A booking system for lash techs that runs on the infill clock, not the calendar month
A full set is the smallest part of what a regular is worth to you. The rest of it is the infill at two weeks, the one at three, and the one after that — and every one of those is a booking somebody has to remember to make while your hands are two inches from her eye. Slotora books your sets at the length they actually take and keeps the cycle between them running when you cannot look up.
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A lash diary is a retention problem wearing a booking problem’s coat
Counted in appointments, a lash diary looks healthy. Counted in cycles it tells you something else. A 1:1 classic client on a three-week rhythm is seventeen visits a year; the same woman, left to remember by herself, is four full sets and a lot of weeks you filled with nothing. Her value to you is almost entirely in the infills, and the infills are the part nobody books in advance.
The cycle does not end with a cancellation either, which is what makes it hard to see. It ends quietly. She means to come, she gets to five weeks, the retention has gone, and the appointment she now needs is a full set you had no time set aside for. Nothing in your diary turned red. Nobody rang. You simply have one regular fewer than last month and no date you could point at.
So the question worth asking a booking system in this trade is not whether it can hold an appointment. It is whether the clock between one infill and the next keeps ticking while you are isolating with your phone face down on the trolley.
One client, ten weeks, four appointments — and where the clock stops
One woman, one set of lashes, and the ten weeks that decide whether she is still yours at Christmas. What happens in the room, and what the diary does about it.
Day nought — the full set
Two and a half hours of mapping, isolation and fans. She is delighted, she is in a hurry, and she will text you.
Volume lashes go in as their own service at 150 minutes, with a buffer before for the trolley and a buffer after for the clear-down — up to 240 minutes each if you want them, blocked in your diary but not part of what she books or pays for. Then, before she stands up, set the appointment to repeat every three weeks and choose how many times, anywhere from two to twelve. The whole run goes in at the same time of day; where a date lands on something already in your diary it is skipped, and you are told which ones, so you do not discover it in week nine.
Week two — the first infill
Half the fans she went home with are still exactly where you put them. Forty minutes of work, an hour in the chair, and it is the most profitable hour of your week.
An infill is its own row on your list at sixty minutes, not a shortened version of the set, because the booking page cannot offer a length nobody gave it. A reminder email goes out a day ahead by default; change the hour, or add a second time — forty-eight hours as well, if she is the kind who books two things on the same evening and forgets one. Email costs you nothing and there is no ceiling on how much of it you send.
Week five — the infill that keeps her
Her third appointment is already in your diary and she has stopped thinking about it. This is what a retained client looks like from the inside: nothing happening.
It was booked in week nought as part of the run, so nobody had to remember anything. If she needs to shift it, the link in her confirmation email lets her move it herself up to your cancellation deadline — a day, unless you change it — and cancelling stays open right until the appointment starts. She can set a run up from your booking page herself too, on the same weekly, fortnightly, three-weekly or four-weekly rhythms, for up to eight visits.
Week ten — the one that got away
She did not come at week eight. It is five weeks since you touched her lashes, there is not enough left to infill, and what she needs is a full set she has not booked time for.
Be told plainly: this is the point on the clock where Slotora does not act for you. There is no rule that notices a lapsed rhythm and no message that goes out when one stops. What the product gives you is the recovery. If the day she wants is full she joins the waiting list for that service on that day, and when a window opens — she cancels, you cancel, either of you moves something, you mark a no-show before the time, or an unfinished deposit checkout lets go of its hold — the first twenty-five people waiting for a service that fits that window are emailed the time that came free. And since the appointment she actually needs is a longer service than the one she asked for, the honest move is to put it in yourself: a booking you enter can overrule your own rules, a clash included, with a confirmation first and a note afterwards on both the web and the app saying the two overlap.
Two and a half hours in one chair, and how it ever gets offered
Every long-appointment trade has the same problem and lashing has the worst version of it. A 150-minute set needs a 150-minute hole, and the way holes disappear is not that somebody books over them — it is that somebody books a sixty-minute infill at half past ten and leaves you two unsellable stretches either side of it.
Two things decide whether the long one is ever offered. The first is that your lengths are honest: classic at 120, hybrid at 135, volume and mega volume at 150, the infill at 60, a removal at 30 and a consultation at 15. Those are the starting points the product puts in front of you when you register as a lash tech, and they are starting points — a professional edits them, and there is deliberately no suggested price on any of them, because we trade in six currencies and a printed number reads as a recommendation.
The second lives in Settings, under Booking rules, and it is the part almost nobody turns on. 'Which free times guests see' has three settings. 'Every free time' is the default and offers any start that fits. 'Only times that sit next to a booking' offers a start only where it touches your opening time, your closing time, or something already in the diary — a booking, a break, time off — and each free stretch offers at most two starts, one at its beginning and one ending exactly at its end. 'Gaps between bookings first' offers the in-between time on days where the service fits into a gap at all.
Underneath there is a switch that is off until you turn it on: an entirely empty day is offered only once the days you have already started this week are full. It works per person and per week, Monday to Sunday, and the first booking on an empty day is what makes it a started day. Together those two rules are how a mega-volume set stops being stranded in the middle of an empty Tuesday morning.
All of that applies only to guests booking online. You, anybody working with you, and the app see every free time you have, whichever setting you choose — and the start times you offer step in fifteen-minute increments unless you change that, with the earliest bookable time two hours from now unless you change that too.
