How to choose a booking system for your barbershop

What actually goes wrong with booking on WhatsApp

WhatsApp is not bad at taking bookings, it is bad at remembering them. A booking becomes words inside a conversation, ten other conversations push it down, and you are halfway through a cut with no free hand to check what you told Fahad yesterday.

Three losses repeat in every shop run this way. The first is your day: every booking takes three or four messages back and forth, and you are the one answering between clients. The second is an empty chair: someone booked by word and forgot, and nobody reminded him. The third is two bookings on one hour: you answered two people in the same minute and gave them the same time, and one of them is going to leave unhappy.

Notice that none of the three is solved by replying faster. They are solved when one place knows which hour is taken, and closes it the moment it is taken.

Five things to check in any system before you pay

Every system says the same things on its own page. The difference shows in five points you can test yourself in ten minutes, as long as you test them from a client’s phone and not from the dashboard.

The second point is what separates a booking system from a timetable published online. If the slot does not close in the same instant, you are back at the WhatsApp problem in a tidier shape, and the argument still happens at your door.

And the fifth point is the one that costs you most after a year, which we work out in the next section.

• Does your client need an app or an account? Ask a man to install an app to get a haircut and some of them go back to messaging you. He should open a link, pick, and type his name and number
• Does the slot close the moment it is booked? Open the booking page on two devices and book the same hour. If both go through, the system is no use to you
• Does each barber have his own schedule? Three chairs means three schedules, hours and days off for each, and a client who picks his barber by name
• Can you run it from your phone? You are on your feet all day, and a dashboard that needs a computer is one you will not open
• Is there a commission on every booking? Either a fixed subscription you know from the first of the month, or a cut of every haircut that grows as your shop grows

What it really costs: work it out in your own numbers

Take your numbers, not someone else’s. Say 20 appointments a week per barber and you have two barbers, so around 160 bookings a month, and your average ticket is 60 SAR.

If a system takes a 10% commission on each booking, that is 6 SAR a haircut, so 960 SAR a month. If it takes a fixed 99 SAR, it stays 99 however many bookings you add. The difference is not today’s number, it is that a commission charges you more the harder you work.

Now the other side of the sum: how many empty chairs does the subscription cover? At an average of 60 SAR, two appointments a month that did not get lost cover a 99 SAR subscription. That is not a promise that you will save them, it is a ceiling you can judge for yourself after a month of running it.

And if you want to start with no spend, use the trial before you pay. On WGTK, for example, the trial is 4 months with every feature and no card, enough to see whether the system pays for itself in appointments that did not get lost before you choose Pro or Enterprise.

And the ones who walk in without a booking?

A good share of a barbershop’s takings comes through the door with no appointment, and any system that forces you to turn each of them into an advance booking breaks the way you work. You need two things: a quick record for the walk-in with the amount and the payment method so he lands in your day’s takings, and some order for the Thursday rush.

A smart queue handles the second one. The client opens the link on his phone, takes a number, and sees how many are ahead of him, so he goes for a coffee and comes back instead of sitting on a chair for an hour. You call the next one from the dashboard, and the argument about who came first is over.

Note that a queue is not for every trade. On WGTK it is available for barbershops, beauty salons and spas only, because those are the trades where people walk in without booking in the first place.

When your shop does not need a system

Do not buy something you do not need. If you work alone on one chair, most of your clients walk in, and your notebook travels with you, a system adds a step instead of taking one away.

The same goes if you take fewer than thirty bookings a month, or you only work by appointment three days a week. A free plan on any system covers you and there is no reason to pay.

The need starts the moment a second barber joins. Two schedules that must not clash, a client asking for one barber by name, and a Thursday peak. That is where doing it by hand starts taking from your day and from your chairs.

Try one for a week before you decide

Most systems give you a trial, and the common mistake is opening the account and leaving it there. A trial only works on one condition: let a full week of real bookings pass through it, even if you are still answering WhatsApp alongside.

Lay the week out like this. One day to set up: enter your services with their prices and lengths, add your barbers and their hours, and put the booking link in your Instagram bio, your WhatsApp auto reply and your shop’s Google profile. Then six days to watch what happens.

On WGTK you open the account and try everything for 4 months with no card, and your link comes out as wgtk.net/your-shop, ready to paste anywhere.

At the end of the week ask three questions. How many bookings came through the link without you answering anyone? How many times did you open the dashboard from your phone while standing? And how many empty chairs did you have compared with the week before? If you do not like the answers, cancel before the trial ends and pay nothing.