Let people book you without the back-and-forth.
Bookings publishes real availability, takes the appointment, and keeps your calendar honest, including the parts that are hard: two staff, one room, a deposit, a cancellation and somebody who did not turn up.
- Free for 14 days
- No card needed
- All sixteen apps included
- Availability that is actually true
- Rooms, equipment and more than one address
- The awkward cases
- Reminders that reduce no-shows
- Deposits and cancellation rules
- A waiting list that works
All of it, in the $99 plan, from your first day.
Most software calls this scheduling. In Piggles it is called Bookings, because that is what you are actually doing.
- appointment booking
- calendar software
- reservations
What Bookings does
Availability that is actually true
Worked out from opening hours, who is in, how long the job takes and what is already booked, not a calendar you keep in step by hand.
Rooms, equipment and more than one address
If a service needs a chair, a bay, a particular person or a particular branch, it cannot be double-booked into one that is already busy.
The awkward cases
Repeating appointments, buffers between jobs, holidays and one-off closures, and different hours on a Saturday.
Reminders that reduce no-shows
Automatic confirmations and reminders before the appointment, and a link the customer can use to move it themselves.
Deposits and cancellation rules
Take money up front where it matters, with a stated policy that is applied the same way for everybody.
A waiting list that works
When somebody cancels, the next person is offered the slot instead of it silently going empty.
The diary, with everyone in it.
The calendar is where the day actually happens. See a day or a week, the whole team at once or one person, room or machine on its own, with the hours nobody is working shaded out so a closed afternoon never passes for a free one.
- A day or a week
- Step through the diary a day or a week at a time, for everybody, or narrowed to one person, one room or one piece of equipment.
- Closed looks closed
- Hours somebody is not working are shaded, and a day nobody works says so, rather than looking like a quiet one.
- Take a booking over the phone
- Add one while the customer is still on the line: the service, the time and who it is with. It lands on that customer’s record.
- Move it, cancel it, say how it went
- Reschedule, cancel, mark it finished or mark a no-show. Every change is kept in the booking’s own history.
- Their other calendar counts too
- Link a person’s outside calendar using the private calendar link their calendar app gives them, and the times they are busy there are blocked here.
- You hear when somebody books
- When a customer books online, the person taking the booking is emailed, or your main inbox if nobody is assigned yet.
Every kind of booking, not only appointments.
A haircut, a yoga class, a table for six and a kayak for the afternoon are four different problems. Each service says which one it is, how long it takes, what it costs and what it ties up, and the times a customer is offered come out of all of that at once.
- Four kinds of booking
- One-to-one appointments, classes with a set number of places, reservations for a party of a given size, and hire of something for a stretch of time.
- How long, and how often it starts
- Set the length, how often a start time is offered, and a gap before and after for setting up, clearing down or getting there.
- Who or what it uses up
- A person, a room, a table, a machine or the thing being hired, and how many. Two bookings can never claim the same one at the same time.
- Only the people who can do it
- Note who has which skills, and a service that needs a color specialist is only offered with the people who do color.
- Who takes the booking
- Whoever is free, the work shared evenly across the team, everyone listed at the same time, or the customer picks the person they want.
- Their own thing, named at booking
- For work on a customer’s own bike, car or instrument, they say which one when they book.
- Notice, and how far ahead
- Set the least notice you need and the furthest into the future anybody can book.
- Approve first, if you prefer
- Let bookings arrive as requests you accept, rather than being confirmed on the spot.
Open when you are open. Closed when you are not.
Availability is worked out, not typed in. Weekly hours, the places you work from, the days you are shut and the bookings already taken all feed one answer, so a customer is never offered a time you cannot keep.
- Weekly hours, with the seasons
- Hours for each day of the week, and a different set for summer or winter if your trade changes with the season.
- Closures and special hours
- Public holidays, a one-off closure or a late opening, for the whole business or only the people it affects.
- More than one place
- Each address keeps its own time zone, and the customer’s confirmation tells them where to go and who they are seeing.
- Checked again at the last moment
- A time is checked once more as it is booked, so two people reaching for the last slot cannot both get it.
- Bookings that repeat
- Every day, every week or every month, on the days you choose, until a date or for a set number of times, with every booking it made listed in one place.
Deposits, clear rules, and fewer empty chairs.
A no-show costs the most when nobody said in advance what happens next. Booking rules put it in writing: what is paid at booking, how much notice a free cancellation needs, what a late cancellation or a missed booking costs, and when the customer is reminded. Customers see the terms before they book, and the same rules apply to everybody.
- Four ways to handle money up front
- Nothing, a card held on file, a deposit as a set amount or a share of the price, or the full price at the time of booking.
- The money follows what happened
- Cancel in good time and the deposit is refunded. Cancel late or do not turn up, and it is kept, or the fee is taken from the card on file.
- Terms they actually agreed to
- Your cancellation terms in your own words, shown at booking and kept as a record of what the customer accepted.
- Reminders on your timing
- A week, two days, a day, two hours or an hour before, in any combination, plus a confirmation when they book and a note if it moves or is canceled.
- Change it without calling you
- Every confirmation carries a link to move or cancel, with no account to create. Your rules decide whether it can still be moved.
- Straight into their calendar
- The confirmation offers to add the booking to the customer’s own calendar, with the address and who it is with.
- A waiting list that fills the gap
- When a slot frees up, the next person waiting for that service in that window is emailed the offer, and it lapses if they do not take it.
How the diary is really going.
A busy week and a full week are not the same thing. Reports answer the questions a booking business actually asks, across all of your bookings for the period you pick rather than whichever ones happen to be on screen.
- How full it ran
- How much of the time you had open was actually booked.
- How bookings turned out
- Finished, still to come, waiting for you to confirm, canceled, and did not turn up, counted side by side.
- Your busiest days and hours
- Which days and times fill first, so you know when to add hands and when to run an offer.
- What people book you for
- Your services ranked by how often they are booked.
It is included. All of it, from day one.
Bookings is not an add-on, an upgrade or a thing you pay to unlock and get billed for. It is in the $99 plan alongside the other fifteen, whether you open it every morning or twice a year.
What actually changes the priceWorks with the rest of it
Nothing here is a separate product that has been made to talk to the others. They are the same business, looked at from different angles.
