Money explainer
Deposits and cancellation terms
A deposit is often the first money that leaves your account, sometimes before anything else is written down. Two facts decide what it actually is: whether it comes back, and whether it comes off the price.
Reviewed Sep 14, 2026. Education only: mechanics and arithmetic, not financial advice.
Two questions, four kinds of deposit
- Refundable, and comes off the price: a prepayment
- Non-refundable, but comes off the price: a prepayment that turns into a fee if you cancel
- Refundable, but doesn’t come off the price: a hold
- Non-refundable, and doesn’t come off the price: a fee for booking
The cancellation window
The window is the notice you have to give to cancel or reschedule without losing money. The shorter it is, the more ordinary weeks can breach it.
- How much notice, in hours or days
- What’s lost if you miss it — the deposit, a fee, or the full price
- Whether rescheduling counts as cancelling
- Whether package sessions have different terms
When a deposit adds to the total
A deposit that doesn’t come off the treatment price is part of the total, not a step toward it. The quote calculator counts it once, on the first visit, and holds back the first-visit total until the quote says which kind it is.
Worked example · hypothetical figures
A $100 deposit on a $500 treatment
The same deposit, read three ways.
- Comes off the price
- $500 in total, $100 of it paid when booking
- Doesn’t come off the price
- $600 in total
- Non-refundable, cancelled outside the window
- $100, and no treatment
The same $100 is either part of $500, on top of $500, or the whole cost of changing your mind.
The figures are invented to keep the arithmetic easy to follow. They aren’t typical prices, and nothing here says what a price should be.
Questions to ask
- 1Is the deposit refundable, and in which situations?
- 2Does it come off the treatment price?
- 3How much notice cancels or reschedules without losing money?
- 4What exactly is charged if I miss that window?
- 5Where are these terms written, and can I have a copy before paying?
Add the deposit to a quote
Due today, the first visit, and what the deposit does to both.
Open the quote calculatorSources
This page uses no outside facts. Everything on it is definitions, questions, and arithmetic on the hypothetical example.