Building your appointment service catalogue

Appointment services

Your service catalogue is the list of things a client can book. It feeds your public booking page, the staff booking form, the calendar, and your reports.

Open Services in the sidebar (/dashboard/appointment-services). The page has three tabs: Services, Categories and Add-ons. The tab you are on is kept in the address, so ?tab=addons and ?tab=categories are shareable links.

This article is the reference: what every field does and how the pieces fit together. If you are creating your first service, start with set up your services and come back here for the detail. Admins moving from another system can use Set up with AI on the Services page to read an old booking page, a photo of a price list or a document, and check each service before it is added. The same article explains how.

Reading a service card

Each card in the Services tab is a summary of the whole service.

• Along the top: a colour dot, the duration, a N variants pill when the service has options, a compliance pill when forms are attached, and an Inactive pill when it is switched off.
• Underneath: a buffer pill such as +15min buffer, the price, and one payment pill: Full payment online, a deposit amount, Card hold (with the no-show fee when you have set one), or No online payment.
• Variants lists each option with its duration, price and deposit, and marks any you are not offering as inactive.
• Add-ons lists each linked group, whether it is required or optional, and the first four options with their extra prices.
• Small pills name the calendars that offer the service.
• On the right, admins get an Active (visible to guests) switch that works without opening the form, plus Edit and Delete. On a service that is on the collective page the switch reads Switched on at every venue. Switching it off asks first, because guests then cannot book it at any venue, and Put it back undoes it for a minute.

Drag the grip handle, or use the up and down arrows, to set the order clients see. Services sort inside their category heading.

The form, in order

Edit opens the dialog titled Edit Service; Add service opens Add Service. The fields appear in this order.

1. Name and Description. Both are shown to clients.
2. Category (admins, and only once you have created one). The dropdown starts at No category.
3. Duration (mins), 5 to 480, and Buffer (mins), 0 to 120. Buffer is protected time after the appointment; clients cannot be booked into it.
4. Price (£), up to £100,000. Leave it blank when there is no set price; clearing it on a saved service removes the old price.
5. How will clients book this service? (admins): One fixed offering or Multiple bookable options.
6. Bookable options, when you chose the second.
7. Add-ons (admins).
8. Processing time (admins, and only on a service with one fixed offering).
9. Online payment when booking.
10. Guest booking rules.
11. Booking interval & start times.
12. Location (admins).
13. Colour and Active (visible to clients).
14. Staff bookings only (admins).
15. Optional overrides per calendar (admins).
16. Calendars that offer this service.
17. When guests can book this service online and This service's schedule.

Steps 3 and 4 disappear once a service uses options, because each option carries its own duration, buffer and price.

Online payment when booking

Four choices, and only one can apply to a service.

• No online payment (pay at venue or arrange separately). The default. Nothing is taken and Stripe is not involved.
• Custom deposit (fixed amount online). Fill in Deposit amount (£). The client pays that as they book, and the rest at the venue.
• Pay full price online at booking. The whole price is charged at the point of booking.
• Card hold. No money moves. The client's card is stored securely and you can charge the No-show fee (£) later if they do not turn up. The fee must be at least £1.

On a service with options the last two labels change to Default deposit (£) and Default no-show fee (£), and are used only when an option leaves its own amount blank.

The deposit and the no-show fee share one field on the service, so switching between Custom deposit and Card hold keeps the amount you already typed. Read it as a deposit in one mode and a no-show fee in the other.

Choosing any of the three paid modes without Stripe shows the line "Stripe is not connected. Connect your Stripe account in Settings before guests can pay online." Finish Settings → Payments first. See deposits and card holds for what happens after the booking is made.

Options in depth

Multiple bookable options is for one service sold in several shapes: 45, 60 or 90 minutes; short, medium or long hair. Clients pick the option before any times are offered, which is what keeps availability honest: the diary is searched for the length they actually chose.

