Combined Checkout — One Person Pays for Several Customers

10 minutes

Introduction

When a group visits together — a mother and daughter, a bridal party, friends treating each other — one person often wants to settle everyone's bill in a single payment: one card tap, one cash hand-over, one receipt moment.

A combined checkout lets you pull several customers' appointments into one Quick Sale and take a single payment, while each customer keeps their own transaction, service history and accurate stylist commissions behind the scenes. Nothing about reporting, commissions or tips changes — the till just takes the money once.

Who this is for: Owner, Admin, Manager, Staff, Receptionist (anyone who processes transactions)

What you'll learn:

Add a second customer's appointments to a sale
Switch the "active" section so added items land with the right customer
Assign the right stylist to each customer's services and products
Adjust a price on any customer's line
Choose who is paying
Take one payment for the whole group
Understand what each customer's record shows afterwards
Refund one member of a group sale

Time to complete: 10 minutes

Prerequisites

Permission to process transactions
Two customers with appointments today (or walk-in items to sell)

Step-by-Step Instructions

1. Start the sale as normal

Open the first customer's appointment and choose Check out (or open Quick Sale and pick the customer). Their services appear in the cart exactly as usual.

2. Add the other customer's appointments

In the cart header, tap Add customer to this sale. Search by name, email or phone, then pick the customer. Their unbilled appointments are pulled in as a separate section of the cart, headed with their name.

What comes in is today's work only — appointments already checked in or completed today, plus today's bookings that haven't been marked as arrived yet. You don't have to check someone in first: if they're standing at the till, their appointment is there to bill, and putting the sale through closes it off on the calendar.

If something has been pulled in that they aren't paying for right now, tap the remove icon on that line — it comes straight back out of the sale and stays on the calendar untouched.

Three things are never pulled in on their own:

Anything from another day. If a service was delivered weeks ago and never charged, it stays unbilled indefinitely — so it isn't added to today's bill by surprise at the price recorded back then.
Bookings for a future day, including ones with a pending deposit. Those stay on the calendar so an upcoming appointment can't be charged in full by accident.
Cancelled and no-show appointments, so a fee can't quietly land on someone else's bill.

None of these become unbillable — they still appear in that customer's own Unbilled Appointments list, where you can add any of them with a single tap. The rule only stops them being added for you.

Note: Add All to Cart follows the same rule — it adds today's work and leaves the rest for you to choose deliberately.

You can repeat this for a third or fourth customer — each gets their own section.

Tip: If the person paying has no appointment of their own (they're just covering someone else's bill), you don't need to add them to the cart at all — just set them as the payer in step 5.

3. Route items to the right customer

Each section header works as a selector: tap a customer's header to make their section active (it highlights and shows an "Active" chip). Scanned retail products, picker adds and services tapped from the catalogue all land in the active section, so a shampoo for the daughter goes on the daughter's bill.

To remove a section entirely, tap the × on its header — nothing is saved to the server until you take payment.

4. Check each line's stylist and price

Every service and product line — in every customer's section — has its own staff dropdown, just like a single-customer sale:

Services pulled in from an appointment arrive with the booked stylist already selected (and priced at that stylist's level). Change it if someone else actually did the work — commission follows the dropdown.
Services added from the catalogue start unassigned and show an amber ⚠ Select staff warning; you must pick a stylist before you can take payment.
Products are optional — pick a staff member if someone should earn retail commission on the sale, or leave it as "No staff".

Every customer's lines work exactly like the main cart. Each section's rows carry the same controls as a single-customer sale (see Processing Transactions):

Price — tap the price on any service or product line to type a new amount. A changed price shows in blue with a "custom price" hint, and Reset restores the standard price. If the line came from an appointment, the new price is saved back to that customer's appointment as well.
Service — tap the service name on an appointment line to swap it for the service actually delivered. When you take payment, you'll be asked whether to update that customer's calendar appointment to match.
Quantity — use the − / + stepper on product (and service) lines.
VAT — each line shows its VAT badge, exactly as in the main cart.

If a customer has an agreed price for a service, it's carried over automatically for that customer, and any price prompt names who it's about.

5. Choose who's paying

Under the totals you'll see a "Paid by {name}" badge — it defaults to the customer who opened the sale. Tap Change to switch the payer to anyone in the sale.

6. Take one payment

The grand total combines every section. Take payment exactly as normal — cash, card, gift voucher or a split. One payment covers everyone.

Tips are shared out automatically: each stylist receives the tip share for their own customer's services.

7. What the records show afterwards

Each customer's transaction lists only their own services and products, at the right amounts — their visit history stays accurate.
The paid-for customer's transaction shows a "Paid by {payer}" badge.
The payer's own transaction shows "Also paid: {name}" badges linking to the other bills they covered.
The payer's profile gains a "Paid on behalf of others" card listing those transactions.
Reports, till totals and stylist commissions all count the sale once — exactly as if each customer had paid separately.

Refunding part of a group sale

Refund the individual customer's transaction as normal. The refund dialog reminds you who originally paid — process the card or cash refund against the payer, not the customer who received the service. Only that customer's share is refunded; the rest of the group sale is untouched, and only their stylist's commission is affected.

Troubleshooting

"This appointment already has an open checkout under another customer" — someone started a draft for that appointment under a different customer. Close or abandon that draft first, then retry.

"Payments must equal the combined total" — the payment amounts entered don't add up to the group's grand total. Check the totals panel and adjust.

A customer was added by mistake — tap the × on their section header before paying. Nothing is billed until payment is taken.