Help & Guides

New accounts start on a 14-day free trial with no card required. The trial gives you Pro Team features so you can see the full product before choosing a plan.

Set these up first — everything else depends on them:

• Settings → Business — your salon name, type, address and contact details. These appear on receipts and your public page.
• Settings → Hours — timezone plus opening and closing time. This controls both the calendar and which slots online booking offers.
• Settings → Payments — currency, tax label and rate, and your payment methods (PayNow, GrabPay, NETS, whatever you take). Methods you list here are what appears at checkout.
• Services — at least one, with a price and duration.
• Staff — at least one, with working hours set under Staff → Schedule.

Once those exist you can take bookings. Publishing your online booking page is a separate switch — see Online booking.

The Bookings page is a day view with one column per staff member. Everything is direct manipulation: drag a card to move it, drag its edge to change how long it runs, drag on empty space to block time out.

Creating and moving appointments

• New booking — customer is optional, so walk-ins don't need a profile first. You can also add a new customer inline.
• Drag to reschedule — across times and across staff columns. In the 3 days or Week grid, drag across dates to keep the same staff member and duration. You can also use Reschedule from the booking's detail panel, then navigate to the day you want.
• Drag the bottom edge to lengthen or shorten an appointment.
• Rebook — creates a new appointment pre-filled with the same customer and services. Different from Reschedule, which moves the existing one.

Booking outside your opening hours or on top of an existing appointment is allowed — you get a warning you can click through, not a hard block. Rooms and staff-service restrictions warn the same way.

Block time — drag on an empty part of a column for breaks, lunch, meetings, training, personal time or holidays. Blocks are resizable like bookings.

Group bookings — one appointment covering several people (a mother and daughter, a bridal party). Each guest gets their own service and can have their own stylist. You can act on the whole group at once (confirm all, cancel all) or drag a single guest to move just them.

Status — Pending, Confirmed, Done, Cancelled, No Show. Two things worth knowing: bookings made online arrive as Confirmed (there's no approval queue), and taking payment marks the booking Done automatically, so you don't press Complete separately. Cancellation reasons are recorded and feed the Cancellations report.

Hide — the one that isn't obvious. Hiding an appointment removes it from your calendar view and frees that slot for online booking again, without cancelling or deleting anything. It exists for the case where a stylist has an assistant covering a long service and can take another customer in parallel. Turn on Show hidden to see hidden bookings, and Restore to bring one back.

Card badges — the small icons on an appointment. Hover any of them for an explanation: globe (booked online), dice (customer chose "Any available" stylist), door (which treatment room), note (booking notes), people (part of a group), trolley (a checkout draft is in progress), tick (done), crossed-out eye (hidden).

Day overrides — click a staff member's column header to mark them off, set custom hours for that one day, or mark them working on a normal day off. If they already have bookings that day you'll be warned; those bookings are not cancelled automatically.

Waitlist — when a day is fully booked, a customer booking online can join the waitlist instead of giving up; you can add someone yourself too, for a phone-in request. Either way you get an email and a bell notification the moment they join, so it doesn't just sit there unseen. Open Waitlist above the calendar to see who's asked for what, and once something opens up, press Book — it becomes a normal appointment with the usual conflict checks. If WhatsApp or email confirmations are turned on, the customer gets a "good news, we found you a spot" message with the same come / can't-come reply buttons a reminder has.

Every salon gets a public page at your own URL where customers can browse services, see your team, read reviews and book themselves in.

Turn it on in Settings → Online presence. There are two separate switches: Published (the page exists publicly at all) and Online booking (customers can actually book, rather than the page being contact-only).

What the customer does: pick services → pick a stylist (or "Any available") → pick a time → enter name and phone → confirm. They can sign in with Google to prefill, or stay a guest. They get a confirmation email with a calendar file attached.

Group booking online is supported too — customers choose a party size and each guest's services, and the system finds times that work for everyone.

If a day has nothing available, customers can join the waitlist instead of leaving empty-handed — see Bookings & calendar above for what happens next.

There is no online payment or deposit. Customers book, they pay in store. If you need a deposit policy, write it on your policy page and enforce it yourself.

Settings that shape availability:

• Minimum advance notice (Online presence) — hides slots that are too soon. Set it to however long you need to prepare.
• Opening/closing hours, each staff member's schedule and breaks, existing bookings, and treatment-room capacity all narrow the offered slots automatically.
• Per-service Show in online booking and per-staff Show on online booking let you keep things bookable in-store but hidden from the public page.

