Getting started

Getting started with BookUp: your first week

Setting up takes about an hour, and you don't have to do it in one sitting. BookUp keeps a checklist of seven steps and tracks your progress as you go. When they're all done, you pick a date and your business goes live. Your business is not bookable until you go live. Nothing you do while setting up is visible to customers, so you can take your time getting it right. Finding your checklist Open your Dashboard. If you're not live yet, a green banner sits at the top telling you how many steps are left. Click Continue setup to open it. The setup banner on the Dashboard, showing four steps left and a Continue setup button That banner can be dismissed with the ✕, so it isn't the only way in. Near the bottom of the sidebar there's a View checklist card with a progress bar, and its Onboarding progress button opens the same checklist. That one doesn't go away. The View checklist card near the bottom of the sidebar, with a progress bar and an Onboarding progress button Both are owner-only — team members don't see either. The seven steps The checklist tracks seven things. Six are quick; the sixth — setting up a booking type — is the real work. The Getting started checklist showing 3 of 7 steps complete, with completed steps ticked and remaining steps numbered Completed steps are ticked and struck through; the rest are numbered. The counter at the top tracks your progress out of seven. 1. Business name The name customers see. Set it in Settings → Biz Profile. 2. Business address Where you're based, so customers can find you. It lives on your location: go to Settings → Biz Profile, scroll to Locations, and click into the location. If you have more than one location, this checks your primary location. Add the others once you're live. 3. About your business A short description of what you do and what makes you worth booking. This appears on your public page. Also on the location, in the same place as the address. 4. Profile picture A photo customers will recognise — your logo, your shopfront, your work. Every new business starts with a placeholder image, and the placeholder doesn't count as done. You have to upload your own before this step ticks off. 5. Opening hours The hours your business is open. Set per location — open the location under Settings → Biz Profile and use the opening hours link on it. Opening hours are not the same as your team's shifts, and they do not control when services can be booked — shifts do that. Opening hours are the hours shown to customers, the default when you set up shifts, and what makes bookable types bookable. If a customer can't book a service, the answer is in shifts, not here. 6. Set up a booking type This is the step that matters most, and it's the one that decides how customers book you. There are three types, and you only need to finish one to go live. Expand the step to see all three and what each one still needs: The Set up a booking type step expanded, showing Services, Classes and Bookable types with their sub-steps Services — one-to-one bookings with a specific team member. A haircut, a treatment, a consultation. To complete this branch you need: - At least one service, added under Services - A shift pattern for whoever provides it, under Team → Shifts Services need shifts because a service is booked against a person, and shifts are what decide when they can be booked. No shifts means no available times, whatever your opening hours say. Classes — scheduled group sessions with a capacity that customers enrol in. A yoga class, a workshop. To complete this branch you need at least one class under Classes. Bookable types — spaces or things customers book directly, without a team member. A court, a lounge, a studio. To complete this branch you need: - At least one thing to book, added under Bookable Types — that means creating a type first, then adding something to it - Opening hours set (step 5) Rooms and equipment your services need are different, and don't complete this branch. They live under Rooms & Equipment. Bookable types need opening hours rather than shifts, because nobody has to be working for a court to be free. You can use more than one type — a gym might have classes and bookable courts. Set up whichever you'll launch with; you can add the others later. Classes and Bookable Types are switched on per business, so if you don't see them, contact support. 7. Subscription Choose Solo or Team under Subscribe, and start your free trial. Your card is taken up front but you're not charged until the trial ends, and you can cancel any time before then. This step counts as done while your subscription is active, including a subscription you've scheduled to cancel — that stays running until the period you've paid for ends. Going live Going live isn't a switch, it's a date. When you open the checklist you'll see a date picker at the bottom. The Schedule your go-live date section at the bottom of the checklist, with a date field and a greyed-out Go live now button To go live today, pick today's date and click Go live now. This only works once all seven steps are complete — until then the button stays greyed out, as in the picture above. The checklist showing 7 of 7 steps complete, with a You're ready to go live message and an active Go live now button To go live on a future date, pick that date and click Schedule go live. You can do this at any point, even mid-setup — the checklist doesn't have to be finished. Your Dashboard then shows "Going live on [date]", and you carry on setting up in the meantime. You can't pick a date in the past. To move a scheduled date, reopen the checklist and click Change date. Until your go-live date arrives, customers can't book you, and they can't book dates earlier than it either. What happens next On your go-live date, your booking page goes public and customers can start booking. Worth doing in your first week once you're live: - Take a test booking yourself to see the confirmation email your customers get - Set your cancellation and rescheduling policies in Service Settings — go to Catalogue → Services and click the cog at the top of the page - Turn on no-show and late-cancellation fees under Settings → Payments - Add your team under Team → Manage Team and set what each of them can see - Import your existing client list from the Client Directory — Fresha, Timely, Square, Ovatu, Booksy and Book in Beautiful exports are all recognised Going live without opening the doors Going live and accepting bookings are two separate things. You can complete the checklist, go live so your page is published and everything is set up — and still keep customers from booking until you're ready. The switch is "Accept bookings from clients", under General in Service Settings — Catalogue → Services, then the cog at the top of the page. Turn it off and customers can't book you online. You and your team can still create bookings from the Planner as normal, so you can keep taking bookings by phone or in person while the online page stays closed. Classes and bookable types have their own equivalents, and the services switch does not cover them: To stop Turn off Where Online service bookings Accept bookings from clients Catalogue → Services → cog → General Class self-enrolments Accept enrolments from clients Catalogue → Classes → settings Bookable type bookings Accept bookings from clients Settings → Bookable Types → settings If you use more than one booking type, turn off each one you want closed. This is not the same as moving your go-live date Pushing your go-live date into the future looks like it does the same job, but it takes your whole business back to not-live. That's the right tool before you've launched, and the wrong one afterwards — an established business that goes not-live loses more than online bookings. Rule of thumb: - Not launched yet, want to delay? Move the go-live date. - Already live, want to pause bookings? Turn off "Accept bookings from clients". Leave your go-live date alone. If you're not sure which you need, ask support before changing either. If a step won't tick off - Profile picture stuck? You're still on the default placeholder image. Upload your own. - Address, description or photo not registering? These are checked on your primary location, not on the business itself. Make sure you edited the location marked primary. - Services branch not completing? You've added a service but not a shift pattern, or the other way round. Both are needed. - Bookable types branch not completing? You need opening hours as well as the thing itself, and the thing has to sit inside a type — a type on its own isn't enough. - Everything ticked but still not live? Check your go-live date. If it's set to a future date, you're scheduled rather than live, and the Dashboard banner will say so. Related articles - Choosing your booking type: services, classes or resources - Setting up your services and service groups - Setting your opening hours, shifts and availability

