How to move from a paper diary to online booking

A diary costs nothing to buy, but it costs time every day. Every booking is a phone call or a message thread, every change means crossing out and rewriting, and the book lives in one place.

A simple count: 25 bookings a week, each arranged in about 3 minutes of calls and messages, is 75 minutes a week. Add the calls you miss while you are with a client – some of those callers simply try the next salon.

• Bookings only during your hours. Clients who think of you in the evening have to remember to call tomorrow.
• Double bookings. Two people writing in the same book, or a quick note on a phone that never makes it to paper.
• No reminders. You remind clients by hand, or not at all.
• No overview. How many visits last month, which service sells best, who has not been back for six months – the diary cannot tell you.

Each of these is small. Added up, they mean answering messages in the evening and a few empty slots every week.

Clients see your free times and book themselves, any time of day. You keep phone bookings too, only now they go into the same calendar.

In Resovu the booking page, e-mail confirmations and reminders, the customer portal and payment by bank transfer with a QR code are all on the Free plan. SMS reminders and Google Calendar sync start on the Starter plan, your own domain on Professional. See the pricing page for current plans.

Start with what clients book and when you work. Everything else can wait.

1. Fill in your business details and choose how clients book: free times from your opening hours (appointments) or fixed sessions (classes).
2. Add your services with duration and price. Five well-named services beat twenty variants.
3. Set opening hours with breaks, and a minimum notice so nobody books 20 minutes before a slot.
4. If you have a team, add each person, tick the services they provide and set their hours.

New accounts get 14 days of the Professional plan, so you can try everything before deciding which plan you need. After that the account moves to Free unless you subscribe.

Example of a short service list for a hair salon: Women's cut and blow-dry (60 min), Men's cut (30 min), Colour with cut (120 min), Highlights with cut (150 min), Blow-dry (30 min). Clients pick from five clear options, and you set a break after the colouring services if you need time to clean up.

During the trial, go through a booking as a client: open the booking page on your phone, pick a service and time, and check what arrives by e-mail.

Copy only bookings from today onwards. Past visits stay in the diary; the new system starts collecting history from day one.

Enter each future booking with New booking. A client without an e-mail can be saved with a phone number only. Decide whether to tick Email the customer a confirmation: it is a good way to tell regular clients about the change, but send it only where the e-mail address is right.

Example: 40 future bookings at about a minute each is less than an hour of work. Clients are created automatically with their bookings; importing a client list from a file is not available at the moment.

Keep writing new phone bookings straight into Resovu from now on, not into the diary. Two places for the same calendar is how double bookings happen.

If you have a team, split the work: each person copies their own column of the diary and checks that the times match their working hours in Resovu.

For regulars who come every four weeks or so, enter at least the next appointment. They can book the one after that online themselves.

Clients use online booking when they find the link where they already look for you.

• Google Business Profile: paste your booking link into Booking links or add a Book button.
• Instagram and Facebook: the link in your bio and a short post with a screenshot of the booking page.
• Website: embed the booking form or a Book now button.
• At the counter: a printed QR code next to the till, so clients book their next visit while paying.
• Voicemail and e-mail signature: one sentence with the link.

Phone bookings stay welcome. Older clients often keep calling for a while, and that is fine – you enter them yourself.

A message to regular clients can be this simple:

From now on you can book with us online at any time, also in the evening: [link]. You'll get a confirmation and a reminder by e-mail the day before. Calling still works as before.

After three weeks of entering everything into one calendar, the diary has become a backup. Put it in a drawer and look at what the first weeks brought.

• How many bookings came in online and at what times? Bookings outside opening hours are the ones the diary would have missed.
• Did reminders go out? A confirmed booking with an e-mail address, made more than 24 hours ahead, gets a reminder 24 hours before the start.
• Did anyone move their own appointment? If you allow it, clients choose another time within your cancellation deadline.

Then adjust: a longer minimum notice, a break between clients or SMS reminders for clients who rarely read e-mail.

Give it more than a month. Some regulars need to come across the link a few times before they book online instead of calling, and some will keep calling – that is fine, their bookings still end up in the same calendar.