templates · 2026-09-05
Booking setup checklist
Most setups fail in the same way. Somebody enters the services, publishes availability the same afternoon, and spends the following month apologising for hours the business does not actually have. The order below exists because each step depends on the one before it, and because the last step is the only one a customer sees.
1. Write down what you already promised
Before anything else, collect the bookings that already exist: the diary, the notebook, the messages, the regular who has a standing Tuesday nobody wrote down. These are commitments and they outrank everything you are about to configure. Entering them first also tells you the truth about your own operation, because the ones that will not fit are the ones you had already promised twice.
2. List services with the durations they really take
Take the time that actually elapses, not the time on the price list. The twenty-five-minute service that everybody knows takes thirty-five should go in as thirty-five. Every other number in the system is derived from these, so an optimistic list here produces a calendar that runs late every afternoon and nobody can explain why.
3. Add the gap you already take
Cleaning, resetting, fuelling, writing the notes, walking to the next room. It exists whether or not anybody records it. Configure it as a buffer per service or per resource, and accept that this reduces how much you appear to be able to sell — it does not reduce what you can actually deliver, which was always the smaller number.
4. Enter people with real hours and real skills
Working hours by day including the late start on Tuesdays, days off, holidays already known, and which services each person actually performs. The last part removes an entire class of mistakes: somebody being offered for work they do not do, and a booking being quietly reassigned to them later.
5. Enter only the resources that constrain you
A room, a chair, a vehicle, a machine, the countable extras. If you have three of something and never run out, leave it out — a calendar with resources nobody checks is harder to read and no more truthful. Add maintenance and standing commitments for each: the club night, the weekly delivery, the training morning.
6. Write the rules you will actually apply
Notice period, cancellation, no-show, deposit. Write them in the words you would say to a customer, and cut anything you know you will not enforce. These four decisions settle most of the arguments you will have next year, and deciding them calmly now is cheaper than deciding them at a counter with somebody unhappy in front of you.
7. Run one real week before anybody outside sees it
Work a normal week in parallel with whatever you use now. Take the phone bookings both ways, and look at the end of each day for the places where the two disagree. Those disagreements are your remaining configuration errors, and they are much cheaper to find here than in a customer’s confirmation.
8. Open availability narrowly, then widen it
Publish a small window first — a few days, a couple of services, one resource. It is easy to open more hours and unpleasant to take them back. Once the desk stops correcting things, widen it and let customers book directly.
9. Change one thing after the first month
After a month you will have opinions about buffers, notice periods and how much of the day to keep for same-day work. Change one of them, not all four, and watch what happens. A setup that keeps changing never gets trusted by the people who have to use it every morning.
Product documentation · Product owner
