Opening a second salon: what changes in your booking system
The lease is signed, the chairs are ordered, and somewhere on the list between the fit-out and the opening party is a line that says „sort out the booking system”. It is usually the line that gets the least thought, and it is the one your guests will meet first. A second address does not just double your diary — it adds a question to every single booking: where?
1. Decide who works where — per day, not per person
Very few salons split their team cleanly into one shop's people and the other shop's. Someone covers Saturdays at the new place; a senior stylist does Tuesdays at both. Write the week out on paper before you touch any software: for every person, for every day, which address. If your system can only put a person at one location, you will find out the first Saturday someone covers.
2. Give each address its own hours and its own closures
The new shop will open later, close earlier or shut on a different day for the first months. A refit, a burst pipe or a local holiday closes one door and not the other. If your hours are one setting for the whole business, a closure at one address quietly takes bookings at the other off the page.
3. Make the guest choose the address before the time
The most expensive mistake with two shops is a guest standing at the wrong door. Your booking page should ask where first, then show only the times and the people actually there — and every letter about the appointment should give the address in words, not just the salon's name. Check the reminder too: it is the one she reads on the morning.
4. Put the rooms and machines where they are
One laser, one pedicure chair, one treatment room with a basin: these exist at one address. If the system does not know where they are, it will happily book a laser appointment at the shop without the laser.
5. Check what a second location really costs
Some booking systems charge per location, and the add-ons you already pay for — a phone assistant, a marketing tool, an analytics package — are often priced per location too. Add it up before you choose, and remember that a per-person price grows as well, the day you hire for the new shop.
6. Know what will stay one thing
Most systems keep some things shared across addresses: the price list, the client book, the reports. Shared clients are usually what you want — a regular can follow her stylist across town — but shared prices and shared reports may not be. Find out before the opening, not at the first month-end.
How Slotora handles a second address
Since 11 October 2026 one Slotora account can hold several addresses — up to twenty — at no extra cost. Here is what that means in practice, and where the limits are:
- Each time window in someone's working week names its location, so she can be at one shop in the morning and the other in the afternoon. A booking at one address blocks her time at the other — one person cannot be in two places.
- Each location has its own opening hours and closed days.
- With more than one location open, the booking page asks the guest where first. The confirmation, the reminder and any move or cancellation letter name the location and its address.
- Rooms, chairs and machines belong to a location, so a service that needs one can only be booked where it is.
- The diary filters by location and names it on every booking; a booking added at the desk asks where.
- The limits: one country and one time zone for the whole account, one service list and price list, and reports for the business rather than per location. The location screens arrive in the phone app with its next version; until then you set them up in the browser.
A one-page checklist
- Every person, every day: which address.
- Opening hours and closures per address.
- The booking page asks where first; the letters give the address.
- Rooms and machines assigned to the address they are at.
- The real monthly price with two locations and the new hires.
- What stays shared — prices, clients, reports — and whether that suits you.
- One test booking at each address, read as a guest on a phone.