• Switching to options seeds the first one from what you already typed: duration, buffer, price, deposit and any processing periods carry across, so nothing is lost.
• Switching back asks you to confirm, because every option is removed.
• Each card is headed Option 1, Option 2 and so on, and is marked Ready or In progress. Add another option stays greyed out until every option above has a name, a duration between 5 and 480 minutes, and, when you charge full payment online, a price above zero.
• Untick Offer this option to clients to keep an option in the service without selling it. At least one must stay ticked or the service will not save.
• Remove deletes an option and is disabled on the last one. To drop options altogether, switch back to One fixed offering.
• You can remove an option that upcoming bookings were made on. When you save, Remove an option that has bookings? tells you how many there are: choose Remove and save to go ahead, or Go back to keep the option. Those bookings stay in your diary with the price, the time and the option name they were booked with. To stop selling an option without removing it, untick Offer this option to clients instead.
• The headline duration and price on the service card, and anywhere a service is shown without its options, come from the first option you are offering to clients. Put your standard option first.

Add-ons

Add-ons are paid extras a client can bolt on: a beard trim, a treatment, an upgrade. They live in groups, and a group is one question with a list of answers.

In the service form, + Add group opens Add an add-on group and Use existing group links one you have already built. Inside the editor: Group name (internal), Prompt to client (the question clients see, falling back to the group name when blank), Selection as Pick one or Pick multiple, Required (client must choose one) or a Minimum and Maximum, and Hide from online booking page (staff-only) for extras only your team adds. A new group starts optional: nothing is required until you tick Required (client must choose one) or set a Minimum. Each option has a name, an optional description, Extra price (£) and Extra minutes up to 240, and an Active tick. Extra minutes are added to the appointment, so a 30 minute service with a 15 minute add-on takes 45.

Saving a group changes only what you changed: every option you kept stays the same option. Remove one that past bookings used and those bookings keep it, while new clients no longer see it.

Groups are shared across your whole business, which has two consequences worth knowing:

• Edit on a linked group edits the group itself, so the change reaches every service that uses it.
• Remove only unlinks it from this service. The group survives.

The arrows next to each linked group set the order the questions are asked in during booking.

Add-ons and money work one way round, which is worth knowing before you price them. On Pay full price online at booking, add-on prices are added to what the client pays as they book. On Custom deposit or Card hold, the deposit and the no-show fee stay at the service amount: add-ons are never included, and the client pays for them at the venue.

The Add-ons tab is the library behind all of this, headed Add-on library. It lists every group with its selection rule, its prompt, and a Used by row of the services that link to it. New add-on group creates one, Show N options expands it, and Delete removes it, or archives it automatically when past bookings reference it. Show archived groups brings archived ones back into view; they are no longer offered to clients.

Processing time

Processing time is a wait where the client stays put but you are free: colour developing, a mask setting, a treatment resting. Marking it lets ResNeo book someone else into that window.

Click + Add processing period. The new period starts at the end of the service and runs on after it, which is the usual shape: you finish applying, the client waits, and the chair is free. Set Length (min) to how long the wait lasts, at least 5. That time is not part of the service length clients see, but in a visit with more than one service the next service waits until it has finished, so a 60 minute colour with 30 minutes of processing booked at 2:30pm shows as 2:30pm to 3:30pm and the cut booked with it starts at 4:00pm.

That shape is the rule, not the example: a service whose processing runs to the end of the appointment is a shorter service plus a tail. The colour above is a 60 minute service with a 30 minute tail, not a 90 minute service. The booked length, the end time on the diary and the time quoted in the client's confirmation all come from the 60.

For a wait in the middle of the service, set Start (min) to how far into the appointment it begins. A period that runs to the end of the service keeps its end there: making it longer moves its start earlier.

The bar above shows Active with client in blue, Processing (you are free) in amber and Buffer / turnover in grey, with the service length, any time after the service and the Total span alongside. Buffer time comes after all of the processing.

