Client Booking — Methodology Handbook

Client Booking is an appointment book for someone whose time is the product: a stylist, a tutor, a massage therapist, a consultant, a small studio with a few people. It keeps the schedule, the clients, the services and the team in one place, and gives the business a public booking page where clients pick a free time themselves — without creating an account.

👉 Open the tracker: calculatorai.app/booking-tracker · How it compares: the comparison page sets it beside a notebook-and-chat routine and the dedicated booking apps.

Who it is for: salons and barbers, beauty and nail studios, massage therapists and clinics, tutors and language teachers, personal trainers, coaches and consultants — anyone who sells time in appointments and today keeps the book in a notebook, a chat or a spreadsheet.

What it costs: nothing. Every part described here — the schedule, the booking page, the emails, the payments, the analytics, the exports — works on the free plan, with no cap on appointments and no commission: clients pay you directly, never through us.

The two halves

1. The tracker — the owner's side, in six tabs: Schedule, Analytics, Booking page, Clients, Services and Team & hours.
2. The booking page — the client's side, at /book/<your-address>. It shows only what the owner chose to show: the services on offer, who performs them, the free times, and the questions the owner wants answered. Nobody else's name, phone, price or appointment ever reaches it — busy time arrives only as "the times that are left", computed on the server.

Schedule

• Four views: Day, Week, Month and List (the next two weeks as a list). Each appointment is drawn in its service's colour; days off are marked; cancelled visits can be shown or hidden.
• Figures at the top: earned this month (with the part not yet paid beneath), today's visits and the next one, what this week is booked for, and the no-show rate over the last 30 days.
• Requests waiting for you — bookings that need your answer are listed separately, with Confirm and Decline buttons. A booking waiting for its prepayment says so ("Awaiting payment"), and one whose client pressed "I've paid" says that too ("Says paid").
• Adding a visit by hand — pick the client (or type a new name), the service and the person; the form offers the free times for that day. You can squeeze a visit in outside working hours, but never on top of another visit of the same person. A visit can use one session of a package, carry a private note only you see, and repeat.
• Every visit card holds the time, the price, the client's answers and note, your private note, and the actions for its stage: confirm or decline a request, mark done or no-show, cancel, move, mark paid or unpaid, undo, restore — and, for a completed priced visit, send it to your income (see Connected to the rest of the platform).
• CSV export of the appointments, at any time.

Statuses

Pending (a request waiting for an answer) → Confirmed → after the visit, Completed or No-show. Either side can cancel. A completed visit is marked paid separately, because being done and being paid are not the same event.

Repeats and packages

• Repeats — a visit can repeat every week, every 2 weeks, every month or every N days, for a set number of visits; the form previews the dates. Dates that collide with something already booked are skipped and listed — never double-booked.
• Packages — a client buys a number of sessions up front (ten lessons, five massages), for one service or any, optionally with an expiry date and marked as already paid. Each visit booked against the package uses one; the client card shows how many are left.

Clients

Everyone who books through your page lands here automatically — the same person coming back (matched by email or phone) keeps the same card. You can add regulars yourself too.

• The list shows each client's visits, last and next visit, no-shows and what they brought in; it is searchable by name, phone or email and sortable by any column (ascending, descending, back to the original order).
• A client card holds every visit, what was paid, no-shows, the average visit, notes ("allergies, preferences") and packages, with a Book again button.
• Several clients can be selected and deleted at once; their past appointments stay in the schedule.
• CSV export of the clients.

Services

• Each service has a name, a short description (clients see it), a duration (5 minutes to 12 hours), a price and currency, optional buffers before and after (preparing the room, cleaning, travel — clients can't book that time), who performs it, and whether it is bookable right now (a hidden service stays in the history).
• Show the length to clients can be switched off — for a package like "consultation + 10 days of follow-up", the length still blocks your schedule but the page doesn't print "60 min".
• Picture on the booking page — beside each service: the specialist's photo, your own picture (a logo or a photo of the service), or no picture.
• Colour — one of 16 colours or your own; appointments for that service wear it in the schedule, so services can be told apart at a glance.
• Categories — services are grouped into categories (Hair, Nails, Consultations…) that sit together on the booking page. Manage categories creates, renames and deletes them; a category can be empty, and deleting one moves its services to "Other".
• Filters — the list narrows by category and by specialist.
• Drag to reorder — the booking page shows services in the order you set.
• Online payment per service — as the page says, its own payment details and/or link (and amount), or paid on site (see Payments).
• CSV export of the services.

