Setting up a salon

Before anything: how it fits together

There are three separate screens and it is worth knowing which is which, because people lose time looking for the till in the wrong one.

• Your booking page — what customers see. It lives at a web address with your name in it, like/studio-kathmandu. No app, no account, no password: a customer picks a service, a person and a time, and that is the whole of it.
• The salon console at /staff — your diary, your till, your customers. Everybody who works for you signs in here.
• Settings at /staff/settings — the same console, the part only a manager or the owner can open.

Nobody from a salon is ever given a database login or an admin password. If a thing cannot be done from these screens, it is missing, and telling us is the right response.

1. Applying, and what we ask for

1. Fill in the short form

   On the application page: your business, your name, a phone number, an email and your town. Six fields, about a minute. Nothing is uploaded at this stage.

2. We ring you

   Usually the same day. That call is where we take the rest — a photograph of the owner's identity document, and, if you are registered with the Inland Revenue Department, your PAN and its certificate. Most businesses here are registered at a ward office or as an SME and have neither; that is fine and expected.

3. We open the account and send the sign-in details

   You get a phone number to sign in with and a first password. Your booking page exists from that moment, with nothing on it yet.

2. Signing in for the first time

Go to /staff/login. Two ways in, and both are fine:

• Your phone number and password — the usual way. Change it any time: tap your name at the bottom of the menu, then Change password. Forgotten it? Tap Forgot your password? on the sign-in page and choose a new one with a code. As the owner you can also set anybody's password under Settings → Team.
• A code — no password yet, or forgotten it? Tap "No password? Get a code on WhatsApp" and we send a six-digit code by WhatsApp, and by email if we have your address.

3. The setup order

Each of these is a tab in Settings. Do them in this order and nothing will be waiting on anything else.

1. Services — what you sell

   Name, how long it takes, and the price. The duration is what the diary blocks out, so a cut that realistically takes 45 minutes should say 45, not 30: the difference is what makes a day run late by six o'clock.

   Two extras worth using. Buffers add setup or cleanup time around a service, blocking the stylist without charging the customer for it. A processing gap is dead time inside a service — the twenty minutes a colour is developing — during which that stylist is free to be booked for somebody else.

2. Hours — when you are open

   Per day, and more than one window a day if you close for lunch. A day with no window is a day you are shut, and no times will be offered on it.

3. Team — who works here

   Add each person with their phone number and a role. They can sign in the moment you save; there is nothing to accept.

   The roles are Stylist (their own diary and their own link), Receptionist (the whole diary, the till, customers, the waiting list), Manager (everything above plus reports and settings) and Owner (everything, including the bill you pay us). Give the smallest role that lets somebody do their job — it is easily changed later.

4. Who does what — capabilities

   Which services each person performs, and optionally their own duration and price for it. A senior stylist can take 40 minutes where a junior takes 60, and charge differently, and the diary offers the right times for each.

   Nobody is bookable online until this is filled in. A customer choosing "Colour" is offered the people who do colour, so a person with nothing ticked appears nowhere.

5. Chairs & basins — resources

   Only if something physical limits you: two basins means two wash-and-blow-dries at once whatever the rota says. Skip it if nothing in your place is scarce.

6. Home visits — if you travel

   Name each area you go to, with the travel time and the fee. The travel time is blocked before and after the appointment exactly like a buffer, which is what stops the diary promising a ten o'clock in Lalitpur straight after a nine in Bhaktapur.

7. Payments — only if you want money up front

   Your own Fonepay or Khalti keys, so money goes to your account and not through ours. Deposits are separate and optional. See Taking payments.

8. Your page — how you look

   Your logo, photographs of the place, a short description, your phone number, your Instagram. This is the page a stranger judges you by, and the one your own customers are sent to from WhatsApp.

4. Open for bookings

There is no "publish" button — your page has been live since the account was made. Test it yourself first: open your link on your own phone, book something at a quiet time, then cancel it from Diary. Five minutes, and it is the only way to be sure the hours and the durations say what you meant.

Then hand the link out:

• Settings → Your page has a QR code — print it and put it by the mirror or on the desk.
• Put the link in your Instagram bio and your Facebook page. It is the same address every time; it never changes.
• Every stylist has their own version of it under My link, which opens your page with them already chosen. That is the one they should be posting.

5. The first week

• Ring up every visit on the till, including cash ones. The reports, the commission figures and each customer's history are all built from it, and a week rung up by hand elsewhere is a week those screens cannot tell you anything about.
• Put a phone number on the bill whenever a customer gives one. That is what keeps their history in one place, and what a package or a once-per-customer code is counted against.
• Check Today each morning. The lower half of it is not a summary — it is the list of things that need somebody to do something about them.