On a service with options, each option card has its own Processing time section instead of one for the service. Turning options on carries your existing periods onto the first option, and saving then clears the service-level ones, so set processing per option from that point on.

Services booked together in one visit

A client can put up to 4 services in one visit, and your team can do the same from the diary. On the service step they tick the ones they want and continue from the bar at the bottom, so the whole visit is built before any times are offered. Processing time is what makes those visits fit: the next service starts once the wait is over, not when the first service ends.

Guest booking rules

These four settings only govern what clients can do online. Staff booking is not limited by them.

• Max advance (days): how far ahead the diary opens, 1 to 365. Starts at 90.
• Min booking notice (hours): the shortest warning you accept, 0 to 168. Starts at 1.
• Cancellation notice (hours): 0 to 168, starting at 48. This is the refund line, not a booking rule. Clients who cancel at least this many hours before the start get a full refund of a deposit or online payment, subject to your payment settings.
• Allow same-day bookings: on by default.

Booking interval and start times

Booking interval & start times decides which times clients are offered. Each service picks one of two modes.

Repeat every few minutes suits most businesses. Set Interval (minutes), anywhere from 1 to 60, and slots run through the whole day anchored to the top of the hour: 15 gives :00, :15, :30 and :45. If you only want part of each hour, tick Restrict start times within each hour and tap the minute marks you want. Select all and Clear are there for speed. A line underneath always spells out the result, and if you clear every mark, bookings quietly fall back to every interval mark rather than offering nothing.

Fixed times of day suits businesses that take a handful of bookings a day at set times. A piano tuner who does four jobs a day might offer 9:20, 11:30, 1:45 and 3:30. Those times do not repeat neatly every hour, so an interval cannot produce them.

To set fixed times:

1. Open the service and find Booking interval & start times.
2. Choose Fixed times of day.
3. Enter your first time, then use + Add a time for each of the others. Remove drops one.
4. Save. Clients now see only those times.

A few things worth knowing:

• Your fixed times still sit inside your opening hours, the calendar's working hours, and any custom schedule. A shorter day simply offers fewer of them.
• If a time is too late in the day for the appointment to finish before you close, it is not offered.
• Times already booked disappear, so four fixed times means at most four bookings a day per calendar.
• If you set two times closer together than the appointment takes, the form warns you and names them. That is fine when a calendar takes more than one client at a time, and a mistake otherwise.
• Blank rows and repeated times are tidied up when you save, and a repeat is only counted once.
• Your interval settings are kept, so you can switch back at any time without setting them up again.

Want different times on different days? Combine the two. Set your fixed times here, then use This service's schedule below to shorten the days that need it. Fixed times of 9:20, 11:30, 1:45 and 3:30 with a Saturday window of 9:00 to 12:00 gives you 9:20 and 11:30 on Saturdays, and all four on other days.

Location

Location (admins only) decides which address the client sees in their confirmation and reminder emails.

• At your venue is the default and uses your business address.
• At the client's address makes the booking form ask every client for their address, saves it to their contact record, and prints their address in their emails instead of yours.
• Online adds Link to the online service and Joining information for the client. Both go into confirmations and reminders. Leave the link blank if you send a personal one separately.

Staff bookings only

Staff bookings only (admins, just under the active switch) is for services you sell but do not want on your public page: a staff discount, a trade price, a treatment you only offer on request.

Tick it and your team can still book the service from the diary as normal. Guests never see it: not on your booking page, not in online availability, and not through a booking link. The note under the tick says so: "Your team can book this from the diary. Guests do not see it on your booking page."

It is separate from Active (visible to clients). Switching a service off removes it for everyone, including your team. Staff bookings only keeps it fully usable behind the counter.

This works on a venue collective page too. When the host ticks it, the note reads "Teams at every venue in [your collective] can book this from the diary. Guests do not see it on the [your collective] page."