Team & hours

• People — each person has a name, a role shown next to the name ("Senior stylist"), a photo (initials without one), an About text clients can open on the booking page (experience, approach, languages), a colour, a time zone, and an email for their own booking notifications. Someone on long leave can be switched off without losing their history. Drag to reorder — the booking page shows people in this order.
• Working hours — a working week per person, in their own time zone. A day can have several intervals (split around a lunch break), and one day's hours can be copied to every working day.
• Days off every week — choose weekdays that are always off, for one person or for everyone.
• Days off & holidays — a date range for one person, or for the whole business ("Everyone — closed"), with a reason. Nobody can book those days; appointments already made stay for you to move.

Staff access — a login for each specialist

In Team & hours → Access every specialist card can get its own login. Invite a colleague by email and choose what they see:

• Own appointments — only the visits booked with that specialist;
• Whole schedule — every specialist's visits (for an administrator or a receptionist).

and what they may do:

• Editor (the default) — confirms or declines requests, moves visits, marks them done / no-show / cancelled, and books new visits (inside what they can see, always at the service's price);
• View only — sees the schedule and changes nothing.

The colleague gets an email, opens the link and signs in (or creates a free account) with that address; the link works for 14 days and only for that address. From then on their Client Booking shows a switch between their own booking and your studio.

• Viewing is free for the colleague. Everything an editor does needs their own Pro — your plan never pays for someone else. Inviting colleagues is part of your Pro.
• Stays with you only: prices, payments and "paid" marks, packages, clients' cards and your private notes about clients, the booking page and every setting. A colleague cannot delete a visit, set a price or use a package; a colleague's screen shows how many visits there are, never the earnings. The note on a visit is shared with your team (never with the client).
• You can switch someone between "own" and "whole schedule", or between editor and view only, at any time, and Remove access takes effect at once — their past work stays in your schedule.
• Each person's card has a ⋯ menu: edit profile, payment (their own account and prepayment), schedule login, "accepts bookings" on/off, delete. Deleting someone together with their upcoming visits cancels those visits and emails each client who left an email.

The booking page builder

The booking page is built inside the tracker, with a live preview beside the form (and a full-size preview on a computer). It is in seven sections:

1. Basics — the name, a short line under it, an "about" paragraph and the link (3–40 Latin letters, numbers and dashes; the builder tells you at once whether it is free). A page starts as a draft only you can see and goes live when you publish it; you can unpublish it any time. You can keep more than one page.
2. Design — a logo (upload one, or take it from your website), a header picture or no header band at all, a style (Light, Dark, Tinted or Bold), an accent colour, corners (sharp, soft, round) and a font (modern, classic, soft). And the page template — see below.
3. Contacts — address, phone, email, website and social profiles (Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, X, Threads, Pinterest, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Telegram, Viber). Only what you fill in is shown.
4. Services and people — which services and which team members appear on this page; whether clients choose the specialist (off: whoever is free is assigned — the person with the fewest bookings that day); and what the page opens on: Services, Specialists, or Services only (hides the Specialists tab).
5. Client form — the client always gives a name; phone, email and a comment can each be asked, optional or required; and you can add your own questions — a text, a choice from options, or a tick box — each optional or required.
6. Rules — see Rules the page follows; also the page's language, the rules for clients shown under the booking (lateness, cancellations, prepayment) and the message after booking (how to find you, what to bring).
7. Payment — see Payments.

Four page templates

How the page looks on a computer; on a phone every template becomes one tidy column.

In the three newer templates (Editorial, Concierge, Integrated) the business column stays in place while the booking side scrolls, a labelled stepper says which step the client is on ("Step 2 of 4"), and the page shows:

• Opening status — "Open until 19:00", "Opens tomorrow at 9:00" — and the week's opening hours, built from the working hours of the people on the page.
• The nearest free time of each specialist — "today", "tomorrow", a date, or "no free time soon" (looking two weeks ahead).
• Search and filter — clients can search the specialists by name or specialty and the services by name; the specialties come from the roles you gave your team. Search is always on in Concierge and appears in the other templates once the list is long.

