Incentivize Clients to Pay in Full Instead of Selecting a Payment Plan

In this article:

• Before You Begin
• How the Price Incentive Works
• Creating a Coupon for Pay in Full
• Setting Up Your Service, Package, or Program
• Testing Your Setup
• Sharing This Incentive with Your Team

Before You Begin

This technique relies on coupons, which only apply when a client selects Pay in full at checkout. Coupons can't be applied to payment plans, partial payments, or invoices sent directly to clients, so keep the following in mind before you start.

📍 Note: Your service, package, or program must use the Fixed Fee pricing model, not Ongoing Payments. Ongoing Payments is built for subscriptions and memberships, and clients on that model never see a "pay in full" option, so this incentive technique won't apply to it.

Your Public Bookings Page and Client Portal payment options must also be set to Require to pay at booking so that clients may have the opportunity to apply the coupon. The coupon field only appears to clients when payment is being collected at booking; if you've set Display fee (no payment required), clients won't see a place to enter a code.

How the Price Incentive Works

Since Practice Better can't display two different prices for the same offering, this technique uses the Fee field and a coupon together to create the price gap.

Set your service, package, or program Fee to the price you want clients to pay if they choose the payment plan. Then create a coupon that discounts that fee by the amount you want to reward pay-in-full clients with. When a client pays in full and applies the code, they pay less. When a client selects the payment plan, there's nothing for the coupon to apply to, so they pay the full fee across their installments.

Example: You set your package fee to $500. You create a coupon for 10% off. A client who pays in full and applies the coupon pays $450. A client who selects your payment plan pays the full $500 across their installments.

Tax is calculated after the coupon discount is applied, so clients are taxed on the discounted pay-in-full total, not the original fee.

Creating a Coupon for Pay in Full

1. Create your coupon. Choose a percentage-based or fixed-amount discount, whichever reflects the gap you want between paying in full and using a payment plan.
   
    
2. Under Limit to, restrict the coupon to this specific service, package, or program. This keeps the discount from accidentally applying to other offerings.
   
    
3. Click Save to create your coupon.

Learn more about Working with Coupons →

Setting Up Your Service, Package, or Program

1. Go to My Practice > My Services (or My Packages / My Programs) and click Edit next to the offering.
    
2. In the Description field, advertise the coupon code and the incentive to pay in full, so clients know the option exists before they reach checkout.
   
    
3. Under Payment Options, set both Public Bookings Page and Client Portal to Require to pay at booking.
   
    
4. Go to the Advanced Options tab and confirm Fee & Taxes > Pricing model is set to Fixed Fee. Set the Fee to the price you want clients to pay via the payment plan.
   
    
5. Scroll to the Payment Plans section and set up the installment plan you want to offer as the alternative to paying in full.
    
6. Click Save Changes.

Learn more about Setting Up Payment Plans in Practice Better →

Testing Your Setup

Before sharing the coupon code with clients, walk through your own booking page to confirm the discount applies correctly when paying in full and has no effect on the payment plan option.

Learn more about Testing Your Booking Process →

Sharing This Incentive with Your Team

If you're on a Team plan and want other practitioners to offer the same incentive, you can share both the coupon and the service, package, or program with your team. Each team member's shared copy carries the same pricing and payment plan setup, so you don't need to recreate it for each practitioner.

Learn more about Sharing Resources with Team Members →