Edit confirmation emails — open Settings → Notifications → Edit confirmation email content. Customize the subject, heading, welcome message and additional information. Insert customer name, studio name, date or time using the variable buttons. Preview uses sample details; Send test to my email sends only to your signed-in account. Save content applies to future booking confirmations. Restore default loads the original wording; save to apply it. Appointment details and booking buttons remain automatic. Waitlist confirmations keep their separate introduction. Owners and users with company settings permission can edit the content.

Self-service reschedule and cancel — confirmation emails include a private link. In Settings → Notifications you choose whether customers may reschedule, whether they may cancel, and how many hours before the appointment each option locks. Note that rescheduling keeps the same staff member — customers can move the time, not switch stylist or service.

Also on Online presence: cover photo and gallery, tagline and about text, social links, Google Maps embed, Google Reviews link, and SEO title/description.

Services carry a name, category, colour, duration and price. A service can have several price options (short/long hair, small/large dog) and an optional promotional discount, so the price shown online is already the discounted one.

• Categories group services on your public page and in reports, and they're what category-based commission profiles pay on.
• Suggested add-ons — prompt the customer with a related service right after they pick one, optionally at a discount.
• Show in online booking — off keeps the service usable in your calendar and POS but invisible publicly.
• Return-visit reminder — email customers who haven't rebooked this service in a while.

Who can do this service — tick specific staff and only they can be booked for it. Leave everything unticked and anyone can do it. The rule is per service: ticking the nail tech on "Manicure" restricts manicures to her, and doesn't affect any other service. Online booking hides ineligible staff outright; the admin calendar warns but lets you override.

Treatment rooms — if a service needs a room, link it to one or more rooms (manage them from the Rooms button on the Services page). That button is named for your trade, so a tattoo studio sees Stations, a pet groomer Bays and a gym Studios — same feature, your own word for it. Once linked, online booking stops offering that service when every eligible room is already occupied, even if a stylist is free. Rooms are assigned automatically and shown on the appointment card. A service with no rooms linked doesn't consume room capacity at all.

Add staff under Staff. Beyond name and contact details you can set a photo, an appointment colour, a public role title and bio for your booking page, and whether they appear on that page at all.

Archiving — the archive icon on a staff card (labelled "Delete" in older versions) removes them from your schedule without deleting anything: their past bookings, sales and commission records all stay intact. It is never permanent — open Archived above the staff list any time to see everyone you have archived and bring one back with a tap. A restored member who now puts you over your plan's staff limit comes back locked, same as any other over-quota staff.

Schedules are versioned. Under Staff → Schedule you set weekly working hours and breaks with an Effective from date. Changing hours creates a new version rather than rewriting history, so past weeks still reflect the hours that actually applied. One-off changes belong on the calendar as day overrides (see Bookings), not here.

Use the Leave tab in a staff profile for leave requests and allowances, and Staff → Leave to review requests. Approved leave blocks availability. See the Leave guide below.

Attendance & clock-in (Pro Team and above) — a QR-based time clock for staff who are physically on-site. Turn it on in Settings → Attendance & Clock-in:

• Open Station (also linked from the Attendance page) on a front-desk tablet or spare phone. It shows a QR code that refreshes on its own, plus a live feed of who's just clocked in or out.
• Staff scan that code from their own phone, using the Clock In / Clock Out card on their Dashboard. One scan clocks them in; the next scan clocks them out — it alternates automatically based on their last record, no separate button for each.
• Optionally set your salon coordinates (or tap Use my current location) and an allowed radius (recommended 100–300 m indoors). With both set, a scan too far from the salon is rejected with the distance shown, so someone can't clock in from home. Leave the coordinates blank to allow clock-in from anywhere.

Records land on the Attendance page — total shifts, total hours and any incomplete pairs (a clock-in with no matching clock-out) for a date range, filterable by staff and exportable to CSV. Whether someone can use the scanner at all, see only their own records, or see everyone's is controlled per role in Settings → Permissions.

Services they do — the other side of the restriction described under Services. Both screens write the same thing, so tick from whichever is more convenient; ticking a service here limits that service to the people ticked for it.

Login access — give a staff member their own account, either by sending an invitation (they set their own password) or by setting one directly. Each account gets a permission role.

Permission roles (Settings → Permissions) control what each person can see and do — including field-level privacy. A lower-trust role can be shown a customer's name but have their phone and email masked, and money values hidden entirely. Roles also carry a discount limit capping how large a percentage discount that person can apply at checkout. Custom roles beyond the built-in ones are a Pro Team feature.

Feature permissions — Photos & scalp, Forms, Messages and Integrations have separate controls. You can allow viewing without allowing changes or deletion. Reports include inventory and cancellations; AI managers have individual access switches. Customer profile features also require access to the customer page. Inventory editing covers product photos, categories and batch expiry. Payroll covers pay structures, overtime and payslips. Marketing covers email and WhatsApp campaigns. Xero financial sync also requires P&L access. Plan limits still apply. Select a role in Settings → Permissions, review its switches, then save.

