Shop owners

Setup, calendar, staff, services, customers, billing, and SMS. Written for the person opening the shop each morning.

Setup & onboarding

Claim your slug, brand your page, first service, first staff member, locations, go-live.

Claim your shop URL — Your shop lives at booked.co/<slug>. Pick it once, print it on cards, put it in your Instagram bio.
Set up your first service — Name, duration, price. That's the whole form. Everything else is optional.
Add your first staff member — If you're a solo shop, add yourself as staff. The calendar needs a person to hang appointments on.
Set your weekly hours — Shop hours are the outer envelope. Staff hours slot inside them.
Close for a holiday, or open on odd hours — One date at a time. Overrides your weekly hours for that date only, and tells customers why.
Make your booking page look like your shop — Logo, colour, a cover photo, a gallery and an about block — and, on Pro, removing our mark entirely.
The go-live checklist — Fourteen things to confirm before you print the QR code.
Can I change my shop URL later? — Yes, but every printed card and social link pointing at the old one will 404.
Add a second location — What $9 a month buys, what the new room inherits, what it does not, and how to move between them.
Sign in with a text message — Link your mobile once, then sign in with a 6-digit code instead of a password.
Install Booked on your phone — Add it to your home screen so it opens like an app — and what it does and does not do without a signal.

Calendar & bookings

Views, blocks, buffers, no-shows, walk-ins, deposits, rescheduling.

How the booking buffer works — The gap Booked keeps on both sides of every appointment, so the next one is never offered back-to-back.
Block time off — Vacations, single days, or a two-hour lunch. Blocks belong to a staff member, not the whole shop.
Mark a booking as no-show — Two clicks. The customer's history gets a mark, and any deposit rules kick in.
Reschedule a booking — Drag on the calendar, or open the booking and pick a new time. The customer gets an email.
Can I add a walk-in from the calendar? — Yes. Click an empty slot, fill three fields, done. No customer email required.
See your bookings in your phone calendar — Subscribe from Apple Calendar, Google Calendar or Outlook so your appointments sit alongside the rest of your day.
Booking statuses explained — Five statuses. Each one changes what the customer sees and what your reports count.
Turn on deposits — Charge a percent of the service at booking. Pro plan and a verified Stripe account required.
Waitlists for full sessions — When a class fills up, customers can ask to be told if a place opens. Nothing is held — first to book gets it.
Set up a standing appointment — Book a regular into the same slot every week or fortnight, in one go, without re-entering it each time.

Staff & services

Adding staff, assigning services, hours, time-off, pricing, duration.

Add a staff member — One row per person. Give them a role, and services if they take bookings.
Assign services to a staff member — Only services with a check next to a staff member show up when the customer picks that person.
Set staff hours — Staff schedules slot inside shop hours. Narrower is fine. Wider isn't.
Add time off for one staff member — Same steps as any time-off block, but scoped to a single staff row.
Price and duration a service — Duration includes cleanup. Price is what the customer pays in full. No hidden fees at checkout.
Run a class or group session — Let several customers book the same start time by giving a service more than one seat.
How many staff members can I have? — Starter is one. Pro is unlimited. That's the whole rule.
How your service list is ordered (and why there are no categories) — Booked has no service categories. Your public page lists services alphabetically, so the name is the ordering tool.

Customers & CRM

Customer list, notes, tags, reviews, import, export.

How the customer list is built — Pro only. Every unique email or phone that has ever booked lands as a customer row.
Add a note to a customer — Notes are private to your shop. They're the "always uses 3 on the sides" you meant to remember.
Tag customers — Short labels — VIP, first-timer, needs deposit — that make the customer list filterable.
Reply to and moderate reviews — Answer a review in public, hide one that should not be up, or add a review a client gave you in person.
Merge two records for the same client — Fold a duplicate into the record you want to keep, without losing their visit history.
Import your customer list — CSV in, deduped rows out. Booked reads exports from Square, Booksy, Vagaro, Fresha, GlossGenius, Acuity, and Schedulicity.
Can I export my customers? — Yes. CSV of every customer row, downloaded from the customer list. Take it with you if you ever leave.

Billing & SMS

Plans, upgrades, payouts, tips, SMS top-ups, portal, refunds, canceling.

Plans compared: Starter, Pro, SMS add-on — One row per plan, one column per thing that matters. The whole pricing story on one screen.
Start your 7-day Starter trial — Card required, no charge for seven days, cancel any time before day 7 for zero cost.
Upgrade from Starter to Pro — One click. Prorated for the remainder of the cycle. Unlocks staff, CRM, deposits, and SMS eligibility immediately.
Downgrade from Pro to Starter — Effective at the end of the current cycle. Some data — extra staff, CRM history — is hidden, not deleted.
Add the SMS add-on — $5/month on top of Pro. 500 messages per billing cycle, then a top-up if you need more.
Top up SMS credits mid-cycle — One-off purchase, not a subscription. Credits roll over until you use them.
What happens when I hit the 500-message SMS cap? — Sending pauses. Bookings still work; only the text messages stop. We email you at 80% and again at 100%.
Open your Stripe billing portal — Update card, download invoices, change plan, cancel — all in one Stripe-hosted page.
Take card payments and get paid — Setting up payouts, what Booked charges, and how the money reaches your bank.
Turn on tipping — Two moments a client can tip, how to set the presets, and why none of it reaches us.
How do refunds and chargebacks work? — Deposit refunds are your call, issued from Stripe. Chargebacks go through Stripe's dispute flow.
Cancel your subscription — Cancels at the end of the current cycle. Your data stays; your public page pauses.