How to create services
Start Booking provides an easy way to create services and manage what services your customers can book. To get started, first log into the app (Start Booking Login) and click on appointments then services in the header. From here you will see a screen like the following.
From the service index page click on the round blue create button in the bottom right of the page to start creating your new service. The create services screen is a simple form that walks through the necessary steps to configure and setup your service.
Name
The service name is simply whatever you want to call the service. For example, this would be Hair cut, Massage, Tanning, etc. This name will be used throughout the Start Booking app and all bookable forms that display services.
Description
The service description is a place to describe what the customer will receive if they purchase the service. Use the service description to be more descriptive so your service name can be more clear. This can be as short or long as you like.
Service Duration
The service duration is the amount of time that should be blocked on your calendar if a customer books this service. These need to be input in minutes. i.e. 60 = 1 hour
Service Recovery
Optional. The recovery is the amount of time it takes you to clean up or recover after you perform the service. For example, if the appointment is 1 hour and you need 10 minutes to clean up before your next customer, then set your duration to 50 minutes and recovery to 10. If you don’t need recovery time you can just put a 0.
Service Type
Service types are like categories or buckets that you can assign to services for better organization. If you only have a few services, this feature is not as helpful. But as your business grows, you can leverage service types to help your customers better find what they are looking for. If you don’t select or create a service type, then all your services will be nested under a general type of all.View your service types.
Price
The price field is to communicate with customers and let them know how much you charge for a service. This can also be free by inputting a 0.
Assigned Rooms
If your Start Booking plan supports "rooms", then you will see the option to select a designated room for the service. These don’t have to be an actual room, they could be a chair or any kind of location that this service needs to be assigned with.
As an example, say you run a small spa and only have one private room where you can perform massages and facials. In this example, you would assign the private room to both massages and facials. This will help to ensure that when the Start Booking openings search looks up available times for a customer to book, we make sure the private room isn’t already booked by another service for a specific time.
As a tip, you can create a room per service in a one to one relationship or have a room with many services for a one to many relationship. Do whatever works for your needs.
Assigned Users
Assigned users are the people on your Start Booking account that can perform or fulfill that given service.
Status
The service status defines whether the service is active or not. If the service is inactive then it will not be available for booking.
Allow Booking Online
This setting is there to tell the Start Booking app if you want this service to display to customers through the various booking portals so that customers can book the service on their own or if you only want this service to display to employees within the app.