Working on your own

What is different

You are the only bookable person, so the software stops asking questions that have one answer. Compared with a salon:

• Your booking page never asks a customer to choose a stylist. They pick a service and a time.
• Settings has no Team, no Who does what, no Chairs & basins and no Commission tab. You cannot pay yourself commission, and there is nobody to allocate a basin to.
• The wording changes throughout: "your work" rather than "the salon", "Business" rather than "Salon".
• You are listed in the public directory under your specialities — makeup, bridal, nails, hair, mehendi, lashes and brows, skin — so somebody looking for a bridal makeup artist finds you rather than scrolling past barbershops.

Setting up, in order

1. Your services and how long each really takes

   Bridal makeup at three hours is three hours in the diary. If you need packing-up time afterwards, add it as a buffer rather than padding the price list with a duration that is not true — the customer sees the duration.

2. Your hours

   The hours you are willing to be booked, not the hours you work. A day left empty is a day nobody can book, which is how you keep Saturdays for yourself.

3. Where you travel, if you do

   Settings → Home visits. Each area with its travel time and fee. The travel time is blocked before and after the appointment, so a booking in Bhaktapur cannot be followed by one in Lalitpur twenty minutes later. The fee is added to the bill automatically.

   Mark which services can be done at a customer's place. Ones that cannot are simply not offered for a home visit.

4. Your photographs

   Settings → Your page. This is the part that actually wins bookings in this trade: your work, not the room. Five or six good photographs beat twenty average ones.

5. Deposits, if you take them

   Bridal work and long appointments are where a no-show costs a whole day. A deposit holds the booking as pending until it is paid, and releases the time automatically if it is not. See Taking payments.

Running the day

• Today is your morning screen: what is booked, and anything that needs you.
• Diary is where you add a booking somebody made over the phone, block out time for a wedding you are attending, or move an appointment.
• Till is how you take money and keep a record. Everything you are paid should go through it, cash included — it is what your reports and each customer's history are made of.
• My link has your own booking link and a QR code. Post it, print it, put it in your Instagram bio.

Money you are paid up front

Two arrangements are worth setting up once and forgetting about, particularly for regular work like nails or threading:

• Packages — five sets for the price of four, paid for now and drawn down over months. The balance is kept for you and follows the customer.
• A club — a monthly fee for a standing discount. Nothing renews itself, so nobody is ever charged without deciding to pay.

Both are on the offers page, and both can be sold from your booking page as well as in person.

Bills, not tax invoices

Unless you are registered with the Inland Revenue Department, the till prints a bill: your name, what was done, what was paid. That is the document, not a lesser version of one, and it is what most businesses here issue. If you do have a PAN, add it under Settings → Bills and tax and you can raise numbered tax invoices as well.