If you are working out how to take online bookings, you need three things: a booking system that knows your services, your staff and your hours; a Book now button on your website and your Google Business Profile that opens it; and a short cancellation policy the customer sees before they confirm. A barber, a physio, a dog groomer or a driving instructor in Ireland can have all three working in an afternoon, either with an app such as Fresha, Booksy, Timely, Setmore, Square Appointments or Calendly, or with booking built into the website itself.
The steps themselves are short. The rest of this page is the thinking behind each one, because the system you pick matters less than the decisions you make before you pick it.
What a booking system does
At its simplest it is a calendar that customers can write into. Underneath, it holds a list of your services with a length and a price for each; a list of your staff with the days and hours each one works; the gaps you need between appointments; and your opening hours and days off. When a customer picks a service and a person, the system shows only the slots that genuinely fit, takes their name and number, and writes the appointment into the diary.
Around that core sit the features that make it worth having: a confirmation by text or email, a reminder the day before, the option to hold a card or take a deposit, a list of every customer and what they had done, and a link you can put anywhere. A good system also lets the customer cancel or move the appointment themselves, which saves you the phone call.
The four kinds of system
| Kind | Examples | Who it suits | Watch for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Marketplace apps | Fresha, Booksy | Salons, barbers and beauty businesses that want new clients from the app’s own directory | Fees for each new client the marketplace sends, your page sitting inside their brand, other businesses shown beside yours |
| Plain calendars | Timely, Setmore, Square Appointments | Small teams who already have clients and want a predictable monthly cost | No marketplace, so no new business from it; check what texts cost |
| Meeting schedulers | Calendly | Consultations: solicitors, accountants, mortgage brokers, counsellors, grinds tutors | Built for meetings, not for a floor with chairs and stock; deposits and staff rotas are an afterthought |
| Built into your website | What we build on the Complete plan | Anyone who wants bookings on their own domain, with deposits and reminders, and no per-client fees | Someone has to run it and keep it working, so it comes with a monthly fee |
If you already use Fresha or Booksy and your regulars have the app, there is no reason to rip it out. Put the button on your site and let the app do what it does. The time to move is when the fees start to sting, when you want the booking page to look like your business rather than theirs, or when you want the customer list in your own hands. For hair and beauty specifically, we go through the options one by one in the best booking systems for Irish salons and barbers.
Services and hours: get the gaps right
The step most people rush is the first one. Write down every service you offer, how long it really takes, and what has to happen before the next person sits down. A colour needs processing time. A deep tissue massage needs the room turned over. A physio needs five minutes for notes. If the system thinks a cut takes twenty minutes and it takes thirty, the whole afternoon slides and the last customer leaves a one-star review.
Hours are the second trap. Enter the real ones, including the half day, and block out the bank holidays now, all ten of them, along with the week in July you already know you are taking. An online calendar that lets someone book on a day you are closed is worse than a phone that goes unanswered.
Deposits and the cancellation policy
A deposit is not about distrust. It is about the appointments that cost you most when they are missed: the two-hour colour, the tattoo sitting, the wedding trial, the custom cake. For a fifteen-minute cut it is usually not worth the friction. A fair deposit is a share of the service price, taken when the customer books and knocked off the bill on the day.
Under Irish consumer law, as we understand it, a non-refundable deposit has to be reasonable and the terms have to be clear before the customer pays. That means the amount and the notice period on the booking page itself, not in an email afterwards. The CCPC publishes guidance on deposits, and the detail is in how to take deposits online in Ireland.
The policy itself should be two or three sentences a customer can read on a phone while they are booking. An example, written here for illustration:
“Please give us 24 hours’ notice if you need to cancel or move your appointment. Appointments cancelled with less notice, or not attended, will lose the deposit. You can cancel or reschedule from the link in your confirmation text.”
That is enough. Nobody reads a page of terms, and a long policy makes a small business look as if it is bracing for a fight.
The button, and where it goes
A booking system nobody can find is a diary. The link needs to be in four places: a button on every page of your website, the booking link field on your Google Business Profile so it appears on Maps, your Instagram bio, and the greeting message on WhatsApp Business so that someone who messages at 11pm can book without waiting for you to wake up. Make the website button say what it does, “Book now” or “Book an appointment”, and make it big enough for a thumb.
Reminders, and why they do most of the work
In our experience most missed appointments are forgotten rather than dodged. A text the day before, with a link to cancel or move, catches the people who had every intention of coming and got the day wrong. Email reminders are cheaper, but most people read a text within minutes and an email when they get around to it, so send the text for anything over half an hour. Some systems include texts in the price and some charge per message, which is worth checking before you pick one.
We will not give you a percentage for how many no-shows a reminder prevents, because the figures quoted around the trade vary with who is quoting them. The honest version is that reminders cut no-shows, and that the size of the cut depends on your trade and your customers.
Your customers’ data
Once you take bookings you hold names, mobile numbers, email addresses and a record of who had what done. Under GDPR you are the controller of that data and your booking provider is a processor acting for you, so pick a provider that is clear about where the data lives and how you get it back if you leave. Your privacy notice needs a line about bookings: what you collect, why, how long you keep it, and that people can ask to see or delete it. The Data Protection Commission is the regulator in Ireland.
Two practical points. Appointment reminders are messages about a service the customer asked for, so as we understand it they do not need separate marketing consent. A text offering money off colour this month does, so keep the marketing tick box separate and unticked by default. And export your customer list every so often, because the day you want to move systems is the day you discover whether the export works. More in GDPR and cookies for small business websites in Ireland.
What we do for clients
Online bookings are part of Complete, which is €1,499 to set up and €100 a month. We either build the booking system into the site, with staff, services, reminders and deposits, or connect the Fresha, Booksy or other system a client already uses so the button on the site opens it. Payments, including deposits, go straight to the client’s own account.
For the built-in system we also connect AI assistants, so that a customer asking ChatGPT or Claude for an appointment can be booked in directly. We do not promise any particular number of bookings from that; it is groundwork, and whatever comes through it is in the monthly report. How it works is on the AI agents page.
Essentials, at €499 and €50 a month, has an enquiry form to email and WhatsApp rather than a calendar, which suits trades who quote before they book. Both plans are on the pricing page.
Take online bookings: the steps
- Write down your services. List every service with how long it takes and what it costs, including the gap you need before the next appointment.
- Set your hours and your staff. Enter opening hours, each staff member's working days, and the bank holidays and holidays you already know about.
- Choose a booking system. Pick a marketplace app such as Fresha or Booksy, a plain calendar such as Timely, Setmore or Square Appointments, a meeting scheduler such as Calendly, or a system built into your own website.
- Decide on deposits and write the cancellation policy. Choose which services need a deposit and how much, decide how much notice you want, and write the policy in two or three plain sentences.
- Put the booking button everywhere. Add the booking link to your website, your Google Business Profile, your Instagram bio and your WhatsApp greeting.
- Turn on reminders. Switch on a text or email reminder the day before, with a link that lets the customer cancel or move the appointment.
- Book yourself in. Make a test booking from your own phone on mobile data and check the confirmation, the reminder and what appears in the calendar.