BookestoSalons and barbershops
Walk-ins, phone bookings and your online page, on one calendar.
Today shows who is coming and what needs you. The Calendar shows your team side by side. Your clients book on your own page, in English or Arabic, without an account.
The day deskLive
No card needed. We set up each new venue with you, and pricing is agreed before anything is charged.
A Tuesday you already know
It is 1:55 PM. The balayage booked three weeks ago has not walked in and is not answering. That is three hours of your senior colourist gone, and the only reason you cannot fill it is that nobody knows it is free.
Meanwhile the diary on the desk says Nadia at 3 PM with no note about which formula you used in July, so someone is texting her to ask what she had last time. A walk-in is standing by the door because the barber’s column looks full even though the second chair has been empty since noon. And at the end of the month you will work out commission with a calculator and a highlighter.
Every one of those is a record that exists somewhere and cannot be reached in the eleven seconds you have to reach it.
Your day
LiveOne place for the whole day
Today shows who is coming and what needs you. The calendar shows your team side by side. Add a walk-in or a phone booking straight onto it, mark who has arrived and who did not come, and pull up a client’s notes before they reach the desk.
Your clients book on your own page in English or Arabic, without an account. They can choose their stylist, or leave it open. They get a confirmation and reminders by email, and a private link to move or cancel. These emails start when our mail delivery is connected.
Capability
In buildThe chair stays held. The stylist does not.
A service in Bookesto is not one length of time against one person. It can list who and what it needs, and for how long. So a full head of highlights can be set up as the colourist for the first forty minutes and the chair for the whole three hours. Bookesto takes them together, or the booking does not go through. Bringing the same person back for the finish is not built.
The same setup works for a couples’ room, a barber and a specific chair, or a treatment that needs a therapist and a bed.
The limit
We set this up with you when we set up your venue. A suite that needs two therapists at once takes a little more care, and we will go through it with you.
Capability
In buildSenior, junior, and the same service at two prices
Prices can be set per person, so the same cut carries one price with a senior stylist and another with a junior one, and a Saturday can carry a third. Time of day, day of week and season work the same way.
If you price by stylist, tell us when we set you up, and we will go through how those prices appear on your page.
Before opening
The chair, the mirror and the processing station are three different things, and Bookesto treats them that way.
Capability
LiveThe sixty vouchers holding you where you are
Ask any salon owner why they have not left the system they complain about and the honest answer is rarely the client list. It is the shoebox. Half-used packages, unredeemed gift cards, a handful of memberships, and an obligation to honour every one of them.
Gift cards and packages are sold at the till, each on a receipt with the rest of the day’s takings, and spent there: part of a gift card, or one visit from a package, with the balance after it on the client’s record. A balance cannot be spent twice or go below zero. Memberships are in build.
There is no file import for balances, and no system exports them cleanly. We go through yours with you when we set up your venue.
At the desk
In buildService, tip and discount on one ticket
Checkout at your desk handles the service, a tip to a named stylist, a discount, more than one way of paying, VAT and a numbered receipt.
It records the payment you take at the desk. It does not charge a card online: online deposits are not switched on yet.
Commission for each stylist: a rate for services and one for retail, and a report of what each person is owed for any dates, line by line, with a spreadsheet for whoever does your payroll.Live
Capability
In buildA ladies-only salon configured, not improvised
Privacy mode is a setting for your whole business. With it on, staff photos do not appear on your public page.
One limit: it controls what is shown. It does not stop a booking being placed with a particular person or in a particular room, so a rule like that is set up in how you list your team and your rooms. If that matters for your licence, tell us.
Deposits and no-shows
WaitingMoney on the long appointments only, when deposits arrive
Online card deposits are not switched on yet, and your customers pay at the venue until then.
A deposit on a fifteen-minute fringe trim annoys good clients for nothing. When deposits go live, you will be able to ask for one only above a certain length or price, only on certain services, or only from someone who has already failed to turn up. Three ways of holding the money are planned.
- Charge at booking
- A real charge when they book, refunded under your policy
- Hold on the card
- A hold now, taken later only if your policy calls for it
- Save and charge later
- The card is saved and charged after a no-show
The part most vendors leave out
If you charge a saved card after a no-show, the client can dispute it, and you can lose unless you can show what they agreed to. So what matters is the record: the policy as they saw it, the moment they agreed, and the reminders they received. Bookesto is designed to keep that record. It has not yet been tested against a real dispute.
Consumer law in Europe limits what a business may keep when a client cancels. Signups from the EU, EEA and UK stay closed for now, so this does not apply to you yet.
Waitingfor deposits.In buildfor the record of what was agreed.Waitingfor European signups.
Moving over
In buildWhat we can carry, and what nobody can
| System | Export it yourself | How |
|---|---|---|
| Fresha | Yes, clients and appointments | Clients → Options → Export, and Sales → Appointments → date range → Options → Export. No full export for services or staff |
| Booksy | Customer list only | A CSV from the interface. Anything else is a support request |
| Vagaro | Customers, owner account only | Avoid the PDF option: it cannot be imported anywhere |
| Phorest | No | The new vendor requests the transfer |
Bookesto imports your client list from a CSV. You match the columns and see a preview before anything is saved.
Your future appointments, your service list and your staff do not come across in a file. We go through them with you when we set up your venue.
One thing we will not do quietly: imported contacts start as service messages only, with a fresh opt-in needed before any marketing. In the UAE that is a TDRA requirement, and it protects your business more than it protects ours.
Cards on file
If your clients have saved cards with your current system, those cards do not move across today. Online payments are not live on Bookesto yet. When they are, we will tell you what is possible.
Questions salon owners ask
Four straight answers
Can each stylist have their own login?
Yes. Invite your team and give each person a role. Each role sees what it needs and can only do what it is allowed to do. If you need a rule that limits a stylist to their own column, tell us and we will say exactly what the roles cover today.
Will I be told when a booking comes in?
By email, when a booking arrives or is cancelled. Five bookings in a minute arrive as one message rather than five. Your customer gets their own confirmation email, with a calendar file, and reminders the day before and two hours before. These emails start when our mail delivery is connected.
Can I keep my Fresha or Booksy marketplace listing while I try you?
Yes, and we would not ask you to switch off a channel that brings you clients. Bookesto does not sync with those calendars yet, so a slot sold there will not close itself here. Calendar sync is coming.
Do my clients need an app?
No. They use your booking page in their phone’s browser, with no account. Putting the page inside your own website, or on your own web address, is not built yet.
The other five trades
Courts and clubs
Peak and off-peak prices, your courts on one calendar, and a booking page of your own
Clinics and treatment rooms
Bookings, intake forms and consent for aesthetic and wellness businesses. We are your diary, not your patient record. We cannot take a DHA or DOH licensed facility yet, and the page explains why
Detailing, pet grooming and rentals
Your bays on one calendar. Work stages, change orders and condition photos have no screen yet, and that page says so
Classes, tours and experiences
Plan dated classes and departures with a seat count. Customers cannot book them online yet, and that page says so. Your tour-listing sites stay where they are
Restaurants
Reservations, walk-ins and a floor map. Covers, turn times and pacing are still coming, and that page says so at the top
You can check what we say
Every capability on this site carries a status that links to the row on our public roadmap saying the same thing. Anything still coming says what it is waiting on. Any figure we publish needs a source and a date.
If you want the plain list, the roadmap is the ledger.
If this sounds like your salon, talk to us
We set up each new venue with you, one at a time, and we are starting with salons and barbershops in the UAE. Tell us about yours.
No card needed. We set up each new venue with you, and pricing is agreed before anything is charged.