Guides › Appointments & front desk
Handling bookings from your website
How bookings made on your salon's booking website arrive in StyleDesk, how to confirm them, and what decides which times clients are offered.
If your salon has the booking website, clients can book themselves at any hour. Those bookings land on the same calendar as the ones you take at the desk. Your job is to check them and confirm them, the same as a phone booking.
The booking website is an add-on, switched on for your salon by StyleDesk. Setting it up is covered in setting up your booking website, and what the client sees in what your clients see when they book.
How an online booking arrives
- It appears on Appointments at the branch the client chose, as Scheduled, in the stylist's column. If the client chose Any available team member, StyleDesk has already picked someone who does the service and is free.
- Several services booked together are one booking, back to back from the time the client picked.
- The price is worked out as for any booking, so a running promotion or the client's special price applies.
- In the portal it looks like any other booking; nothing marks it as coming from the website. The Working Queue's Arriving Today section is the easiest place to spot today's.
The customer record
Clients book with their phone number. If it matches one existing customer at your salon, the booking goes on that customer's record. If not, StyleDesk asks the client for their first name and creates a new customer with that name and number. See client sign-in on your website.
Confirm it
- Open the booking from the calendar or the Working Queue.
- Contact the client if you want to check anything, such as a patch test or how long their hair is.
- If something needs changing (a different stylist, a longer service), use Edit details first; see editing a booking.
- Click Confirm Appointment.
If you cannot fit the client in after all, Reschedule or Cancel it and let them know; see rescheduling, cancelling and no-shows. Clients cannot change or cancel a booking from the website themselves, so they will contact you.
What the client is told
The website shows You are booked in with the booking's reference. If your salon's SMS sending is set up, the client also gets a text saying their booking is confirmed, with the reference. That message goes out straight away, before anyone at the desk has confirmed it, so confirm promptly.
Which times clients are offered
The website offers only times StyleDesk would accept at the desk. A time is offered when all of these are true:
- The branch is open, from its opening hours (branches and hours).
- At least one stylist whose branch it is does the service (which services each person does), is working then (staff schedules), is not on approved time off (time off), and is not already booked.
- The service is active and ticked for that branch under Available Branches (services and branches).
If a client says the website shows nothing for a service, one of these is usually missing.
Stopping online bookings
To stop taking bookings online, unpublish the website from the Website page; the whole site goes offline. If your subscription lapses, the site stays up but clients are told online booking is temporarily unavailable and to contact the salon.