Staff seats — Solo Simple includes 1 staff member, Pro Team 4, Pro Max unlimited. The owner doesn't consume a seat. If you exceed your limit (usually after a downgrade), the newest staff are locked: they can't log in, don't appear in booking or POS pickers, and are hidden from your public page. Their past bookings, sales and commission stay fully visible — nothing is deleted. Archive someone else or upgrade to unlock. Pro Team can also buy extra seats individually.

Open Settings and find Booking slot size. Enter a number, choose minutes or hours, review the preview and save. For example, 15 minutes offers start times a quarter-hour apart; 3 hours spaces start times three hours apart.

The setting controls offered start times, not service duration. Online booking and AI availability still check staff schedules, existing appointments, leave and room capacity. A small interval does not mean the AI must list every available time.

Choose Day, 3 days or Week above the calendar. Calendar height stays consistent, with stronger hourly lines. In the desktop multi-day grids, drag a card to move it or drag its bottom edge to resize; review the confirmation before saving. On a phone, Week uses a list.

Open Staff, select a person and choose Leave. Enable leave for staff who participate in your policy. Review their joined date and the allowance settings before using the balance; employment type alone is not a substitute for this setting.

Staff with permission select the dates they need in the monthly calendar and submit a request. Managers review requests under Staff → Leave, including balance and schedule conflicts, then approve or decline. Approved dates block booking availability.

Review any existing appointments before approving leave. Conflict guidance supports your decision; it does not cancel appointments for you. Authorized users can use the approval override where offered, supplying the required reason.

Previously used from current allowance records leave already taken before you started tracking it here. It reduces the available balance; it is not an extra grant. Use Leave adjustment to correct balances and record a reason.

Use Grant extra leave for additional entitlement. If a grant was added incorrectly, use its delete control and provide a reason. The system may require dependent leave requests to be resolved first; the audit record is retained.

Control staff access and approval permissions through Settings → Permissions. Use Leave for annual leave instead of creating a second schedule override for the same absence.

Open Staff and select a person. Record their joined date and, when applicable, end date in the profile. In Pay, select full-time, part-time or freelance employment and the appropriate pay structure.

Enter the monthly base amount or hourly rate as applicable, and choose the existing commission profile. Freelance can use a fixed amount or commission-only structure. Review the effective month before saving; saved settings are versioned.

In Pay history, open a saved monthly payslip. Use Download or Email payslip for that record. This history shows saved payslips, not every change made to salary settings. Review the recipient before sending.

Prepare and review payroll under Accounting. Check attendance, commission and adjustments before saving a payslip. A later settings change should not be treated as proof that an already saved payslip has been regenerated.

In the staff Pay tab, enable This person earns overtime for eligible staff. Configure Company overtime rules for the effective month. These shared rules determine overtime; the staff checkbox controls eligibility.

Set weekday, weekend and holiday percentages, daily and weekly thresholds, weekend days and holiday dates. Select whether weekend and holiday overtime starts from the first worked hour or after the configured threshold. Review the saved rules before running payroll.

Use the Station QR code for clock-in and clock-out. Check Attendance for incomplete or incorrect shifts before calculating pay. An unfinished clock-in is not a reliable completed shift.

Review calculated regular hours, overtime hours and pay before saving monthly payroll. Check the payslip preview and downloaded PDF, including the overtime breakdown. Company rules must reflect the policy that applies to your staff.

Open Engage → Integrations. Select your website platform: Wix, WordPress, Squarespace or Shopify. Open its setup instructions and copy the booking embed code for your studio. Check the displayed studio and services before publishing.

Paste the code into the website platform’s HTML/embed element and give the frame enough height. Preview and publish the website, then test service selection, availability and the Continue button on desktop and mobile.

Booking steps run inside the embed. Google, Facebook or Apple sign-in can open a secure authorization tab; after sign-in, return to the booking frame and continue. Test on your published website because editor previews can restrict embeds.

After installation, confirm it in Integrations to save Connected status. This status records your confirmation; it is not automatic monitoring of your website. Use Manage to revisit the instructions.

Xero connection, account mapping and manual sync are now in Integrations. Existing connections are retained. Stripe and WhatsApp self-service connection remain Coming soon; existing configured WhatsApp services are unchanged.

The Dashboard and Reports Overview use your selected theme and clearer summary panels. Open the existing tools or report tabs to inspect the underlying information; the visual refresh does not change permissions.

Use the top-bar What’s new button to browse New, Fixed and Improved. Each category lists recent updates. See all updates opens the full changelog, and Help & Guides contains the operating instructions.