Choosing your booking type: services, classes or resources

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: 1. A type you name yourself — "Courts", "Treatment rooms". This is what customers see as a heading, and it's what appears in your menu. 2. The things inside it — "Tennis courts", "Padel courts". 3. 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. Related articles - Getting started with BookUp: your first week - Setting up your services and service groups - Setting your opening hours, shifts and availability

Moving from Fresha to BookUp

Switching from Fresha? We'll make the move as easy as possible. To bring your business across, we need three files from your Fresha account: - Your client list - Your services - Your future bookings Export all three, send them to us, and we'll take care of the rest — you don't have to set everything up again by hand. A few things worth knowing before you start: - Do these steps on a desktop or laptop, not your phone. Fresha's exports are much easier to get to on a bigger screen. - Don't open or edit the files before sending them to us. Even small changes in Excel can move columns around and make the file harder for us to read. - You'll be exporting from Fresha, so the menus and buttons below are Fresha's, not BookUp's. 1. Download your client list 1. Log in to your Fresha account. 2. Select Clients from the menu. 3. Open your Clients list. 4. Select Options. 5. Choose Export. 6. Download the list as a CSV or Excel file. Please don't edit the file before sending it to us. 2. Download your services 1. In Fresha, go to Catalog. 2. Select Service menu. 3. Select Options. 4. Choose Export. 5. Download your complete service list as a CSV or Excel file. This lets us recreate your services for you, including the names, prices and durations. 3. Download your future bookings Fresha now exports bookings through Reports, rather than straight from your calendar. 1. Select Reports from the Fresha menu. 2. Find and open Appointments list. Important: choose Appointments list, not Appointments summary. The summary won't have the detail we need. 3. Select the date range at the top of the report. 4. Set the start date to today. 5. Set the end date far enough ahead to include all your upcoming bookings. We recommend at least 2–3 years ahead, so nothing gets left behind. 6. Check your filters so you're including all your team members, all your locations, and all future bookings. 7. Select Options. 8. Export the report as a CSV or Excel (XLSX) file. Send your files to us Once you have all three files, email them to us at info@bookup.online and let us know you're moving from Fresha. We'll bring your clients, services and future bookings across, and come back to you if we need anything else. You don't need to import anything yourself. Related articles - Getting started with BookUp: your first week - Choosing your booking type: services, classes or resources - Setting up your services and service groups