Booking system

The booking system gives a client's own website a complete booking setup, with no platform subscription and no per-booking fees. Klaudius proposes one of two styles from the kind of business and confirms it with you:

• Sittings and slots, for restaurants, supper clubs, classes, tours and events: fixed start times, each with a capacity that party sizes use up, with tables counted too if you want.
• Appointments, for salons, barbers, clinics, groomers, garages and studios: services with their own durations, and staff calendars.

What customers and the owner get

Customers book on the site's /book page and get an instant confirmation email with a calendar invite and a link to change or cancel, up to a cut-off you set.

The owner gets:

• an email for every booking, marked first-time or returning customer
• a dashboard at the site's address plus /admin/bookings, for the day's bookings, phone bookings, cancellations and closures
• reminder emails sent to customers each morning for that day's bookings

The owner adds one-off closures, such as a holiday, in the dashboard. To change opening times, capacity or the cut-off, ask Klaudius: the change is live within about 30 seconds, with no redeploy, and existing bookings are never changed.

Sign-in works like the editor's: personal accounts, with a Bookings role for staff who should only see the bookings. A site with both add-ons uses the same accounts for each.

Setting it up

Pick Booking system under Client add-ons on the Runs page, choose the client and press Start. It asks one message of questions, prefilled from its research so most answers are a quick confirm: the style, demo or paying client, the days, times and capacity (or services, staff and hours), how far ahead people can book, the cut-off, the time zone, and where the owner's booking emails go.

Then it installs and tests itself on the live site: a real booking with your own email address, both emails checked, the booking moved and cancelled, the reminder job checked, and everything cleaned up. You get the dashboard address, the setup password and a ready-to-forward note for the owner in their language.

Before you pitch it

What it costs. No per-booking or platform fees. Bookings are kept in your own database, and the site runs on your Vercel account. For a paying client with their own domain, emails go through your Resend account. Its free tier covers one verified domain and about 3,000 emails a month across all your booking clients, so a second client on their own domain needs a paid plan; check Resend's current limits.

Demo or converted makes a difference. On a site you're still pitching, emails send from your own mailbox and notifications come to you, so you can demo the flow live. When the client converts, ask Klaudius to "switch Acme Bistro's bookings to their own domain": sending moves to an address like bookings@acmebistro.co.uk and notifications go to the owner.

Booking-mode leads arrive halfway there. Their preview has a demonstration booking page that takes no real bookings. Running Booking system when they convert replaces it; or, if the client would rather keep their current platform, Klaudius points the booking buttons at it. Do one or the other before go-live: go-live SEO won't run while the demo page is there.

Never rebuild a booking client. A rebuild would remove the booking system, so Klaudius changes these sites in place.

The customer data is yours to look after. Bookings hold customers' names, phone numbers and emails in your database. If the relationship ends, ask Klaudius to export the client's bookings and then delete them.

The form stops casual abuse. A determined attacker can get past it; if a client gets targeted booking spam, adding a CAPTCHA is a bespoke job. Deposits, pre-orders and waitlists are custom work too, so quote them separately. For pricing, see Pricing.

Read more on the blog: Booking systems, custom to the business, in a few clicks.