In the mobile app, internal update links stay in the app session. Reports support vertical page scrolling and horizontal chart scrolling where needed. Menu icons, selected navigation states and appointment cards follow the shared theme.

Commission is configured as reusable profiles that you assign to staff, so several people can share one scheme. There are five types:

• Basic (flat rate) — one percentage on everything. Separate rates for services, products and packages.
• Standard (tiered) — rates step up as the month's service revenue grows, and each band only pays its own rate on the portion inside it.
• Advanced (override at target) — hit a target and the whole month is recalculated at the higher rate. This is the difference from tiered: tiered pays the higher rate on the excess only, override pays it on everything.
• Specialist (by category) — a different rate per service category, with a default for anything unmatched.
• Support (assist mode) — for assistants: a fixed amount or percentage per service, varying by assist level (1–3).

Each profile also declares three capabilities: whether the person can take solo bookings, whether they can assist others, and whether they can receive assistance. These control who appears in the Primary and Assistant dropdowns at checkout.

At checkout every service line has a primary staff member, an optional assistant, and a primary share % splitting the commission base between them. Products and packages can be marked as a house sale with no staff, so revenue still counts but nobody earns commission.

Flat commission is available on every plan; the four advanced types are Pro Team and above. If you downgrade, staff on an advanced profile aren't reassigned — they fall back to the salon-wide rate under Settings → Payments, and their card shows a "Fallback rate" badge until you upgrade again.

Results appear in Reports → Commission, and staff with a login can see their own statement under My Commission.

There are two ways to take money. Checkout opens from an appointment on the calendar and arrives pre-filled with the booked services. Point of Sale is a standalone till for retail and walk-ins, where the customer is optional.

Walk-through: a sale at the till. Open POS from the sidebar. Recorded in our demo studio — your services, staff and payment methods will show instead.

Checkout runs in three steps:

• Cart — booked services are already there; add retail products by search or barcode. Barcode scanning works anywhere on the page with a hardware scanner, no need to click into a field first.
• Pricing & Staff — override any price, apply a discount per line (percentage or fixed) or across the whole sale, assign the primary and assistant staff, and add tips with a split across staff.
• Payment — one method or several. Split across cash, card, PayNow and so on until the remaining balance reaches zero.

Save Draft (steps 1 and 2) stores the prices and staff you've set so a colleague can finish the sale later. The appointment shows a badge while a draft is open, and it clears once the sale completes.

Quick payment (POS only) charges something that isn't in your catalogue — a towel rental, a one-off consultation. Type a description and amount, mark it as service or product revenue, and optionally credit a staff member. It cannot be used to sell a package; use the Packages tab for that.

Redeeming a package — if the customer has one, it appears at checkout with their remaining balance. Credit packages deduct an amount; session packages burn exactly one session and only cover services. The customer signs on screen to confirm, and the signature is stored with the redemption. Packages can also be shared with family members, but only after the owner authorises that person from their own profile.

After the sale — print to a Bluetooth thermal printer, email the receipt, or copy it as text. Completing checkout marks the appointment Done and decrements product stock automatically.

Fixing mistakes — Void cancels a sale entirely and reopens the booking as Confirmed, restoring any product stock. Refund is separate and can be partial, line by line, with an optional restock per line. A sale that has already been refunded can't then be voided, and if it sold a package that has since been used, you have to void those redemptions first.

If a booking already has a completed sale, checkout warns you before charging again — a guard against accidentally billing the same visit twice.

Customer profiles hold contact details, birthday, gender, a running notes log, and tabs for their bookings, reviews, products bought, packages and redemption history.

Consent is tracked in two separate places, which matters legally: marketing email (promos, birthdays, win-back) is opt-in per customer, while appointment notifications (confirmations, reminders, cancellations) are their own toggles for email and WhatsApp. Marketing campaigns only ever go to customers who explicitly accepted marketing and haven't unsubscribed.

Acquisition source records how each customer first found you: Walk-in, Referral, Family, Staff's own client, or one of the online channels (Website, Social media, Google, Email, Other). Online sources are detected automatically — see Marketing & tracking. You can also record Referred by, which feeds the referral rate and the top-referrers list in reports.

Merging duplicates — Merge lets you pick which profile to keep and which to fold in; all bookings, sales and notes move across, and missing contact details are back-filled from the record being merged away. Auto Merge scans for likely duplicates and proposes groups, keeping the profile with the highest lifetime spend. It only proposes a pair when at least two of name, phone and email match, and it compares first names only — so two different customers both called "Wendy" with different numbers won't be flagged. Phone numbers are compared ignoring the country code, so "90054800" and "+6590054800" are recognised as the same person. Always review the proposals before confirming. Merging is a Pro Team feature.

