Your services are your menu. Everything a customer books, sees a price for, or picks a time for starts here.
There's a lot on this screen. Most of it you can ignore on day one — this article covers the handful that matter immediately, then the rest in the order you're likely to need it.
Each row summarises the service at a glance: its duration, price, whether payment is taken up front, who provides it, and badges for anything unusual — add-ons, a linked Form, day restrictions, or Custom settings where a team member has their own price.
Groups first
A service group is a section of your menu: Cutting, Colour, Treatments. Customers see your services grouped this way, so it's about how your menu looks, not just tidiness.
A group has a Name and an optional Description — a line explaining what the group is for.
You can drag both groups and services into the order you want. That order is what customers see, so put your most-booked work near the top.
If you only offer a handful of services, one group is fine. Don't split things up more than you need to.
The essentials
For a service to be bookable it needs four things.
Name. What customers will recognise. "Cut and finish", not "CF30".
Duration. How long it blocks in the diary, in hours and minutes. Be honest — this is what everything else is built on. Too short and you'll run late all day; too long and you'll sell fewer slots than you could.
Price. What you charge. Tick Starting price if the final figure depends on the consultation — it then displays to customers as "from £45" rather than a fixed price.
Who provides it. Assign the team members who do this service. Anyone unassigned won't be offered for it, and a service with nobody assigned can't be booked at all.
Pricing that varies by person
If one of your team charges differently — a senior stylist, a trainee rate — you don't need a duplicate service. Set an override for that person on the service instead.
An override can change their price, their duration, their payment settings and whether the service splits for that one person. Anyone with one is flagged Override active, and the service picks up a Custom settings badge in the list, so you're never left wondering why the figures differ. Restore to default undoes it.
Use overrides for the same work at a different rate. Use a separate service when the work itself is different.
Payment settings
Each service can ask for payment up front. The choices are:
- No payment — they pay you at the appointment
- Full payment — the whole amount at booking
- Deposit (all clients) — a set deposit from everyone
- Deposit (new clients only) — a deposit from first-timers, nothing from regulars
These options only appear once your Stripe account is connected and able to take charges. If you can't see them, that's why — connect Stripe first.
Setting one rule for everything
Rather than setting this service by service, use Payment defaults — the gear icon on the Services page.
Enable payment defaults applies your chosen option to every service that doesn't have one of its own. It's worth reading the consequence of leaving it off: with it disabled, no payments are collected at all unless a service has its own option configured.
Override per-service settings goes further and forces every service onto the default, ignoring anything set individually. Right when you want one rule and no exceptions — and a good thing to check first if per-service payment settings seem to be doing nothing.
Each service tells you which it's using. "Default payment settings applied" means it's following your default. "Default payment settings overridden" means you've set it yourself, and Restore to default puts it back.
Split appointment
If a service has dead time in the middle — colour developing, a treatment setting — turn on Split appointment. It adds a processing break where other clients can be booked.
You set it in three parts — Part 1 duration, Processing time, Part 2 duration — and BookUp totals them for you. Only parts 1 and 2 block your diary; the processing time in the middle is offered to someone else.
This is how you get two customers out of one chair. Without it, the whole duration is blocked solid and that gap is wasted.
Set it up only where the gap is real and predictable. A break you can't reliably leave the customer for isn't a split.
Add-ons
Add-ons are extras a customer can attach when booking — a treatment with a cut, a strengthener with a colour. Each has its own price and duration, and the duration is added to the booking.
Add-ons are an easy way to increase what each booking is worth, because the customer has already decided to book by the time they're offered.
Controlling when it can be booked
Four settings narrow when and where a service is available. All are optional, and all default to "no restriction".
Locations — which of your locations offer it. Leave it empty to offer it everywhere.
Available days — restrict it to specific days of the week, or leave every day selected to allow any. Useful for work you only take on quieter days.
Requirements — link the limited things this service takes up while it runs. Two kinds can be linked:
- Something from Rooms & Equipment — a treatment room, a set of beds, a rack of bikes. These are things customers never book on their own.
- Something customers can book directly, from one of your bookable types — a court, say, for a coaching session held on it.
Either way it does the same thing, and it's worth understanding: you can never have more of these bookings running at once than you have of the thing, and that's shared with every other service using it. Two beds means two of those bookings at a time, counting every service that needs a bed — and, for a court, counting anyone who booked that court directly.
Leave it empty for no limit. You'll need to create the room, equipment or bookable type first — there's nothing to link until you do.
Internally bookable only — customers won't see it in the booking flow, but your team can still add it from the Planner. Right for cash jobs, staff appointments, and anything you don't want sold online.
Forms and colour
Linked Form attaches forms the customer must complete when booking this service — consultations, medical history, patch tests. You can link more than one.
Planner colour sets how the booking looks in your diary. Purely for you, and worth spending a minute on: colour-coding by service type makes a busy week readable at a glance.
Getting your menu right
- Start with the services you actually sell most. You can add the long tail later.
- Get durations right before anything else — every slot you offer is built on them.
- One group is fine to begin with.
- Use overrides for the same service at a different rate, and a separate service when the work differs.
- Turn on Split appointment wherever there's genuine processing time; it's the single biggest capacity win on this screen.
- Order groups and services the way you want customers to read them.