BookUp has three ways customers can book you. It's the biggest decision in your setup, because it changes how your available times are worked out, how you get paid, and what your booking page looks like.
The good news: you don't have to pick just one, and you don't have to get it right forever.
The short answer
| Services | Classes | Bookable types | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What's booked | A person's time | A place in a session | A thing |
| Who's it with | A specific team member | An instructor, or nobody | Nobody |
| How many at once | One customer | Many, up to a capacity | One per unit — three courts, three bookings |
| Who picks the time | The customer | You — they pick from your schedule | The customer |
| Available times come from | That person's shifts | The timetable you set | Your opening hours |
| Typical of | Salons, clinics, trades | Studios, gyms, tutors | Courts, studios, lounges |
If you're still unsure, one question usually settles it:
Is the thing being booked a person, a session, or an object?
Services
Bookable appointments performed by your team. Services use each team member's individual schedule.
A haircut, a consultation, a treatment, a call-out. One customer, one team member, at a time the customer chooses.
Choose services if what you sell is somebody's time and attention. This is the most common type and, for most businesses, the only one they need.
Services give you the most control per booking: per-person pricing, add-ons at checkout, processing breaks that let you book someone else into the gap, and per-service payment rules.
Available times come from your team's shifts. No shifts means no times to book, whatever your opening hours say.
Classes
Group sessions clients can book onto at a scheduled time. Each class has its own schedule and capacity.
A yoga class, a group lesson, a workshop. Many customers, one session, at times you decide in advance.
Choose classes when you're selling a place rather than an appointment. The big difference is who picks the time: with services the customer chooses, with classes you set the timetable and they book onto it.
You build a class once — name, duration, price, capacity, instructor — then give it a repeating schedule, and BookUp generates the individual sessions from that. You can also add one-off sessions that don't fit the pattern.
Assigning an instructor holds their time so they can't be double-booked elsewhere.
Bookable types
Things customers book directly, without a team member. These live under Bookable Types in your Catalogue, and they're bookable around your opening hours.
A tennis court, a sunbed, a lounge, a studio. No staff member attached.
Choose this when the customer is booking a thing rather than a person.
Three levels
You set these up in three levels, which sounds like more than it is:
- A type you name yourself — "Courts", "Treatment rooms". This is what customers see as a heading, and it's what appears in your menu.
- The things inside it — "Tennis courts", "Padel courts".
- Units — "Court 1", "Court 2", "Court 3". Three units means three bookings at once, and you get a column per unit on the planner so you can see exactly which one is taken.
You can leave units unnamed if the things are interchangeable. Five identical gym passes don't need naming; three courts probably do, because the customer has to walk to one of them.
What you can set
- Session length — one fixed length, or several for the customer to choose from.
- Party size — if more than one person can come on a booking, set the range. "1–4 people".
- Turnaround — time held after each booking so you can reset before the next one starts.
- Booking rules — each type has its own: how far ahead customers can book, how close to the start time, and your cancellation and rescheduling windows. Courts can work differently from treatment rooms.
Available times come from your opening hours, not shifts, because nobody has to be working for a court to be free. Give an individual thing its own schedule when it differs.
What about rooms and equipment?
If customers never book it on its own, it isn't a bookable type. It's under Rooms & Equipment.
A treatment room a facial needs. A set of massage beds. A rack of bikes for a spin class. Customers never pick these — they're the things that quietly limit how much you can sell at once.
Attach them to a service or a class under Requirements and BookUp holds them for the booking. If you have two treatment rooms and five therapists, attaching the rooms to your treatments stops you selling six facials at the same time.
The difference in one line: a bookable type is something a customer chooses, Rooms & Equipment is something they never see.
You can use more than one
Most businesses that use two use them like this:
- A gym — classes for the timetable, bookable types for the courts, services for personal training
- A salon — services for the chair work, with the treatment rooms under Rooms & Equipment behind them
- A studio — classes for the group timetable, services for one-to-one sessions
You only need one booking type fully set up to go live. Start with whichever you'll launch on and add the others when you're ready.
What if I pick wrong?
Nothing is permanent. You can add another type later, and you can stop offering one without deleting anything.
The real cost of changing your mind is what your customers see: your booking page looks different, and any links you've shared might go somewhere else. Easier to do in your first fortnight than in your second year.
Two mistakes worth avoiding:
Setting a class up as a service. If you run a 10am spin class for twelve people, that's a class. Building it as twelve separate services is a lot of work that BookUp will do for you.
Setting a room up as a service. If the customer doesn't care who's in the room, don't make it a service — that ties it to somebody's shifts for no reason. If they book the room itself, make it a bookable type. If they book a treatment that happens to need the room, add the room under Rooms & Equipment and attach it to the service.
Classes and bookable types aren't switched on by default
Services are always available. Classes and Bookable Types are switched on for each business — if you don't see them in your menu, contact support and we'll turn them on.