Undoing a merge — open the profile you merged INTO. Under the Overview tab you'll see "Merged into this customer", listing each record that was folded in and how many rows would move back. Click Undo merge to separate them again: bookings, sales, notes, messages, no-show history and referral links all return to the original profile, which is restored to your customer list. Two things to know. Anything created after the merge stays with the profile you merged into — the system has no way to tell which of the two people it belonged to, so it leaves it rather than guessing. And merges done before this feature existed have no undo record, so they show as "cannot be undone automatically".

CSV import — download the template or bring your own file. Column headers are matched flexibly ("mobile", "phone", "telephone" all work; first and last name columns are combined). Each row needs at least a name and a phone number, and rows missing either are skipped. You get a preview before anything is written, and a count of imported versus skipped rows after.

The Photos tab on a customer profile keeps before and after shots of their treatments, grouped by the visit they belong to. Pro Team and above.

Consent comes first, and there are two separate permissions. Photographing someone is not the same as publishing them, and treating it as one thing is how disputes start.

• Consent to take and store photos — required. No photo can be uploaded until this is recorded.
• Consent to use photos in marketing — optional and separate. Only this one covers posting to social media, your website or printed material.

Clicking Record consent shows the customer the exact wording they are agreeing to and asks them to sign on screen — with a finger on a phone, or a stylus on a tablet. The signature is stored alongside the wording they read and the staff member who took it, so the record still means something months later. If the customer isn't there to sign, choose Record without a signature — it is stored honestly as verbal consent rather than looking the same as a signed one.

Withdrawing consent stops new photos being added. The signed record stays on file, because "consented, then changed their mind" is a different fact from "never consented". Existing photos are not deleted automatically — delete them yourself if the customer asks.

Adding photos — pick Before or After, optionally link the photo to a specific appointment so it files under that visit, then add one or more images. On a phone this opens the camera directly. Photos are resized on your device before uploading, so it works on shop wifi and doesn't fill your storage.

How photos are stored. Unlike your logo and team photos, which are public by design, treatment photos are held in private storage. They are never reachable by a public link, and each viewing address expires within minutes — so a link that leaks from a browser history or a forwarded screenshot stops working. Only staff whose role allows them to see customer notes can open them.

Forms in the sidebar is where you build the documents your customers sign — treatment consent, health questionnaires, package terms, whatever your business needs. You write the wording; nobody else's terms will fit yours. Pro Team and above, and hideable from the sidebar via Customize if you never use it.

Building a form. Start from one of five templates — treatment consent, health questionnaire, package terms, photo consent, guardian consent for under-18s — and edit every word, or start from scratch. A form is a list of blocks: section headings, paragraphs of terms, tick-box acknowledgements, multiple-choice questions (yes/no is just two options), and written answers. Mark any question required and it cannot be skipped.

Before you can publish you need a registered company name under Accounting → Company & Tax. Every form states that the agreement is between the customer and your company, and that line needs a name to use. It is added by the system and you cannot edit or remove it — MyStudioWalker provides the software and is not a party to what your customers sign.

Our templates are drafts, not legal advice. They are a starting point so you are not writing from a blank page. Read every line, change it to match how you actually work, and have your own lawyer review it before you use it.

Collecting a signature — open a customer, go to their Forms tab, and any form they haven't signed is listed under "Waiting to be signed". The customer reads the terms, answers the questions and signs with a finger or stylus. If the form is marked as needing a guardian, you record the guardian's name and relationship instead, and they sign.

Editing a published form creates a new version. It never rewrites signatures already collected — those customers keep the wording they actually read, and are flagged for re-signing. That is the whole reason versions exist: changing your terms should not silently change what someone agreed to last month.

Re-signing happens for two reasons. Set Re-sign after (months) and the signature expires on schedule — sensible for health questionnaires, where medical history goes stale. Or you publish new terms, which supersedes the old ones. Either way the form returns to "Waiting to be signed", the old record is kept rather than replaced, and a red banner appears at the top of that customer's profile so staff see it before the treatment rather than after.

The emailed copy matters more than it looks. With it switched on, the customer receives their own copy the moment they sign, carrying the full terms, their answers and a reference code. Everything else that protects the record — locked versions, a checksum, no way to edit a submission — lives in the same system you control. A copy in the customer's inbox is the one record outside it. It protects you too: "I never signed that" is answered by a delivery record and a matching reference.

Downloading a copy. Every signed record has a download button that produces a PDF on your letterhead — the terms as they were signed, the answers given, the signature, who witnessed it, and a reference code. It reproduces the version that was actually signed, so editing the form afterwards never changes a document you have already filed or handed over.

