How Clients Pay and Cancel a Booking

Every order in the client portal has a detail page that shows the client exactly where things stand — what’s owed and, when it applies, how to move or cancel the booking.

Viewing the balance

The order page shows the quoted total, the amount already paid, the amount still due, and a full payment history with receipts — card brand and last 4 digits, links to the payment provider’s receipt, and any refunded amounts. There’s no separate invoices or billing list in the portal; this per-order view is the complete picture.

If you’ve issued invoices on the order, they show up here too: the client sees each invoice issued to them and can download its PDF, and the balance the Pay action settles is the amount remaining on their own invoice. That holds on orders that bill more than one person — say a shoot where the brokerage covers part and the agent the rest — where each participant sees only their own invoice and payments, never another payer’s. How the billing gets split in the first place is your side of the fence; see deposits and balance invoices and order participants. And if an invoice sits unpaid past its due date, the follow-up emails your client receives are covered in invoice reminders and overdue balances.

Paying online

If online payments are turned on for the business — a paid plan plus an active Stripe connection — and the order has a balance due, the client sees a Pay action. It opens an in-portal card-payment form, so they don’t need to leave the page; if the business has tipping enabled, the client is first offered an optional tip for the photographer. This is also how a client unlocks any downloads that were locked pending payment. See when clients pay for how payment timing is set up.

If online payments aren’t enabled, the client sees the balance but pays you outside the portal.

Spending account credit

Credit on a client’s account isn’t just a number that sits there — it’s spent at booking checkout. When a client with credit on file books their next shoot from the portal, the credit comes off the new order’s total and they’re charged only the remainder. If it covers the whole total, there’s no card charge at all.

The amount used shows on that order as an “Account credit applied” line in the billing breakdown, next to the rest of the payment history. Cancelling with a refund returns the credit that was spent back to the client’s account.

Rescheduling a shoot

Whether a client can move a shoot themselves is set by the business’s booking policy, so what they see varies from order to order.

Moving the shoot themselves. When self-reschedule is enabled, the client opens the order, picks a new time from the photographer’s live availability, and confirms. It’s the same photographer and the same duration — only the time changes. Available times are shown in the shoot’s timezone. Confirming moves the session, updates the photographer’s calendar, and notifies both sides.

This option is offered when all of the following hold: the booking is still inside the free-cancellation window, the shoot is a single session with a photographer already assigned, nothing has been delivered and no session has been completed, and the order isn’t cancelled. Twilight shoots are excluded — they have to be placed against the actual light at the property, so they always come back to you.

Asking for a different time. Before delivery, when self-reschedule isn’t available, the client sees a request form instead: they type their preferred times and send. Nothing on the booking changes. The request lands on the order’s activity history and notifies the business immediately, in-app and by email, so a human can move it. This is a pre-delivery fallback only — once the media is delivered or a session has been completed, the request form disappears along with the self-reschedule option.

Cancelling a booking

Cancellation from the portal is optional too, and it depends entirely on the business’s booking policy. Like rescheduling, it belongs to your primary client — other people on the order who can sign in to the portal can view the booking, but they can’t move or cancel it.

One-click cancellation. A client gets a Cancel booking action when all of these are true:

• The business’s policy allows client self-cancellation.
• The order hasn’t been delivered.
• No session has happened yet.
• The request falls within the business’s configured free-cancellation window.

The refund amount shown is calculated automatically from the same policy math the business uses in its own cancel tool. Cancelling notifies both the client and the assigned photographer.

Request cancellation. Before delivery, outside the free-cancellation window or when self-cancellation isn’t enabled at all, the client sees Request cancellation instead. This doesn’t cancel the order — it logs the request on the order’s activity history and notifies the business immediately, in-app and by email, so a human can decide on cancellation and any refund.

Delivered or completed orders. Once an order is delivered, or a session has already happened, the whole “Need to cancel?” block disappears from the order page — regardless of policy. There’s no self-cancel and no request form; the client has to contact the business directly, and it becomes a refund conversation rather than a cancellation. The same goes for an order that’s already been cancelled: the page shows a cancellation notice with the business’s email address instead of any actions.

Go deeper

• How clients view and download their media — the gallery and downloads a cleared balance unlocks.
• Accepting online payments with Stripe — connect Stripe so the in-portal Pay action appears.
• When clients pay — set upfront, on-delivery, or invoiced timing per order form.
• How orders work — the stages a booking moves through on its way to delivered.
• Refunding a client — issue the refund yourself when a cancellation request lands with you.
• Invoice reminders and overdue balances — the automatic follow-up a client sees when an invoice goes past due.