Booking and takings in one app, for businesses that sell time
A salon is two businesses wearing one name: a service business selling time in a chair, and a retail business selling product off a shelf. Software written for appointments loses the shelf; software written for stock loses the chair. Duka365 does both in the same app, on a phone, and the same haircut and bottle of relaxer go onto one bill.
What service businesses keep running into
The diary is a notebook, and two customers get the same eleven o’clock.
Bookings live on the phone, laid out as a day at a time with the next fortnight along the top. Everyone who works there sees the same book, and if the owner prefers, each person sees only their own.
Somebody books while you are mid-cut and you have no signal.
You take the booking anyway. It is written on the phone and sent when a connection comes back — and it cannot arrive twice, because the phone names it before it sends it.
You cannot tell whether the money came from the chairs or the shelf.
Services and products are recorded separately and priced separately, so the reports show what the work earned and what the retail earned. That is the number that decides whether to hire another stylist or widen the range you sell.
Product goes off before it is used and nobody notices until a client complains.
Relaxers, dyes and creams can carry an expiry date, and you choose how many days of warning you want. The shop is told before stock goes off, while it can still be sold or discounted.
You do not know what each stylist actually brought in.
Every sale records who rang it up and every booking can name who is doing it, so takings break down by person. Staff signing in get their own counter and their own day, and none of the shop’s margins.
A day in a salon that runs on it
- 1
You open the app on the Diary and see who is coming, in order, with the times.
- 2
The first client arrives. You mark them confirmed with one tap as they sit down.
- 3
A walk-in calls asking for Thursday. You take the name and a half-hour slot while still on the phone to them.
- 4
The cut finishes. You ring up the service and the bottle of relaxer she is taking home as one sale, and the stock comes off the shelf.
- 5
Somebody cancels. The slot frees up and the booking stays in your records rather than disappearing.
- 6
At the end of the day, Today shows what the chairs took and what the shelf took, side by side.
Questions before you move your book onto it
- Can I sell products as well as services?
- Yes, and on the same bill. That is the case it was built around — most salons here are both, and an app that handles only one of them makes you keep a second record for the other.
- Does it work without internet?
- Yes, including the diary. The day’s bookings are held on the phone, so you can see who is coming even with no signal, and a booking taken offline is sent when the connection returns.
- Can each stylist see only their own appointments?
- Yes. It is a setting the owner controls, and it is honoured on the phone as well as the dashboard — not just hidden in one place.
- Will it stop two bookings at the same time?
- No, deliberately. A salon with three chairs genuinely takes three bookings at two o’clock, and software that guessed at your capacity would refuse real work. The day is laid out so an overlap is visible.
- What does it cost?
- Free to start, with no time limit. Paid plans add reports, staff accounts and more than one branch.
Put next week in it
Move one week of bookings across and run the chairs from the phone. If the day is easier to see than the notebook, keep going. Free, and the notebook is still there if it is not.