Deleting a signed record clears the answers and the signature but keeps the fact that consent was given, along with the reason you gave for deleting it. "Consented, then changed their mind" and "never consented" are different facts, and you may one day need to show the first.

Packages are prepaid bundles sold up front and drawn down over later visits. There are two kinds, and the difference matters:

• Sessions — a punch card. "Buy 5, get 6." Each redemption uses exactly one session, and sessions only cover services.
• Credit — a stored-value wallet. "Pay $500, get $600 of credit." Each redemption deducts a dollar amount, and you can optionally allow it to be spent on retail products too.

For each package you set the selling price, which services it covers (or all of them), and an optional validity in days. Leave validity blank for no expiry.

Sell them from the POS Packages tab or as a line at checkout. Redeem them at checkout — the customer's remaining balance shows automatically. Balances also appear on the customer's profile and in Reports → Packages.

An expired package simply stops being offered at checkout. It isn't retroactively marked or cleaned up, so if you're auditing, check the expiry date rather than relying on a status label.

Packages are a Pro Team feature. Note there are no recurring-billing memberships — everything here is prepaid.

Marking a booking as a No-show records it on the Cancellations report, cancels any reminder still queued, and — if you have switched it on — charges the missed visit to the customer's package.

Turning the charge on

Settings → Business → No-shows and packages. It is off by default and nothing is deducted until you turn it on. Two choices sit underneath:

• What a credit package loses — the price of the service they booked (so missing a colour costs more than missing a fringe trim), or a fixed amount you set. A session package always loses exactly one session either way; there is no half a session. An unlimited membership loses nothing, but the no-show is still recorded against it.
• Whether the staff member earns commission on the fee. Their chair was held and could not be sold, but no work was done — studios genuinely differ on this, so it is a separate switch.

What happens when you mark one

• The customer's soonest-to-expire package that covers that service is charged — the same order a till would spend them in. A customer with no package is not charged anything; there is no balance to take it from.
• A No-show fee sale is recorded, so the money appears in daily sales, the Sales report and the P&L, and its own total shows on Reports → Cancellations.
• A booking already paid for from a package is not charged twice.

If you mark one by mistake

Change the booking back to Confirmed. The session or credit is returned, the fee sale is voided, and the figures drop back. Nothing needs to be fixed by hand.

Telling the customer

The no-show email and WhatsApp are not sent automatically — tick “By email” or “By WhatsApp” on the confirmation dialog when you want them sent. When a package was charged, both say so and name the amount, the package, and what is left.

Before switching any of this on, make sure your package terms say it. There is a starter Package terms form under Consent forms that covers missed appointments — read it, edit it to match how you actually work, and have it signed at the point of sale rather than after the argument.

Products carry a name, category, SKU, barcode, retail price and a minimum stock level. Tick Available for retail sale to make one sellable in POS and checkout — an untagged product can be tracked but not sold.

Quantity and cost always start at zero. You can't type an opening stock figure on the product form. Use New stock receipt to record what came in, which sets the average cost at the same time.

Stock receipts take a supplier, invoice number and date, then line items with quantity and either a line total or unit cost. Two useful details: there's a scan mode for counting items in with a barcode scanner, and extra charges (freight, duties) can either be spread proportionally into unit cost or excluded from it — the latter for things like claimable GST.

Selling a product decrements stock automatically and records the cost of goods at the current average cost. Voiding a sale puts the stock back; refunds restock only if you tick that line. Manual corrections go through Adjust stock with a reason (internal use, damaged, expired, or a plain adjustment).

Low stock is a visual threshold, not an alert. When quantity drops to or below the minimum you set, the product turns red and is counted on the Inventory and Reports pages. There is no email or push notification — you need to look.

Every product has a history panel showing each movement: purchases, sales, internal use, damage, expiry, adjustments and returns.

In Inventory, add or edit a product and select an existing category from the dropdown. Manage the category list using Categories. Upload PNG, JPEG or WebP photos up to 2 MB, then save the product. Images are stored privately as PNG.

When adding a stock receipt, enter the batch number and expiry date on each product line. Use separate lines for different batches of the same product. Dates are optional; an empty date means unknown, not safe to use.

Product expiry appears in Inventory and Reports → Inventory. Choose expired plus the next 7, 30, 60 or 90 days, or Missing expiry dates. Authorized inventory editors can use Edit batch to correct dates on existing receipts.

Expiry is a current-stock check independent of the report sales period. Received units are the original receipt quantity, not a remaining batch balance; product stock is the total across all batches. Confirm physical batches before sale or disposal. Older stock without receipts cannot be checked here, and products with zero stock are excluded.

Ask Stock Manager which batches are expiring in the next 30 days or which batches are missing expiry dates. It reads the same records; this does not automatically dispose of stock or send marketing.