Per-calendar values

Sometimes the same service is not quite the same on every chair. Optional overrides per calendar lets you decide which fields may be set for one calendar rather than the whole venue: Display name, Description, Duration, Buffer time, Price, Deposit and Colour. Leave them all unticked and every calendar uses the venue values. On a service with options, Duration, Buffer time and Price cannot be ticked, because each option sets its own, the same on every calendar.

Once a field is ticked, there are two ways to set it:

• You, for any calendar. Open Calendar Availability, the Calendars tab, Edit a calendar, then click Edit values next to the service in Appointment services. The dialog is headed with the service name, the word "on", and the calendar name.
• The team member, for their own calendar. An Edit your settings button appears on the service card on their Services page. It opens a dialog headed Your settings: followed by the service name.

Either way the dialog shows only the fields you allowed, and Save changes stores them.

• The venue value is printed under Display name, Duration, Buffer time and Price as Venue default:, so you can see what you are departing from.
• Duration, Buffer time and Price start empty unless the calendar has its own value. Leave one empty, or set it back to the venue default, and the calendar uses the venue value rather than storing a duplicate.
• Deposit appears as a Require deposit switch with the amount underneath. Turning it off removes the deposit for that calendar.
• When a team member manages more than one calendar, a Calendar dropdown at the top says which column they are editing. Changes apply to that one only.

Turning a box off clears what was stored

A calendar's own value only applies while its box is ticked. Unticking a box does not quietly park the value for later:

• Price, Deposit, Duration and Buffer time: every calendar's stored value is cleared when you save. Ticking the box again does not bring an old price back, which is the point. Set them again if you need them.
• Display name, Description and Colour: the stored text and colour are kept, but they stop showing while the box is unticked.

You are asked first. A dialog headed Clear calendars' own values? names each calendar and what it loses, and you choose Clear and save or Go back.

Per-calendar values only cover the seven fields above. Payment mode, booking rules, start times, add-ons, processing time and the service's schedule are set once for the whole venue.

Calendars that offer this service

A service is only bookable on the calendars ticked here, so this list decides who offers it.

• Add calendar creates a new column without leaving the form: type a Display name and click Create and assign. It is ticked for this service straight away and starts with the standard weekly hours, which you can narrow later. When your plan has no room left, the button is replaced by a message naming your plan.
• Calendar availability is a link across to the full editor.
• A calendar that has since been switched off or is no longer eligible still shows, marked (not available: calendar inactive or not eligible), with Remove link to clear it.
• New services start with every calendar ticked. Untick the ones that should not offer it.
• An admin can save a service with no calendars ticked and no warning. It will look correct in your list and no client will ever see it.

You can work from the calendar side instead: Calendar Availability, the Calendars tab, Edit a calendar, then tick services under Appointment services. The same service can sit on as many columns as you like.

Untick a calendar that already has bookings

Unticking a calendar that still has upcoming bookings for this service does not stop the save. A dialog headed These bookings are already in the diary opens instead. It groups the bookings by service and calendar, and lists each one with its date, its time, the client's name and its status. Underneath it says: "Nothing is cancelled or moved unless you choose to move it. Saving stops the calendar offering the service for new bookings from now on."

Each group has a dropdown, What should happen to these bookings?, with two kinds of answer:

• Leave them on [the calendar], which is what happens if you choose nothing. Those clients carry on exactly as before.
• Move to [another calendar]. The list only offers calendars that are switched on and already offer this service. Each booking keeps its date, time and length, so nobody is emailed and nothing is cancelled.

The main button then reads Save and leave these bookings here, or Move N bookings and save once you have chosen a destination. If a move cannot go ahead, because the other calendar is already busy at that time, ResNeo names that booking and the reason, and leaves it where it is so you can pick somewhere else or leave it.

If no other calendar at your venue offers the service, the dialog says so and there is nowhere to move them to. Add the service to another calendar first if you want to move them.

