# Australia: Native app booking while retaining no-show protection

**URL:** <https://developer.squareup.com/forums/t/australia-native-app-booking-while-retaining-no-show-protection/28018>\
**Category:** Questions\
**Created:** [September 28, 2026, 9:24am UTC](https://developer.squareup.com/forums/t/australia-native-app-booking-while-retaining-no-show-protection/28018 "2026-09-28T09:24:30Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![TBK\_Barbershop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b19c9b/32.png) [@TBK\_Barbershop](https://developer.squareup.com/forums/u/TBK_Barbershop)\
**Post date:** [September 28, 2026, 9:24am UTC](https://developer.squareup.com/forums/t/australia-native-app-booking-while-retaining-no-show-protection/28018/1 "2026-09-28T09:24:30Z")

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Hi Square team,

I run TBK Barbershop in Australia and am building a customer app. We want customers to book entirely inside our app while retaining protection against no-shows.

Our existing Square website services have non-zero no\_show\_fee values. Your documentation says these services cannot be booked through the Bookings API. We do not want to remove their existing protection.

Could you confirm:

1. Is there a supported approach for native booking with no-show protection?

2. Could separate fee-free service variations remain hidden from our public booking website while supporting buyer-level SearchAvailability and CreateBooking? Which exact settings allow this?

3. Would those variations share the same barbers’ availability and prevent overlapping website/app bookings?

4. Can a deposit collected through the Payments API be linked to an API-created appointment so Square POS automatically shows the correct remaining balance?

5. If not, what supported card-on-file workflow could protect app bookings, and what would staff need to manage separately?

Please clarify which options are currently supported in Australia and which would require custom development.

Thanks,  
Karl  
TBK Barbershop

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**Author:** ![jseok](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f475e1/32.png) [@jseok](https://developer.squareup.com/forums/u/jseok)\
**Post date:** [September 28, 2026, 8:53pm UTC](https://developer.squareup.com/forums/t/australia-native-app-booking-while-retaining-no-show-protection/28018/3 "2026-09-28T20:53:20Z")

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1. The Bookings API has no supported way to book a service with no-show protection natively. It cannot create bookings for service variations with a non-zero `no_show_fee`. Any protection for app bookings would have to be built by you, or configured and implemented through the Square Dashboard.
2. To prevent specific variations from appearing as options for buyers, configure the initial Catalog Search using filters that would exclude those options. See the [Search for bookable services](https://developer.squareup.com/docs/bookings-api/use-the-api#request-search-for-appointment-services) step for more details.
3. SearchAvailability only searches for each barber’s availability as it would appear in their calendar. So long as they are booked correctly in Square, overlapping appointments should not occur.
4. There is no supported way today to link a Payments API payment to a booking so POS shows the remaining balance. Staff would need to account for the deposit when they check out the booking.
5. A supported option is to save the customer’s card with the [Cards API](https://developer.squareup.com/docs/cards-api/overview) after they agree to your no-show policy. If they don’t show up, charge the fee with the [Payments API](https://developer.squareup.com/docs/payments-api/overview) using that card. Your app or your staff would decide when to charge, and customer notifications about the fee would come from you. Booking changes made through the API also still send Square’s standard customer notifications.

All of this works in Australia. Only item 1 is a platform limitation. Items 4-5 need custom work on your side.