Here are the tattoo booking and deposit terms every artist runs into, in plain English. A deposit is money a client puts down at booking to hold a slot. An escalating deposit steps that amount up for clients who have no-showed before. Waitlist auto-fill fills a cancelled slot from your whole client history. A healing window is the recovery time between sessions. And payout to your own account means deposits pay straight to you — The Hive never holds your money. Definitions below, plus how The Hive handles each.
Six words you hear around booking and money — what each one means, and what The Hive actually does about it.
Money a client puts down at booking to hold a slot. It commits the client to the appointment and protects your chair time — a booking without a deposit is really just a maybe.
The Hive takes the deposit on card or bank the moment a client books, before the slot is held. No deposit, no held slot — so you are never chasing the money later.
A deposit that steps up for clients who have no-showed before. Instead of one flat amount for everyone, the client who ghosted last time puts more down the next time they book.
The Hive tracks repeat offenders and raises the deposit for anyone with a no-show on record. A flake costs the client, not you — so the risk sits with the person who created it.
Filling a cancelled slot from your whole client history instead of leaving the chair empty. A late cancel does not have to mean a dead day.
When a slot opens up, The Hive works your entire client history to put someone in the chair — not just a short manual waitlist. The dead slot gets filled instead of eaten.
The recovery time between sessions on a bigger piece. Book the next session too soon and you are tattooing over skin that is not ready; too far out and the piece drags on for months.
The Hive runs multi-session pieces scheduled around healing windows, so the next session lands when the skin is ready — you are not doing that math in your head between clients.
The record of finished, healed work — not the day-one photo with the sheen still on it, but how the piece actually settled. It is the truest version of your portfolio.
As pieces complete, The Hive builds a healed-work repository — a record of finished, healed work that grows on its own as you tattoo.
Deposits and payments landing in your account, not sitting in a platform's account waiting to be released. There is no middleman standing between you and money you already earned.
Deposits pay straight to your own account. The Hive never holds your money, and your book and clients stay yours — not something you rent back from a platform.
Most of the money a shop loses hides inside these words. A "deposit" you never actually collect is a no-show waiting to happen. A cancelled slot with no waitlist auto-fill is a dead day. A next session booked outside the healing window is a redo. The Hive is booking and payments software built specifically for tattoo artists — it takes deposits on card or bank, escalates them for repeat no-shows, fills cancelled slots from your whole client history, schedules around healing windows, builds a healed-work repository, and even answers the shop phone while you tattoo. And every deposit pays straight to your own account.
The quick-answer version of the glossary above.
A tattoo deposit is money a client puts down at booking to hold a slot. With The Hive the deposit is taken on card or bank the moment a client books, and it pays straight to your own account — The Hive never holds your money.
An escalating deposit is a deposit that steps up for clients who have no-showed before. The Hive tracks repeat offenders and raises the amount they put down up front, so a flake costs the client instead of costing you the chair time.
Waitlist auto-fill means a cancelled slot is filled from your whole client history instead of leaving the chair empty. When a slot opens up, The Hive works your full book to put someone in it rather than losing the day.
A healing window is the recovery time between sessions. The Hive schedules multi-session pieces around those healing windows, so the next session lands when skin is ready rather than too soon.
No. Deposits pay straight to your own account — The Hive never holds your money. Your book and clients stay yours.
Watch the demo, or book a call and we'll walk your shop through deposits, escalating no-show amounts, waitlist auto-fill, and multi-session scheduling.