Bookings are never cancelled by this, whichever you choose. Cancel backs out of the whole thing: nothing is saved, the calendar keeps the service, and the service form reopens with that calendar ticked again and your other edits still in it.

A booking you leave behind carries on exactly as before. You can still drag it, change its length, or open Modify and move it, even though the calendar no longer offers that service to new clients. Only new bookings are stopped.

When guests can book this service online

Online availability is the overlap of three things: your venue opening hours, the weekly hours of each calendar you ticked, and this service's own schedule. The preview under When guests can book this service online draws that result before you save. Staff blocks and one-off calendar changes are not shown in the preview, but they do apply live.

This service's schedule (admins only) is the third layer, and it can only narrow, never widen. Tick Limit this service to a custom schedule, then add rules:

• Weekly hours: the same pattern every week, with Mon–Fri 9–5, Every day 9–5 and Clear presets.
• Specific dates: tap days on the month grid and give each its own time windows.
• Date range: a season with its own weekdays and time windows, set by tapping a start day then an end day.

+ Add another rule adds more, and rules combine: a time is bookable if any rule allows it, still inside venue and calendar hours. A Summary underneath reads the whole thing back in plain English. A schedule that is switched on with no rules will not save, and the form warns you before you try.

Turning the tick off clears the rules when you save, so a schedule you may want again is worth writing down.

Categories and order

Categories are the headings your booking page groups services under, and they are the same headings your team sees in the staff booking form.

The Categories tab holds them. Type a name and click Add category to create one, the drag handle and arrows set the order they appear in, Rename changes the wording, and Delete asks you to confirm (Delete "Hair"?, with your own heading's name) and then moves that heading's services to Other services rather than deleting anything. A service with no heading is listed under Other services at the end.

Back on the Services tab, a service's Category dropdown only appears once you have at least one heading, and starts at No category. Services sort inside their heading, so the drag order you set is the order within each section.

Whether clients see categories as sections with a menu or as collapsible headings is set on your booking page: see your public booking page and embed.

In a venue collective that shares one set of services, the collective page takes its headings from the host's categories. A member's own headings still organise its own lists, but they do not change the collective page, and a heading that came from the host cannot be renamed or deleted at a member venue.

What a team member sees

Team members who are not admins get a shorter form. They can create services for the calendars an admin has linked to their login, and on each card they get an Offer on your calendars box with their own columns listed. Calendars are labelled (your calendar) or (view only). They cannot edit or delete a saved service, and category, options, add-ons, processing time, location, per-calendar overrides and the service's schedule are all admin only.

If your venue is in a collective

When your venue is part of a venue collective that shares one set of services, the host venue manages those services for every venue.

• At the host, a service on the collective page shows a Collective badge. Saving it changes it at every venue in the collective. The form's Calendars that offer this service lists every venue's calendars, and Edit values next to one sets that calendar's own price, length, buffer or deposit. On your own calendars, if the service does not let calendars set that value yet, saving one turns it on for you (the dialog says so first), and your staff can then set it for their own calendar too. The other venues' calendars do not need it turned on. On a service with options, each option sets its own price, length and buffer, the same on every calendar, so calendars cannot have their own. A calendar can still have its own deposit, used for options that do not set one. A calendar with its own values shows chips such as Custom price £45.00 or Custom length 75 min.
• At the host, a new service goes on the collective page while Show on the [your collective] page is ticked in Add Service. The form then lists every venue's calendars, so you can choose who offers it in the same step (All calendars at every venue ticks them all). Afterwards a message says which venues do not offer it yet, with Choose calendars.
• At a member venue, the host's services are listed under From and the host's name. Open one with View to see its settings. You choose which of your own calendars offer it, and Edit values beside one of them sets that calendar's own price, length, buffer or deposit, unless the host has locked the service's prices and times. Only your venue's admins can do this: your team members do not get Edit your settings on the host's services. Everything else is the host's to change.
• On a service that is on the collective page, or that you are adding to it, Display name and Description cannot be ticked under Optional overrides per calendar, so guests read the same name and description on every calendar at every venue.
• At the host, Optional overrides per calendar on a service that is on the collective page has two parts. The boxes under Your own calendars are for your calendars only. Under Calendars at and the other venues' names, Let them set their own price, length, buffer and deposit is ticked unless you have locked the service. Untick it and save to lock it: only you can then change prices and times on their calendars, and any they set before stay until you change them. It is the same lock as Lock prices and times in Manage Collective.
• Unticking a box under Your own calendars never clears a value another venue set. Giving the service options does clear their price, length and buffer, because each option sets its own, and each venue is told.

