Bookings
Sell time, not just stock.
Customers pick a service, choose a slot that is genuinely free, and book themselves in. You get the day laid out in front of you, route the work to the right person, and cut no-shows with automatic reminders — on a flat subscription, with no cut of each booking.
What it does
You describe what can be booked; WhatsMenu works out when it is actually free.
- Services carry their own duration, price, photo, and optional prep / cleanup padding. A 60-minute massage with 15 minutes of cleanup blocks 75 minutes of your day while the customer still sees a 60-minute appointment.
- Real availability is computed per day from your opening hours minus every booking already taken, pending ones included. A time that is gone never appears, and if two people race for the same slot only the first one wins.
- Two ways to sell time. Flexible appointment times for one customer at a time, or scheduled sessions — fixed weekly start times with a seat limit, for classes, workshops, fitness and tours.
- A booking page that walks the customer through three steps: pick a service, pick a date and time on a month calendar, fill in their details. Every booking ends with a confirmation code and an add-to-calendar button for Google or Apple / Outlook.
- Four ways in, one panel. The Book button and booking cards on your storefront, a shareable link with its own QR code, a floating widget you paste into any external website, and a booking block on pages you build with WhatsMenu. All of them open the same booking page and land in the same panel.
Who it's for
Any business where the calendar is the product. Salons and barbers booking chair time per stylist. Clinics and dentists with consultation slots. Tutors and training centres running preview classes and fixed weekly sessions. Personal trainers, yoga and pilates studios. Photographers, detailers, groomers, cleaners, and workshops with a fixed seat count. Tour operators with two departures a day. Consultants and coaches who meet over Zoom rather than in a room. Restaurants use it too, for table booking — with the Tables module on you assign a table from your floor plan when you confirm; with it off the panel runs in simple mode and you confirm in one click.
How it works
- In Settings > Apps, turn on Reservations, then switch on Take bookings online so customers see the booking entry. You and your staff can add bookings by hand at any time, whether or not online booking is on.
- Under More > Services, add what you sell: name, duration, price, and any prep or cleanup padding. Turn on This service is performed by a specific staff member to route it to the people who can actually do it — each one then gets their own calendar, so booking Ana at 2:00 never blocks Ben.
- Choose how each service is sold. Flexible times offers any open slot inside your hours. Scheduled sessions takes fixed weekly start times with a seat limit instead, plus how many seats one booking may take (so a parent can book two children) and the dates you skip for holidays.
- Add up to five booking questions per service — a child's school standard, hair colour history, the car model, the occasion — and decide whether that service confirms automatically or waits for you. Set each person's own working hours and time off under More > Staff schedules.
- Share it. Booking cards go above or below your storefront items, the share link and QR travel on WhatsApp and Instagram, and the widget snippet drops into WordPress, Wix, Squarespace or a hand-written site. From there, reminders go out automatically and every message carries a secure link where the customer can cancel or reschedule without calling you.
When to use it
Use Bookings when your constraint is hours rather than inventory — you can only cut so much hair, see so many patients, or run so many classes in a day. Use Stock Management instead when the limit is a physical count of things, and Daily Limit when you take orders rather than appointments but need a ceiling on how many you accept per day. They combine happily: a salon sells retail shampoo with stock counts and books chair time on the same storefront. If you only need "reserve a table for Friday" and never sell named services, skip services entirely — the page then just asks for a date and a time, and you approve or decline.
Frequently asked questions
Can customers book a specific person?
Yes. Mark a service as performed by specific team members and customers pick who they want, or choose No preference — WhatsMenu then books whoever is free and spreads no-preference bookings evenly across the team. Each person has their own calendar, their own working hours (including split shifts and days they do not work), and their own time off, so they are never offered when they are away. The panel gains a team filter and a Team tab that draws everyone's day as a timeline, and you can reassign a booking to someone else while confirming it.
Can I take bookings for a class, a workshop or a tour?
Yes. Set the service to Scheduled sessions and add each weekly start time with the number of seats it takes: Saturday 10:00, twelve seats. Customers only see days that have a session, each session shows the seats left, and a full one stays visible as "Fully booked" rather than vanishing. Let one booking take more than one seat so a parent books two children or a couple books two places, name the seat picker whatever fits ("Number of children"), and block the dates you are closed. Session seats are counted on their own, so a class never eats into your appointment capacity.
Do I have to approve every booking?
Only if you want to. Confirm bookings automatically is set per service, so a haircut can confirm itself while a consultation waits for you. When a booking does need your approval it arrives as pending and the slot is held from the moment it is requested, so nobody can take it while you decide — and the customer is told straight away that the request landed. A pending request whose time passes without action releases the slot on its own.
How does this reduce no-shows?
Three ways. Every confirmed booking gets an automatic reminder 1 to 48 hours ahead, through WhatsApp or email. Every message carries a secure personal link where the customer can cancel or reschedule in two taps without an account, so they move a booking instead of silently not turning up — and a cancelled slot frees up immediately for someone else. And when someone does miss, mark them as a no-show (or have WhatsMenu flag it after a grace period); anyone with three or more no-shows in the last 90 days then carries a warning badge on their next request.
Does it work for sessions held online?
Yes. Put your Zoom, Google Meet or Teams link on the service and every confirmed booking gets a Join online session button in its confirmation, its reminder and on the customer's manage-booking page, with calendar invites pointing at the session instead of your address. Customers never see the meeting link itself — each booking gets its own join link, so changing the meeting updates every link already sent, and cancelling a booking kills its link. The link never appears on your storefront or the public booking page.
How does pricing work?
Flat monthly subscription, the same as the rest of WhatsMenu. No commission and no per-booking fee, however many you take — which is the whole difference against booking marketplaces that charge per appointment or per referred customer. Email notifications are free. WhatsApp messages use credits, or none at all if you connect your own WhatsBox number, in which case they also come from your number and replies reach your own inbox.
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Services, staff calendars, classes, reminders — no per-booking fee.
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