FFP Guides

Online bookings

How to take card details on a Cliniko online booking

Cliniko cannot hold a card without charging it. What you can do is require a deposit or full payment through Stripe at the time of booking, set per appointment type under Settings, Appointment types, Online payments. A patient who has already paid something is a far weaker no show risk than one who only reserved a time.

Last checked 25 Sep 2026 against the sources listed at the end of this page.

Method
A deposit or full payment charged through Cliniko's Stripe integration at the moment of online booking, set per appointment type. Cliniko has no separate card on file hold that charges only after a no show.
On mobile
Cliniko's payment step accepts Apple Pay and Google Pay as well as a typed card number, through Stripe. On a phone this matters more than it does on desktop: a patient asked to type a full card number on a small screen is more likely to abandon the booking than one who can confirm with a fingerprint or face scan. Point this out to patients in your booking confirmation email if the appointment type requires payment, so it is not a surprise.
Can you track bookings?
Partly. Requiring a deposit does not change how a Cliniko booking is tracked. The same page path trigger on bookings/confirmation counts a completed booking whether or not a card was taken, and the same limit applies: an embedded booking still reports as Direct in GA4 because Cliniko's booking pages sit in an iframe served from Cliniko's own domain. See the main Cliniko WordPress tracking guide for the full workaround.

Add Cliniko bookings to your website

  1. In Cliniko, go to Settings, Integrations, and connect a Stripe account under Stripe Payments if you have not already. Set a default deposit amount here, for example $25, which appointment types can use or override.
  2. Open the specific appointment type you want to protect against no shows, for example an initial consultation, and find the Online payments dropdown.
  3. Choose Require deposit during booking to take a partial amount up front, or Require payment during booking to take the full fee. Allow payment during booking leaves payment optional and will not deter a no show.
  4. Confirm or override the deposit amount for this appointment type. Cliniko's deposits are a fixed dollar figure, not a percentage of the fee.
  5. Save, then use the Bookings URL builder to create a link filtered to this specific appointment type, so a patient booking that slot lands straight on the page that requires the deposit rather than a general booking list.
  6. Make a real test booking yourself to see exactly what a patient is asked to pay, and when, before publishing the link.

Track the bookings

  1. Enter your Google Tag Manager container ID under Cliniko's Settings, Online bookings, the same setting used for any Cliniko booking page.
  2. Use a GA4 Event tag firing where Page Path contains bookings/confirmation, which fires once the deposit or full payment has gone through and the booking is confirmed, not before.
  3. If keeping the ad or search source matters as much as the deposit itself, use Cliniko's documented postMessage workaround or link to the hosted booking page instead of embedding it.

What Cliniko does not offer

Cliniko has no feature that simply holds a patient's card details for a no show fee without charging anything at the time of booking. Its help centre documents three states for an appointment type's online payment setting: allow payment (optional), require a deposit (a partial charge now), or require full payment (the whole fee now). There is no fourth option that authorises a card and only captures it if the patient fails to attend.

If a genuine no show fee, charged only after the fact, is what you are after, that has to happen outside Cliniko's online booking flow, for example by manually charging a saved Stripe customer through Stripe itself. Cliniko's own documentation does not describe that process, so treat it as something to confirm directly with Stripe or Cliniko support rather than something this guide can walk you through.

Why a deposit works almost as well

A deposit is not the same thing as a no show fee, but it changes the incentive in the same direction. A patient who has already paid $25, or the full consultation fee, toward an appointment has a real reason to turn up or to cancel with enough notice that you can refill the slot, rather than simply not showing. Cliniko's deposit is a fixed dollar amount you set globally with per appointment type overrides, not a percentage, so decide the figure with your actual no show rate and average fee in mind rather than copying a number from another clinic.

This setting sits at the appointment type level, not per practitioner, so if only some appointment types have a no show problem (a first consultation is a common one), apply it there rather than clinic wide.

What the patient actually sees

A patient booking an appointment type set to require a deposit or full payment is shown the amount due as part of the booking flow itself, before they confirm the time, and pays by card, Apple Pay or Google Pay through Stripe. Cliniko's help centre does not publish the exact policy wording shown on screen, so write your own short line for the appointment type's description field, something like "A $25 deposit is required to confirm this booking and is deducted from your consultation fee", so the patient understands what they are paying and why before they reach the card entry screen.

Sources

  1. Cliniko offers three online payment settings per appointment type: Allow payment during booking (optional), Require deposit during booking (a partial amount, not a percentage), and Require payment during booking (the full fee). There is no card on file option that charges only after a no show. Cliniko Help, checked 25 Sep 2026.
  2. A default deposit amount for online bookings is set under Settings, Integrations, Stripe Payments, as a fixed dollar figure, with the option to override it per appointment type under Settings, Appointment types. Cliniko Help, checked 25 Sep 2026.
  3. Cliniko's online payments, including deposits, are processed by Stripe, the payment processor Cliniko uses for online bookings. Cliniko Help, checked 25 Sep 2026.
  4. Filtered booking links can be built by business, practitioner and appointment type using Cliniko's Bookings URL builder, and the filtered link can be embedded or shared on its own. Cliniko Help, checked 25 Sep 2026.
  5. Cliniko's GA4 conversion tracking fires a GA4 Event tag on page views where the page path contains bookings/confirmation, which only occurs once a booking, including any required payment, is completed. Cliniko Help, checked 25 Sep 2026.