The patch test: what the product records, and how
A patch test is a question about a date and a piece of paper, and Slotora handles the paper properly. Under Forms you build a form from short text, long text, multiple choice, a date, a consent tick box, or a signature field she draws on her own screen — or you add the ready-made 'Patch test record' in one click and edit it.
What that template actually asks, word for word: whether she has had this treatment before; whether she has ever reacted to a patch test or a product; if she has, a box to describe the reaction; the date the patch test was carried out; a tick against 'I understand a patch test is required 48 hours before treatment'; and a signature, which is required.
Each question can apply to every service or to exactly one, through its 'Applies to' setting, so the adhesive questions go out for a full set and not for a lash lift. Each question also has a place where it is asked: at the moment of booking, on the form you send before the visit, or both. That choice matters more than it sounds — a required question in the booking flow has to be answered before the booking will complete, which is right for one question and badly wrong for six.
Turn on the automatic send, choose how many hours ahead, and pick email, text, or both; a text costs credits and email costs nothing. She taps the link, fills it in and signs on her phone with no app and no login. The Forms page shows each send as awaiting reply or completed, and the answers and the signature attach to the appointment and stay on her record afterwards.
Be clear about what the signature is: a picture she draws with her finger, captured with your consent wording shown above it. It is not a cryptographic or eIDAS electronic signature, nobody countersigns it, and the product does not produce a PDF of the signed form. And an adhesive or a dye sensitivity does not belong in your notes — the client record has a field of its own for it, 'Allergies, sensitivities, anything to know first', which shows in red at the top of her profile and on the appointment itself.
What this does not do for you
The patch-test question set records an answer; it does not run a clock. Nothing in Slotora works out when a patch test has lapsed, and nothing reminds you that one has. You get a dated answer, a tick against the 48-hour statement and a signature, attached to that appointment and kept on her record — which is a record, not a compliance clock. If your insurer wants a patch test inside a certain window, the person watching that window is you.
And one about the recovery, because it is easy to hear it as more than it is. When a slot frees up, the email goes to the first twenty-five people waiting for a service that fits that window on that day, by email only — no text, no push — and nothing is reserved for any of them. The fastest phone gets it, which cuts both ways: a client who waits for you to reply will lose it to one who did not. A window that opens inside your own shortest-notice period is not sent to anybody at all, because an invitation your booking page would then refuse is worse than silence.
Asked before moving a lash diary across
What actually costs money?
Three things are sold on the side, all optional, all bought as you go: texts, drawn from a balance you top up; anything the assistant produces for you, charged per piece from the same kind of balance; and phone answering, bought as minutes in advance. The diary, the booking page, the emails, the forms, your clients and your bookings are not on that list and have no ceiling, and registering asks for no card. Card payments are not on the list either — those run through a Stripe account in your own name, and the transaction fee is Stripe's, as it would be with any machine.
Can classic, hybrid, volume and mega volume each have their own length?
That is the point of setting them up as four services rather than one. Register as a lash tech and they arrive as starting points at 120, 135, 150 and 150 minutes, with the infill at 60, a removal at 30, a lash lift at 60 and a consultation at 15. Every one of those numbers is yours to change, and each service can also carry its own buffer before and after and its own photo on your booking page.
Can a full set need a deposit when an infill does not?
Yes, and that is a setting on the service rather than on your salon. Open the full set, use 'Deposit for this service' and give it a percentage, a fixed amount or the whole price; leave the infill alone and it follows whatever your salon does, or set it explicitly to no deposit. The money lands in your own Stripe account, Slotora adds nothing to it, and if there is a regular you would rather not ask, her own record has a tick that exempts her.
She books at ten at night and cancels at seven in the morning. What happens without me?
Her confirmation email carries a link she can use herself. Moving it closes at your cancellation deadline, which is a day unless you say otherwise; cancelling stays open until the appointment is due to start, and if you charge a late-cancellation fee the page shows her the amount before she confirms it. The time she gives back goes out to the people waiting for that day, with the hour that came free in the message.
What goes out before the appointment, and does it cost me anything?
A reminder email goes out before every confirmed booking, a day ahead unless you change it, and you can set more than one time. Email is free and uncapped. A text is available as well, paid out of a credit balance you top up, and it sends nothing whatsoever until you switch it on — so nobody is ever charged by surprise for a message they did not ask to send.
Somebody wants her lashes taken off and nothing put back on. Is that a booking?
It is a thirty-minute service with a price on it, and it is in your starting list for exactly that reason. A soak-off is a third of an hour of your working day whoever put the lashes on, and a treatment that is not on your list cannot be offered a length, cannot be paid for and cannot be protected by a deposit. Put it on the list and it behaves like everything else.
A client has missed three appointments. Can I stop her booking online?
Marking a booking as a no-show counts on her profile, so the pattern is visible rather than remembered, and from her own record you can stop her booking online altogether — she can still ring you, and you can still put her in yourself. If you charge a no-show fee against the card she saved, it is taken automatically an hour after the appointment should have finished, and that hour is your window to undo one you marked by mistake. You can switch the automatic charge off and decide each one yourself.
Where each of these settings lives
Is there a team on your floor?
If several people work in your salon, and somebody else keeps the day running while you are with a client, that is a different job from one diary — and there is a Slotora written for it.
See Slotora for busy salonsPut your sets in at their real lengths, then book the next infill
Registering takes a few minutes and no card. Your classic, hybrid, volume and mega-volume sets arrive as starting points with the infill, the removal and the consultation beside them; give them your own numbers, set the hours you work, and the booking page is live. The next full set you do, the infill goes in before she has her coat on.