Reports are grouped into tabs:

• Overview — a snapshot of every other report. Each card links through to the detail.
• Sales — revenue grouped by day, week, month or year, plus a flat list of every individual sale for reconciliation.
• Performance — revenue trend, new customers, returning rate, referral rate, source breakdown and top referrers, with an option to compare against the previous period. Pro Team and above.
• Payment summary — totals per payment method, including transaction fees where you've configured them.
• Commission — per-staff commission with drill-down. My Commission shows a single staff member their own statement.
• Packages — sales and outstanding balances. Pro Team and above.
• Inventory — stock, cost of goods and valuation over a period. Pro Team and above.
• Cancellations — cancellations and no-shows broken down by reason.

What "new customer" means: a customer counts as new in the month of their first completed sale, not the month their record was created. Someone who books online three weeks ahead counts in the month they actually come and pay. Someone who never shows up doesn't count at all. New Customers, Source Breakdown and Referral Rate all use this same definition, so the numbers agree with each other.

Profit & loss lives on the Accounting page, not in Reports — along with GST reporting. Manage the Xero connection under Integrations. P&L is the one report with a PDF export; everything else exports as CSV, and CSV export requires Pro Max.

Xero — connect your own Xero organisation from Engage → Integrations and push a period's sales summary across as a manual journal, so your bookkeeper isn't re-keying totals. Account mapping is suggested automatically when you first connect, and you can adjust it. Pro Team and above.

Plan-locked reports stay visible rather than disappearing, so you can see what an upgrade would unlock. What each role can open is also controlled by permissions, so a staff member might see fewer tabs than the owner.

Trackable links (Settings → Online presence) generate a separate booking link per channel — Google, WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, your website, email, or anything else you name. Customers who book through one land in that channel's bucket in the Performance report's Source Breakdown, so you can see which channel actually produces customers rather than guessing. Each link also produces a QR code you can print or share, and past links are kept so you can find and reuse one months later.

If you use a plain link with no tracking, the source is still detected where possible from where the customer came from — a Google search, an Instagram tap. Where there's no signal at all (someone typing your address directly, or a browser that strips it), it lands under Online · Other. Tracked links are simply more accurate.

Email marketing lives on its own Marketing page in the nav. It only ever reaches customers who ticked marketing consent, and every email carries an automatic unsubscribe link. It comes free with Pro Max; on Solo Simple and Pro Team it's a monthly add-on with a starting allowance of emails included and top-ups (manual or automatic) when you need more — one email to one person is one credit, automated and hand-written campaigns cost the same. A test copy to yourself is always free, so you can check how something looks before spending a credit on it.

Groups are a saved set of rules — hasn't visited since a date, spent at least an amount, has had a particular service, has an active package, birthday in a given month. The page shows how many customers match before you save, and you can untick individual people to leave them out without changing the rule.

Campaigns are a one-off email to a group or to everyone who accepted marketing. Write it as plain text or use the block builder — headline, image, button, divider, discount panel — and a booking-page button is tracked, so bookings it produces show up as conversions on the campaign itself and in the Performance report. Sent campaigns show opens, clicks, bookings and revenue.

Automatic campaigns run on their own schedule, no one has to press anything:

• Birthday emails — sent ahead of the day, optionally with a discount valid that month.
• Win-back — for customers who haven't booked in a number of days you choose, optionally with a discount.
• Package expiring reminders — a nudge before unused credit or sessions run out.
• Return-visit reminders — per service, on your own schedule, for customers who are due.

A discount you set here becomes a real single-use code already applied on that customer's own booking link — nobody at the counter has to remember it. The Messages page's Marketing tab shows every marketing email sent so far, plus a Coming up forecast of who is about to receive one — enough to cancel a single upcoming send for one customer without touching the rule for anyone else.

If a campaign reaches fewer people than expected, the Customers page can show why: filter chips for people missing an email address, who never agreed to marketing, or whose address is bouncing — linked straight from the campaign screen whenever it has people it can't reach.

Bouncing addresses are set aside on their own. If mail to someone is permanently rejected, or they mark it as spam, we stop including them rather than spending a credit on every future send and dragging down whether your other mail reaches inboxes at all. Their profile shows the reason, and correcting the address puts them straight back on the list. A temporary problem — a full mailbox — sets nothing aside, and booking confirmations keep going out either way.

Reviews — completed appointments can invite a review, and reviews you approve appear on your public page. You can also link customers straight to your Google review page from Online presence.

An assistant that answers your customers on WhatsApp and books them in, at any hour, in whatever language they wrote in. It is not a chatbot with canned replies: it reads your live services, prices, opening hours, closures and staff schedules, so when it quotes a price or offers a time, that is the real price and a genuinely free slot.

