An online booking system for a small Swiss business
Appointments that stop the phone ringing. Staff, rooms, the gap between clients, reminders that get read, and cancellations handled without you being involved.
Every business that books time has rules it has never written down — the fifteen minutes after a colour, the treatment only two of the staff can do. Writing those down is the build.
What actually happens,
and when it is your turn.
Your rows are marked. Add them up and the whole thing costs you well under two hours, which is the number every other agency's process page leaves out.
From the call to the day it goes live. One figure for the whole build, agreed in writing before any of it starts.
What moves it: staff, rooms and opening rules, and whether deposits are taken at the time of booking.
YouA call about how the diary really works, including the part you would not put in writing.
The rules are written down as a list you can read and argue with: services, durations, who can do what, where, and the gaps.
YouRead that list. Almost everybody finds two rules they follow and had never said out loud.
The booking flow goes up on a private link, wired to a test calendar, with your real services in it.
YouBook yourself in, on a phone, as an awkward customer would. Then try to book something impossible.
Reminders, deposits, cancellation rules, the two-way sync to the calendar you already use, and the staff view.
YouTwenty minutes connecting the real calendar and, if you want deposits, the payment account — both in your name.
Live, with the phone number still on the page. The booking button is an option for the customer, not a wall.
Six choices
only you can make.
None of these are technical and all of them change the result. They are listed here so the call has an agenda and so you can think about them before it rather than during it.
Cleaning, notes, a coffee. Left out, the diary books you back-to-back all day and you will hate it by Wednesday.
Per person and per room. This is the rule most often carried in somebody's head and the one that causes the worst double-bookings when it is.
How far in advance somebody may book, and how close to the slot. Both are business decisions with a real cost attached.
The single setting that changes the behaviour of people who book and never come. Per service, and it is your call which ones deserve it.
Your notice period and what happens inside it. Written once, applied by the system, so you are never the one enforcing it in a message.
Timing and tone. Far enough ahead that the customer can still do something about it, and in the language they booked in.
What to have ready.
None of it is required. All of it makes the price firmer and the first draft closer.
Three questions
this one gets and the others do not.
We already use a salon or practice system.
Then the honest question is whether you need this at all. If that system takes bookings badly but holds your records well, connecting to it is usually the better build and it is quoted separately. If it is a diary with a login, replacing it is cheaper than bridging it.
What about classes rather than one-to-one slots?
That is a different shape — capacity, waiting lists, series of sessions — and it is a bigger build. Say so on the call and you will get a price for the real thing rather than a booking system that almost fits.
Does it hold health records?
No, and it should not. It books time. Anything that needs to be kept under health-data rules is a different build with a different price and a much stricter set of checks, and pretending otherwise would be the worst kind of shortcut.
If the appointments are fine and it is the paperwork that is drowning you, the weekly roles are the better answer.