SuddenlySorted ← All help articles
Help Centre › Services & booking rules
Get started

Services, durations & booking rules

Each service carries a price, a length, and a few quiet rules — cleanup time, minimum notice, a booking note. Set them once and they shape exactly what customers can book, and when.

Your services are the backbone of every booking. In Settings → Services & pricing, each one gets a name, a price and a duration — and a handful of optional rules that decide which start times are offered, how much breathing room sits after it, and what the customer is told before they book. Get them right once and your assistant and booking page hold the line for you, every time.

The Services & pricing section of Business setup, showing three services — Women's Cut $65 / 45 min, Full Colour $140 / 90 min, and Cut & Blow Wave $75 / 45 min — each with a Deposit to confirm dropdown and fields for minimum notice (hrs), cleanup (min) and an optional booking note. Full Colour shows a booking note beginning 'Please arrive with clean…'.
Settings → Services & pricing. Each service has a name, price and duration on the top row, with the Deposit to confirm dropdown, minimum notice, cleanup time and a booking note underneath.

What you can set per service

Patch tests for colour services

Some services — typically a colour — need a skin patch test around 48 hours beforehand. The simplest way to flag it is to add a line to that service's booking note — for example "A patch test is needed at least 48 hours before this appointment." It's shown to the customer right when they book, so they're not caught out. Pair it with a minimum notice of 48 hours on the same service and the booking page won't even offer a slot that's too soon for the test.

How the rules protect your day Durations keep services from overrunning your closing time; cleanup time builds in realistic gaps for tidy-up and turnover, so you're never sprinting between chairs; and minimum notice stops last-minute bookings you can't prep for. Set them once and every self-booked appointment respects them automatically — no back-to-back chaos, no "sorry, we can't fit that in" after the fact.

Who can do what

Not every stylist does every service. On the Team screen you can mark a person as doing only certain services — and your assistant and booking page then only offer that stylist for services they actually do, routing each part of a group or multi-service visit to a stylist who's genuinely capable. It's one more rule working quietly in the background so a customer can never book the wrong person for the job.

Deposits & confirm-to-hold

Each service has a "Deposit to confirm" dropdown: off, a fixed dollar amount, a percentage of the price, or full prepay. Set it and customers pay a refundable deposit to lock in that booking, both on your booking page and inside the chat. You connect your own Stripe account, the money lands straight in it, and we take no commission. It's opt-in per service, so you can ask for a deposit on your higher-value appointments and leave the rest as they are. See Deposits & pay-to-hold for the full how-to.

Don't want to take money up front? Confirm to hold is the no-payment sibling — the slot is held and the customer taps a one-tap link to keep it, or it auto-releases. If a service has a deposit set, the deposit wins.

Letting customers pick a stylist

If more than one person can do a service, Sally offers the choice as tappable buttons in the chat — "Anyone's fine" first, then your stylists by name. Most people tap "anyone", which keeps your book flexible; the ones who want Jess get Jess.

She only offers it when it's a real choice. If just one person does a service, she'll book them without asking. On your booking page the same choice appears as stylist cards, with photos.

What makes it work

Screenshots use sample data — the names, accounts and bookings shown are fictional.