What clients see and do

• Services | Specialists — with several people and "clients choose the specialist" on, the client switches between starting from a service or from a person. Details on a service opens its full description, duration, price and who performs it; the About button on a person opens their photo, role and About text — each with a button to book.
• Picking a time — two weeks at a time, grouped into morning, afternoon and evening, in the client's own time zone (with the business's zone noted when they differ).
• Booking — the client fills in the form and presses Book (or Request, when you confirm by hand). The confirmation screen offers Add to calendar (a calendar file) and Add to Google Calendar, a link to change or cancel, and — when you take prepayments — how to pay.
• Prices are written the way the client's language writes money; a price of zero reads "Free".
• Language — you choose the page's language: English, Russian, Ukrainian, Chinese, Spanish, German, Italian, French, Japanese, Portuguese (Brazil) or Turkish. The link is the same for everyone; the page, its emails and the change/cancel page all speak the language you picked.

Links, tagged links and the QR code

• The page has one link — for an Instagram bio, a WhatsApp status or a website button.
• Tagged links — the builder gives a separate copy of the link for Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Google, Telegram and email. Share each in its own place, and Analytics → Sources shows which one brings the bookings. Any link with your own utm_source / utm_campaign tags is counted the same way, and when another website sends a client, its name is recorded too.
• QR code — for a desk, a window or a flyer, the builder hands the link to the QR code generator. The code it opens with is a dynamic one (its destination can be changed after printing) and is tagged as the qr source, so bookings made by scanning it show up as their own line in the analytics.

Rules the page follows

A service's duration and its buffers block the calendar together, so the next client can't be booked into the clean-up.

Time zones

Every moment is stored as an absolute instant. Working hours are written in the team member's own time zone, and each reader sees times in theirs: the owner in the tracker, the client on the page and in their emails. "14:30" therefore means the same instant for a studio in Chicago and a client booking from Lisbon — the page shows the business's zone beside the client's whenever the two differ, and the client's emails show the time on their own clock too. Daylight-saving changes are handled by the calendar, not by hand.

No double bookings

Two clients pressing "Book" on the same slot in the same second is not a rare edge case — it is exactly what happens to a popular time. So the guarantee does not rest on a check made before saving: the database itself refuses a second live appointment that overlaps the first for the same person, buffers included. The second client is told the slot was just taken and is shown the times that are still free. Cancelled and deleted appointments release their slot at once.

The same rule holds inside the tracker: a visit added by hand into time that person already has taken is refused too, and a repeating series skips the dates that collide instead of stacking two clients. Different team members can, of course, see different clients at the same time.

Payments — straight to you, no commission

The page never takes the money. Clients pay you directly, so there is no commission, no processing fee and no payout delay. You switch it on in Booking page → Payment and give clients one or both ways to pay:

• Payment details — plain text, exactly as it should be copied: your Zelle or Venmo handle, a Cash App $cashtag, account details, what to write as the purpose. Clients see it line by line with a copy button on each line (and "Copy all").
• A payment link of your own — PayPal.me, a Stripe or Square payment link, a Venmo or Cash App link. Only secure https:// links are accepted.

How much: the full price, a fixed prepayment, or a percentage of the price. A fixed amount never exceeds the price.

Per service and per specialist. A service can follow the page, use its own payment details and/or link (with its own amount), or be paid on site. A specialist can follow the page, use their own payment details or link (optionally with their own amount rule), or be paid on site. The money goes to the most specific place that is set — the specialist's own details, then the service's own, then the page's — each is used whole, so one account's link never appears next to another's details; the amount follows the service's own amount first, then the specialist's rule, then the page's. "No online payment" on either the service or the specialist means the visit is paid in person.

Prepayment required turns a booking into a request waiting for payment: the time is held, and the booking is confirmed when you confirm the money. Optionally, an unpaid request is cancelled automatically after a number of hours you choose (up to two weeks), which frees the slot again — but never for a client who has already said they paid.

The client's side. A service card shows "Prepayment 50%" (or the amount, or "Pay online"). After booking, the confirmation screen, the confirmation email and the client's private link all show the amount, your details and the Pay online button, plus "I've paid".

Your side. When a client presses "I've paid", you get a notification and an email, and the visit shows "Says paid". You check the money arrived and press Confirm payment — the visit is marked paid (and a booking that was waiting for its prepayment is confirmed). A prepayment you haven't confirmed yet shows on the visit as "Prepayment … not confirmed yet".

