For salons and barbershops

Your calendar should not live in a notebook by the till

Most hairdressers I talk to run on three things: a notebook next to the till, their WhatsApp, and their memory. That works surprisingly well, right up until you are ill, until someone calls while you are mid blow-dry, or until you read it back on a Sunday evening and "Fatma 2pm?" no longer means anything.

The point of online booking is not that the notebook is bad. The point is that your client is on the sofa at eleven at night and wants to book then, and you are asleep.

For one chair it is free: 1 staff member, 5 services, unlimited appointments. Work with more people or run a longer menu and it is €5 a month. The whole back end is available in Turkish as well.

Where salon booking usually goes wrong

A booking system for a dentist and a booking system for a salon look the same on paper and are not the same in practice. For you a cut takes thirty minutes, a cut with a wash and blow-dry takes seventy-five, and colour takes as long as it takes. You need five minutes to clean the chair. And half your clients simply walk in.

Systems that do not account for that hand you a calendar that looks tidy and is wrong. Clients book back to back with no gap, or they book a colour at quarter to six when you close at six.

That is why the settings below exist. They are not extras — they are the difference between a calendar you trust and a calendar you double-check every morning.

The settings that actually matter for a salon

There are five. All of them are in the free version, and you set them once.

Duration per service. Cut thirty minutes, colour a hundred and twenty. The system works out which times still fit, so a colour is never offered in a half-hour gap.
Padding before and after an appointment. It ships at zero, but set it to five or ten minutes and there is always air between two clients. Tidying, washing your hands, coffee. This is the setting that most reliably stops you running behind all day.
Fifteen-minute grid. Appointments start on quarter hours rather than arbitrary minutes, so your day does not fill up with unusable seven-minute gaps.
How far ahead clients can book. Two months by default. Far enough for regulars, not so far that in January you are already committed to something in June.
The cancellation cut-off. Twenty-four hours by default. After that they cannot cancel online and have to ring you — which is the point, because then at least you know.

Working hours, your regular day off, your lunch break and the two weeks you close in August are all set once too. Clients simply never see those times.

The empty hour at quarter past two

This is where most salons leave money on the table, and it is the part I have put the most work into.

Someone cancels. You suddenly have a gap, and you know there are people who want it — you turned someone away last week. But you are working, and you are not about to text ten people one at a time.

The slot is released automatically

The moment the cancellation lands. You do not have to do anything and you do not have to be there.
One person is offered it

The first in line, not everyone at once. And the slot is held for them while they think, so it is not a race to click fastest.
If they do not answer, it moves on

The offer lapses by itself and the next person gets exactly the same one. That continues until someone says yes or the list runs out.

You notice none of it except that the gap has closed. Here is exactly how it works, including what it does not do.

People who do not turn up

Two things help, and I want to be straight about what the second one is and is not.

The first is the reminder. By default an email goes out automatically twenty-four hours ahead, and you can change that timing. For a salon the day before usually beats two hours before, because it still leaves someone room to cancel while you can fill the slot.

The second is that you can mark an appointment as a no-show. It stays on that client and it shows up in your reporting, so after a few months you know who does this repeatedly instead of having a vague feeling. What the system does not do is block that client automatically — that stays your decision and your conversation.

Reminder plus waitlist is the combination that earns the most: fewer people forgetting, and the ones who do cancel get replaced.

What it does not do

Before you sit down for an afternoon of typing, you should know this now rather than in two weeks:

It does not send text messages. All reminders go by email. For part of the client base in this trade that is a genuine drawback, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. SMS is on the list but it is not in the product today.
It does not take deposits. You cannot require money up front to discourage no-shows. Your client books online and pays you the way they do now.
It is not a till and not stock control. No product sales, no colour inventory. It is a calendar with a client list attached.
There is no app. It runs in the browser, on your phone just as well as on a laptop.
You cannot pay for Pro yet. The free plan limits are real, but no payment processor is connected. If you hit them, I switch it on by hand. The rest of that story is here.

Frequently asked questions

Is it free for a one-person salon?

Yes, and it is not a trial. The free plan is 1 staff member and 5 services, with unlimited appointments and no credit card. For one chair running cut, wash, colour, blow-dry and beard that fits exactly. With more people it is €5 a month.

Does it work if half my clients walk in?

Yes. Online booking does not replace walk-ins, it runs alongside them. You put a walk-in into the calendar yourself and that time immediately stops being bookable online. In practice it shifts slowly: clients who book online once usually do it again.

Can I make sure there is time between two clients?

Yes. You can set padding before and after every appointment — five or ten minutes, say — and the system keeps that time free when it offers slots. It ships at zero, so this is one to switch on before you share your link.

What happens when someone cancels?

The slot is released automatically and offered to the first person on the waitlist, one at a time, held for them while they decide. If nobody responds, the gap simply stays open in your calendar.

Is the software available in Turkish?

Yes. The whole admin area and the booking page are available in Dutch, English and Turkish. Your client picks their own language and you work in whichever one you think fastest in.

What changes if I have two or three chairs?

You need Pro, because the free plan is 1 staff member. With Pro each person gets their own schedule and their own service list, a client can choose who they see, and you can track commission per person. That is €5 a month for the whole shop, not per person.

Set your salon up once and see whether it sticks

Half an hour of typing and you have a link for your Instagram bio. If you do not like it, delete it and you are out half an hour.

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