What it can do — answer questions about services, prices and opening hours; check what is free on a given day or with a particular stylist; make a booking; move one; cancel one; and tell a returning customer what they had last time, what they bought, and how many sessions are left on their package. It confirms by email and WhatsApp exactly as a booking made by your front desk would.

When it stops — it hands over to a person rather than guessing. A photo it cannot see, a complaint, a request for something you do not offer, anything it is not sure about. You get a notification, the conversation is flagged on the AI assistant page, and you reply there yourself — your reply goes out on the same WhatsApp thread, so the customer never sees a handover.

It gets better because you teach it — every question it could not answer is collected into a short list on the same page. Parking, walk-ins, how to find your unit, what happens if someone is ten minutes late. You type the answer once and it knows it from then on. It never invents these answers itself: a wrong parking policy stated confidently to every customer, traceable to nobody, is worse than no answer.

Getting it — it runs on a WhatsApp number of your own, not a shared one, and setting that number up is something we do with you. Ask on the AI assistant page and we will get in touch. Three things have to be true before we can start:

• A spare phone number that has never been used in the WhatsApp app.
• You accept that once it is the assistant's number, nobody at the salon can use it in the WhatsApp app again.
• Someone at the salon is an admin of your Meta Business account, or is willing to create one.

Nothing is charged by asking, and nothing is charged when we approve it. You are charged only when you switch it on yourself, and you can switch it off from the same page — it stops immediately and the days you have paid for and not used are credited back to you.

What it costs — a monthly add-on that includes a starting allowance of replies, plus top-ups when you need more. One reply the assistant sends is one credit; what the customer sends costs nothing. Credits you buy never expire, and automatic top-up can keep it running without anyone watching the balance. A very busy number is also capped per customer per day, so one person cannot burn through your allowance.

Who can see it — reading the assistant's conversations means reading what your customers said, so it is controlled by permissions like everything else. Settings → Permissions → AI assistant: “See the AI assistant” opens the page and the transcripts; “Answer and teach it” allows replying in the salon's name and writing the notes it answers from. Managers and owners have both by default; everyone else has neither until you grant it.

Settings is split into tabs: Business, Hours, Payments, Online presence, Notifications, Billing and Permissions (plus Outlets if you run more than one location).

Payments deserves a look beyond currency and tax: the payment methods you list here are exactly what appears at checkout, you can record a transaction fee percentage per method so the Payment summary report shows what you actually netted, and there's a fallback commission rate used if a staff member's profile isn't supported by your current plan.

Company & Tax (Pro Team and above) holds your legal entity name, UEN, GST registration and fiscal year start — used on invoices and tax reports.

Customer emails can be switched on or off individually: booking confirmation, reschedule, cancellation, and a thanks-for-visiting note after a completed appointment. Reminders are separate — pick how long before the appointment to send one, and optionally a second short reminder closer to the time.

WhatsApp notifications work alongside email, not instead of it. Each WhatsApp message costs one credit, so all WhatsApp triggers are off by default — turn on the ones worth paying for. You get a monthly free allowance plus any credits you buy, and auto top-up can keep the balance from running out. If you do run out, WhatsApp sends are skipped but email keeps working normally.

Three plans, all with unlimited bookings and unlimited customers:

• Solo Simple — 1 staff member. Online booking page, POS, inventory, sales and payment reports, flat commission, all transactional emails, CSV customer import.
• Pro Team — up to 4 staff, plus advanced commission profiles, custom permission roles, packages, customer merge, the Performance report, P&L and company/tax settings, Xero, reviews, and staff attendance with geofencing. Extra seats can be bought individually.
• Pro Max — unlimited staff, multiple outlets, all automatic marketing campaigns, CSV/PDF report export, and analytics tracking IDs.

Current pricing, monthly and annual, is on the pricing page and in Settings → Billing. Billing runs through Stripe, where you can change plan, update your card and download invoices.

Trials last 14 days and preview Pro Team features. You can pick a plan during the trial without being charged until it ends.

If your account locks — trial ended without a plan, subscription cancelled, or a payment that kept failing — the admin area redirects to a billing screen until you choose a plan. Failed payments get a grace period first while Stripe retries. Nothing is deleted. All your bookings, customers and history are exactly as you left them and come straight back when you subscribe.

Note that "locked" means two different things in the product: the whole account being locked for billing (this section), and an individual staff member being locked because you're over your seat limit (see Staff).

WhatsApp credits are bought separately from your plan, in packs, with a per-message cost that drops on larger packs. One credit is one message. Auto top-up buys a fresh pack when your balance runs low, capped so it can't run away with your card.