one-off key for that one form, so the client taps it and starts filling it in. Copy link on a pending submission in your dashboard hands over the same no-sign-in link, and the Submissions tab of a form now has its own Send form button — pick a client and it goes. Where a client already has that form waiting, Resend link nudges the same one instead of quietly creating a second submission and a second message. Links you sent before this update keep working exactly as they did.
Add a File upload field to any form — clients take a photo or choose files (JPG, PNG, WebP, HEIC, or PDF) from the form link, up to five files per question. Your team reviews them on the submission and on the client's Files and Photos tabs. Clients re-view their uploads on the completed form.
Clients
A client's payment history listed the deposit on its own row and also inside the sale total, so a $180 appointment with a $43 deposit read as $223 of activity and disagreed with the receipt. The sale row now shows what was collected at checkout, so the rows add up to what the client actually paid. Deposit rows also name the payment method now, including for deposits paid online.
Scheduler
A Filters control in the scheduler header combines status, booking source (and team member preference for online bookings) and appointment tags. By default you still see Booked, Confirmed and Completed only — tick Cancelled when you want cancelled appointments on the calendar. Booking source moved here from Display options. Defaults show as unmodified; any change shows a dot; Reset restores the defaults. Session-only, so a reload clears them. The Appointments list now matches: Clear all returns status to the same default instead of switching cancelled appointments back on, and the online-booking indicator reads "Requested team member" / "Any team member" everywhere. Across the list screens that show a running total — Appointments, Clients, Sales — that "N results" line now stays put at the default view instead of only appearing once you filter.
On a waitlist entry, tap the client's phone or email — or use Send SMS / Send email in Actions — to open Messages with that client already selected. You stay one step from the waitlist instead of hunting them up in Clients first.
Gift cards
Once you have uploaded at least one custom gift card design, Settings → Gift cards → Custom designs gains a Built-in designs control (Visible or Hidden), the same shape as Prices in booking policies. Set it to Hidden and clients purchasing online only see your uploads — Bella's built-in designs stay out of the way. Delete the last custom and built-ins come back automatically so the picker is never empty.
Memberships
When a membership is set to end at the end of the billing period (or at the end of an instalment term), you can reverse that from the member page with Undo cancellation — renewals continue and the client keeps their benefits. If you meant to end it sooner, Cancel now ends the membership immediately instead of waiting for the scheduled date. You no longer need to open Stripe to clear a pending cancellation.
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