How to set up online booking for your business

If you are still taking every booking by phone or DM, you are losing the ones that come in after hours — and spending your day playing scheduling tetris. This guide walks you through switching on online booking in Opraly so customers can self-book a real, available slot, and you can stop being the calendar. It takes about 20 minutes the first time.

Before you start

Have these three things ready and the setup goes much faster:

• A list of your services with rough durations and prices.
• Your staff or providers and who does what.
• Your opening hours for each location.

You do not need a website. Opraly gives every business a branded booking page with its own link you can share anywhere — your bio, Google profile, or a button on your existing site.

Step 1: Add your services

Open Services and add each thing a customer can book. For each one set a name, a duration, and a price. Durations are what make the calendar honest — a 30-minute service only offers 30-minute gaps. If you need clean-up or turnaround time between bookings, add a buffer so the next slot does not start the second the chair empties.

For a deeper walkthrough, see How to add services with durations, prices, and buffers.

Step 2: Add staff and assign services

Under Staff, add each provider and tick which services they offer. Now the booking page only shows a barber the cuts they actually do, and a guest can pick “any available” or a specific person. If you run more than one site, assign staff to the right location so cross-town slots never show up by mistake.

Step 3: Set when you are open

Your booking page can only offer real availability, so it needs to know your hours. Set each staff member’s working hours and any breaks. Walk through it in detail in How to set staff working hours and availability. The calendar combines everyone’s hours, service durations and buffers to show only slots that genuinely exist.

Step 4: Choose your booking rules

A few rules keep your calendar sane:

• Lead time — how soon before a slot someone can still book it (e.g. no bookings within 1 hour).
• Booking window — how far ahead customers can book (e.g. up to 8 weeks).
• Cancellation window — how late a customer can cancel or reschedule for free.
• Deposits or card-on-file — for high-demand or long services, ask for a little commitment up front. See How to take deposits and reduce no-shows.

Step 5: Brand your booking page

Add your logo, a short description, and your brand colour so the page feels like you, not like generic software. Set your capture timing per service — prepaid, pay-before, deposit, or pay-after — and turn on payments and tips if you want to collect at booking or after the visit.

Step 6: Share the link and test it

Copy your booking-page link and put it everywhere customers find you. Then book a test appointment yourself, end to end, to confirm the times, prices and confirmation message all look right.

Tip: Add the booking link as the “Book” button on your Instagram and Google Business profiles. Those two placements alone often double self-bookings in the first month.

Step 7: Turn on confirmations and reminders

The last step protects the bookings you just started taking. Switch on confirmations so every customer gets an instant booking summary, and reminders before the visit. Both cut no-shows and reduce the “wait, when was my appointment?” messages. Set them up with How to send appointment reminders and confirmations.

What good looks like

Grow into the rest of Opraly

Online booking is the front door, but it opens onto everything else the platform does — and you can switch these on whenever you are ready:

• Memberships, packages and gift cards — sell recurring value and let regulars prepay, so booking is one tap and revenue is predictable.
• The walk-in queue — for the customers who show up now rather than book ahead. See How to set up the walk-in queue and online check-in.
• Intake and consent forms — collect what you need before the visit, attached to the right service.
• Reporting and analytics — once bookings flow in, watch utilization, no-show rate, sales and retention to see what is working.
• Multi-location and staff roles — add sites and decide who can see and change what as you grow.

You do not have to set these up on day one. Get bookings live first; layer the rest on as you go.

Troubleshooting your first week

A few things to glance at after launch:

• No slots showing? Usually missing working hours or a service with no staff assigned.
• Wrong durations? Check the service times — they drive every gap on the calendar.
• Customers not getting confirmations? Confirm the email or number is captured at booking and confirmations are switched on.

Tailor it to your business

Online booking works the same across every Opraly vertical, with small twists per industry:

• Salons, barbers and spas — service menu plus the walk-in queue. See /industries/beauty.
• Clinics and med-spas — bookings plus intake and consent forms at /industries/health.
• Classes and studios — enrollment and packs at /industries/classes.
• Rides and chauffeur — pre-booked jobs and the taxi stand at /industries/rides.
• Restaurants — reservations and the host waitlist at /industries/restaurants.

Online booking is the foundation everything else in Opraly sits on — memberships, packages, gift cards, reporting and the walk-in queue all hang off the same calendar. Get it live first, and the rest is a few clicks.

Ready to take bookings while you sleep? Start free and have your booking page live today.