Everything it does, in plain words

Your booking page

Every approved business gets its own page at a web address you choose. It is yours to share — there is no marketplace, no directory, and we never show a competitor alongside you.

• Your own web address, e.g. your-business.takebookingsnow.co.uk
• Your logo, description and opening hours
• Services grouped however you like
• Mobile-first — most bookings come from a phone
• Choose a specific person, or take whoever is free
• Your own page title and description for search

The diary

Day, week and month. Switch between them freely — and your choice is remembered per person, so the owner can live in week view while a stylist keeps day view on their phone.

• A column per person
• Filter by staff, service or status
• Add a booking straight into the diary
• Phone and walk-in bookings block the slot too
• Customer, service, time, status and payment at a glance
• Click an appointment for the full record

Availability rules

This is the part that decides whether the software is any use. A time is only offered if it survives every one of these checks.

1. 1 Your opening hours, including split hours on the same day
2. 2 The staff member's own working pattern
3. 3 Their recurring breaks
4. 4 Their holiday and time off
5. 5 Whole-business closures, like bank holidays
6. 6 The real length of the service
7. 7 Buffers before and after it
8. 8 Your minimum notice period
9. 9 How far ahead you allow bookings
10. 10 Everything already in the diary

Staff

Unlimited, always. We do not charge per person and we never will — a team of twenty costs exactly what working alone costs.

• Own working hours and breaks
• Own holidays and time off
• Own list of services
• Own price or duration for a service
• Photo, job title and biography on your page
• Bookable without needing a login
• Roles: owner, administrator, manager, staff
• Staff can be limited to their own bookings

Customers

Your customer list builds itself. Every booking, online or otherwise, adds to it.

• Contact details and address
• Full booking history
• Total spend and total appointments
• No-show and cancellation counts
• Private notes, never visible to the customer
• Marketing consent recorded with a timestamp
• Search by name, email or phone

Payments

Optional, and off until you switch it on. You connect your own Stripe account, so money goes straight to you. We take no commission on your bookings.

Set the rule per service — full payment on a colour, nothing on a consultation. Payments are only ever marked as successful once Stripe confirms them directly to us, never on the strength of the customer's browser being redirected back.

Reminders & SMS

Email reminders are included at no extra cost. SMS is a paid add-on, bought as credit when you want it — there is no monthly SMS fee.

• As many reminder rules as you like
• Choose email, SMS, both or none per rule
• Confirmations, changes and cancellations too
• Separate settings for you and for your customer
• Every message logged with its outcome
• Credits returned automatically if a text fails

Reporting

Enough to run the business, without a dashboard nobody reads.

• Bookings by month, service and staff member
• Revenue over any period
• No-shows and cancellations
• New versus returning customers
• Payment totals
• SMS usage and spend

Security

• Your data is yours alone

  Every business is isolated from every other. One business cannot read another's customers, bookings or settings — and we test that explicitly rather than assuming it.

• Two-factor authentication

  Optional, available to everyone, with recovery codes. Turn it on from your security settings.

• Encrypted credentials

  Your Stripe keys are encrypted before they reach the database and are never shown back to the browser or written to a log.

• An audit trail you cannot edit

  Approvals, price changes, refunds and permission changes are recorded permanently.

Optional extras

Everything above is in the plan. These are paid separately because only some trades need them, and charging everybody for a vehicle lookup to keep the pricing page simple would be a strange thing to do.

Added to your existing invoice rather than billed separately, free for the rest of your trial, and cancellable by the month. More about the extras

Limits worth knowing

Things worth checking before you move your diary across. Better to find out on this page than in week three.

None of these are permanent decisions — they are simply not built today, and we would rather say so than let you find out yourself. Nothing here is promised for a date.