What is asked is fixed at the moment of booking: changing a price or the payment settings later never rewrites what an existing client was asked to pay. Where to pay is not frozen: if you (or a specialist) correct the payment details or the link, clients who already booked see the corrected ones on their private link. A service with its own details or link and no amount entered uses its price — and follows the price if you change it later.

Choosing "anyone available". The specialist is assigned the moment the booking is made, so the client sees that person's payment terms right after booking. Before a specialist is chosen, a service card whose specialists have different terms says "How to pay — after booking" instead of a prepayment figure. And because the money never passes through the site, the site cannot see a payment: "paid" is always your confirmation.

Emails

To clients — when a client leaves an email address, they receive:

• a confirmation (or "request received", when you confirm by hand) with the details, a calendar file and a private link to see, move or cancel the visit;
• a message when you confirm a request, move the visit or cancel it — and when an unpaid request lapses;
• a reminder about 24 hours before the visit.

Emails carry your business's name, logo and colour, show the payment details when you take prepayments, and a reply goes to your page's contact email. They are written in the page's language — any of the eleven listed above.

To you — a copy when a client books, sends a request, moves or cancels a visit, or reports a payment, together with a notification in your account. The copy goes to the team member's own email when they have one, otherwise to yours.

The client's private link

The confirmation carries a private link to that one appointment. There the client sees its status, the time, the price and the payment, can add it to their calendar, move it to another free time or cancel it (with an optional reason) — until the page's cancellation deadline, which the page states. After that it says to contact the business directly. The link shows nothing about anyone else.

Protection against spam

The public page is open to anyone, so it is limited: a few attempts per visitor within a few minutes, a daily ceiling per page, a hidden field that people never fill in but form-filling bots do, a check that the form was actually opened (and not sent faster than a person could fill it), and an invisible human check. A client can hold at most three upcoming online bookings with one business — for more, they contact the business, and you can always add more by hand. None of this shows to a real client, and a client never needs an account or a password to book.

Analytics

The Analytics tab takes a period (this week, this month, the last 30 or 90 days, this year, or your own range) and can be narrowed to some specialists or services. It has six sections:

1. Overview — the headline figures and a chart of bookings or revenue over time (by day, week or month).
2. Finance — revenue, what is not paid yet, what is booked ahead, revenue by specialist and by service.
3. Team — per person: bookings, visits, revenue, average check, no-shows and occupancy.
4. Top services — what was booked and what brought the money, with each service's share.
5. Sources — where the bookings came from: the page link itself, each tagged link (with its campaigns), another website that linked to the page, or added by you.
6. Client base — who came in the period, new and returning, sortable by revenue or visits; a name opens the client card.

Money is shown in one currency: services and visits keep their own, and totals are converted at current rates (the page says so when it does).

Your data

Appointments, clients and services export to CSV at any time, free. Nothing is hidden behind the export.

Connected to the rest of the platform

• Workspace calendar — every pending, confirmed and completed visit appears on the calendar; a request can be confirmed, a visit marked done or cancelled right there, and the morning summary lists the day's visits.
• Income & Expense Tracker and Business P&L — a completed, priced visit can be sent to the Income & Expense Tracker as income, or to the Business P&L as revenue. The form opens filled in with the price, the client and the service; nothing is saved until you press Save.
• The weekly email includes a line about last week's visits and earnings and the week ahead, and nudges you when requests are waiting.
• Reminders — when booking requests have been waiting for your answer, the assistant can remind you with a notification.
• The assistant knows your week ahead, today's visits, the requests waiting, the month's earnings and what is still unpaid, the no-show rate, the most-booked service, and how many bookings are waiting for a prepayment or for you to confirm a payment a client reported.

Privacy

Clients' names, phones and emails are visible only to you — and to colleagues you give access to, for the visits they can see. The booking page never lists other clients or who is booked when. A client's private link shows that one appointment and nothing else. Booking pages and private links are not listed in search engines. The example salon shown before you start is never mixed with your real schedule and disappears on its own when your first real client books (or you can clear it), and deleted appointments go to a bin for 30 days before they are removed.

What it does not do

• It does not process card payments itself — clients pay you directly by the details or payment link you give, so there is no commission and no payout delay; a payment is marked paid only when you confirm it.
• It does not sync with an outside calendar. Clients get a calendar file and an "Add to Google Calendar" link; your own schedule lives here and on the Workspace calendar.
• It is not a directory: your page is found through the link you share, not through a list of businesses.