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Celsus — Booking systems

Service 03 / 04

Online booking

Let people book themselves in, without ever double-booking you.

A booking page tied to the calendar you already use, with the rules of your business built in — buffers, travel time, deposits, who can book what.

What an appointment occupies

As a booking tool assumes

One block: the appointment.

As your day actually runs

  1. 01Travel there
  2. 02Setup
  3. 03The appointment
  4. 04Cleanup
  5. 05Buffer

Including setup, cleanup and the ten minutes you always need and never count. Most double-bookings start as an optimistic duration in a booking system.

01—The problem

Off-the-shelf booking tools assume every appointment is a neat thirty-minute block and every day is identical. Real businesses have travel time between jobs, a service only one person can do, a Thursday that finishes early, and a colour that needs the chair for three hours.

The work here is not installing a booking widget. It is getting the rules of your actual week into it, so that every slot it offers is a slot you can genuinely work.

Who this is for

Anyone still booking by text message, DM and memory, or fighting a booking system that does not understand how their day works.

02—The process

06 stages

  1. 01

    We write down every service and how long it really takes

    Including setup, cleanup and the ten minutes you always need and never count. Most double-bookings and most running-late start as an optimistic duration in a booking system.

  2. 02

    We audit your calendar

    One calendar, shared properly, is the foundation. If bookings currently live in three places — a diary, a phone, someone’s head — that gets consolidated first, because nothing downstream works until it is.

  3. 03

    We build your availability rules

    Opening hours, breaks, buffers between jobs, travel time, how far ahead people can book, how late they can cancel, and which services need you specifically. This is the part that takes the thinking.

  4. 04

    We put the booking page up

    On your site, in your Google listing, and as a link you can paste into a text or a DM. Same rules everywhere, because it is the same calendar underneath.

  5. 05

    We turn on reminders

    A confirmation when they book and a reminder before they turn up. This is the cheapest thing on this page and the one that most reliably reduces no-shows.

  6. 06

    We watch the first fortnight

    Real bookings expose the rule you forgot. We tighten buffers, fix the service that keeps overrunning, and block the slot nobody should have been offered.

Two doors, one calendar

  • Door oneThe phoneSome customers will always ring, and the receptionist answers.
  • Door twoThe booking pagePlenty would rather book at 11pm without talking to anyone.

One calendar

Both doors read the same availability, from the same place.

You keep using your normal calendar. Anything you put in it is time nobody can book over.

03—What you actually get

What exists at the end

  1. 01A booking page matched to your site
  2. 02One calendar, correctly shared, as the single source of truth
  3. 03Availability rules that reflect how your week actually runs
  4. 04Confirmations and reminders to customers
  5. 05A bookings link for your Google listing and socials
  6. 06Deposits or card-holds where they make sense for your trade

How long

About a week once your service list and hours are settled.

What it costs

A one-off setup fee, then a small monthly amount.

Payment providers charge their own transaction fees if you take deposits — we do not mark those up.

Questions

Does this replace the receptionist?

No, they are two doors into the same calendar. Some customers will always ring; plenty would rather book at 11pm without talking to anyone. You want both, and you want them reading the same availability.

Can I still block out time myself?

Yes. You keep using your normal calendar — anything you put in it is time nobody can book over.

Can I take a deposit?

Yes, where your trade supports it. For businesses that lose real money to no-shows it is usually the single highest-value change on this list.

Also from Celsus

Ready when you are

Every slot it offers should be one you can work.

We start with your service list and the rules of your actual week, because that is what decides whether a slot is real.

Start with your service list

Or email support@thecelsus.com