Parked services

A service that is not on the collective page is parked. Nobody can book it while the collective is live, your own team included, and bookings already made for it are not changed. Its card carries a Parked badge, and it stays yours to edit.

• At the host, the card's active switch reads Active (bookable once it is on the page), because the way to make a parked service bookable is to put it on the page. Choose On the page on the card to do that, and Not on the page to take a service off it.
• At a member venue, the same switch reads Active (bookable again if you leave [your collective]), and a Suggest to [the host] link asks the host to add it. That link is for members only: a host does not see it, because the host has On the page instead. To suggest several at once, use Manage Collective.
• At the host, a member's services are put on the page from Manage Collective, Every venue's services, one or many at once. Nobody is asked: each goes on as it is and keeps the calendars that offer it. Add from another venue on Services opens it.

Common problems & fixes

Problem	Likely cause	Fix
The service is not on the booking page at all	Every calendar is unticked (this saves silently), or it is not Active (visible to clients)	Open the service, tick at least one calendar under Calendars that offer this service, check the active switch, and save
The service shows but has no times	Venue hours, calendar hours and the service's schedule barely overlap, or Min booking notice (hours) rules out today	Read the preview under When guests can book this service online, then check Settings → Business hours and the calendar's own hours
Only some options can be booked	An option has Offer this option to clients unticked, or is longer than the free gaps in the day	Tick it back on, or shorten it
Add another option is greyed out	An option above is missing a name, a valid duration, or a price you need for full online payment	Finish the option highlighted in amber, then add the next
The service will not save	A price or deposit is not a number, below zero, has more than two decimal places or is over £100,000, a deposit is blank or zero, a no-show fee is under £1, full payment is on with no price, no option is offered to clients, a custom schedule has no rules, or the online link is not a valid web address	The message names the exact problem; fix that one field
Nothing is charged even though a deposit is set	Stripe is not finished	Complete Settings → Payments until charges are enabled
Processing time vanished after adding options	Service-level periods are cleared once a service uses options	Set processing time on each option card instead
An add-on price changed on other services too	Add-on groups are shared, and Edit changes the group everywhere	Build a separate group for the service that needs different pricing
An add-on group will not delete	Past bookings used it, so it was archived instead	Tick Show archived groups on the Add-ons tab to see it; archived groups are no longer offered
A team member's price is stuck at the venue value	The field is not ticked under Optional overrides per calendar	Tick it, then set it yourself with Edit values on the calendar, or ask them to use Edit your settings on the card
At a member venue, a team member cannot change their price on one of the host's services	On the host's services, only your venue's admins set prices and times	An admin sets it with Edit values. If the host has locked the service, ask the host
A calendar's own price came back as the venue price	The Price box was unticked at some point, which clears every calendar's stored price	Tick Price again and set that calendar's price with Edit values. Ticking the box alone never restores a cleared price
A service is missing from the booking page but the team can still book it	Staff bookings only is ticked	Untick it to put the service back on your public page
A calendar shows (not available: calendar inactive or not eligible)	The calendar was switched off or is no longer bookable	Reactivate it under Calendar Availability, or click Remove link

Next steps

• Set up your services, step by step
• Calendar setup
• Working hours
• Deposits and card holds
• Your booking page, embed and QR code