Susie Samuel MA VetMB MRCVS
CEO Digital Practice
No-shows and late cancellations are commercially damaging.
If you asked most vets a few years ago whether deposits would become “normal” in practice, I think many of us would have hesitated.
Now, more and more practices are actively considering deposits and the conversation has changed completely.
This isn’t about being harsh on clients. It’s about protecting clinical time, team time, and your practice’s financial sustainability.
No-shows aren’t just annoying, they are expensive
Not only are your team waiting around if an appointment is missed, but it also means consulting rooms and resources aren’t fully utilised.
This is bad enough for routine appointments, but for surgery it’s a completely different level of impact, especially for:
- Longer procedures
- Complex cases that require extra staffing
- Cases involving outside surgeons or specialists coming into the practice
If that client doesn’t turn up, it can be devastating. The schedule is broken, costs aren’t covered, and it can take weeks to recover the opportunity.
Deposits are not the only way to prevent no-shows
There are lots of things that can reduce non-attendance, and practices should absolutely use a combination of approaches.
That includes:
- Clear pre-op instructions (especially making sure pets don’t eat or drink the night before)
- Reminding people in a way they will actually see (increasingly, that means WhatsApp, not email or SMS)
- Giving clients lots of ways to cancel (and making it easy to cancel in the appropriate timeframe)
But deposits seem to focus the mind.
And they come with the added benefit of giving the practice some compensation in the event of a no-show, late cancellation, or last-minute change.
Clients are getting used to deposits and they aren’t unexpected anymore
This is a really important point because it’s where a lot of the worry sits.
Many practices still have the feeling of:
“Clients will see this negatively.”
In reality, most clients have already experienced deposits in everyday life:
- Restaurants
- Hairdressers
- Dentists
- Physio / private healthcare
- Cosmetic clinics
Deposits have become normal.
So when a veterinary practice asks for a deposit (especially for longer consults or surgery), it doesn’t come as a big surprise, and the vast majority of the time it doesn’t make clients think any less of the practice.
The hard part: Taking deposits without the right system is a pain
Even when a practice wants to take deposits, doing it operationally is not simple without the right tools.
Taking deposits can create issues like:
- Lots of manual chasing
- Unclear admin responsibility
- Poor payment links / clunky card payment processes
- Deposits not being properly recorded
- Deposits not being correctly added to the invoice in the PMS
So even if deposits are the right thing commercially, they can fall apart in the real world if the process is messy.
Digital Practice makes deposits feasible
Digital Practice makes it possible to:
- Send clients a payment link via WhatsApp (in a way they actually respond to)
- Keep all communication organised and captured
- Track paid and unpaid deposits
- Ensure the deposit is added to the total on the practice management system in real time so that everyone knows what the client has paid
It turns deposits from “a nice idea” into something a practice can actually do without creating extra workload.
What Urban Vet found when they introduced deposits
In the video, Paul Aggarwal from Urban Vet explains the impact deposits have had on his practice.
Paul describes how deposits have given him peace of mind, particularly because they offer longer consultations (40–60 minute appointments), as well as referral-level orthopaedic surgery with visiting surgeons.
Deposits mean that if there is a late cancellation, they have a way to cover costs.
And when it comes to client response?
He says something I hear more and more from practices:
- No pushback whatsoever
- Clients are used to it from other services
- Even when deposits are retained (with clear notice), clients have been 100% understanding
That’s a powerful reassurance for any of you who are still hesitating.
Final thought
Deposits won’t be right for every single appointment. But for longer consults, referral-level work, and surgery, or clinics experiencing high no-show rates, they’re increasingly becoming part of sensible, modern practice management.
No-shows cost far more than most people realise. Deposits are one of the simplest, fairest ways to reduce them, and clients are far more comfortable with them than the profession often assumes.