Deposits are already your norm; make them painless
Tattooing solved the deposit question years ago. Clients expect to put money down to hold a session, especially for custom work, and they know it goes toward the piece. The problem is usually the mechanics: chasing deposits over DM, sending payment links by hand, and tracking who has paid and who has not across a stack of messages.
Keptbookings takes the deposit at the moment of booking through a branded page, validates the card, and applies it to the session. No more screenshotting payment confirmations or wondering whether a consult is actually locked. The deposit norm you already rely on becomes automatic.
- Deposit collected and validated when the client books.
- Deposit applied to the session total, not an extra fee.
- No more chasing payment links through DMs.
Design time is real time you have already spent
By the time a client sits down, you may have spent hours on a custom design, references, and stencil prep. A no-show on a large piece does not just empty the chair for the day; it throws away the unpaid design work that led up to it. The cost of that ghosted appointment is far higher than the day rate alone.
A validated deposit covers that exposure. If the client honors the session, the deposit comes off the total. If they ghost, you are not left having done the design work for free. Keptbookings lets you set deposit amounts that reflect the scale of the piece, so a full-day back piece carries more weight than a small flash booking.
Closing the fake-card and deleted-card loopholes
A deposit is only protection if the payment actually clears. Some booking tools accept any card a client types without checking it, so a dead number slips through and the deposit never lands. Others let a client remove the card after booking, undermining the hold without warning.
Keptbookings validates the card with Stripe at booking and rejects invalid cards before the session is confirmed. If a client removes their card before the appointment, you are alerted so you can re-secure the deposit or open the slot. Deposits pay out through Stripe the next business day with no fund holds.
- Cards validated at booking, not blindly stored.
- Alert when a client removes a card before the session.
- Next-day deposit payouts, no fund holds.
Consults, sessions, and multi-part pieces
Big work happens across sessions. Keptbookings gives you a branded booking page and link-in-bio where clients book a consult, then follow-up sessions, with guest checkout so there is no account to wrangle. Reminders cut the no-shows on long-awaited session days, which matters when a sleeve is booked weeks out.
Each client’s booking and project history stays attached to their record, so you can see what is booked, what is paid, and what remains across a multi-session piece without digging through old messages.
Your clients and your portfolio pipeline stay yours
Marketplace apps treat your client list as a lead source and take a cut of every booking. For an artist whose reputation and waitlist are the business, that is the wrong trade. Keptbookings has no marketplace, no discovery feed, and zero commission, so the clients who sought you out specifically stay yours.
You pay one flat price: around $19 solo, a flat $49 for a studio of up to six artists, and a free tier of 20 appointments a month. Leave whenever you want; your client list and history export in one click and import for free.