Signing up and setting up your salon in Canada

Before you start: the provinces we serve

Slotora takes Canadian salons from every province and territory except Québec. Québec's language law expects the software, the contract and the invoices in French first, and our Québec French is not ready. If you open the sign-up page from Québec you are shown “Slotora isn't available in Québec yet” and can leave your email for the day it opens; we write to that address once, about that, and nothing else.

The check that holds is your postal code, not where your phone happens to be. A code starting with G, H or J places a salon in Québec, and Settings will not save it, replying that Slotora isn't available in Québec yet.

Registration, in the order you meet it

About fifteen minutes on a computer, or in the app on your phone.

1. 01

   Email, password and one optional box

   Register at slotora.io with your email and a password, and press the confirmation link we send. A Canadian visitor sees an extra box, unticked, asking whether Slotora may email news, tips and offers. Leave it empty and you still get everything about your account; only our marketing waits for your yes, as Canada's anti-spam law expects.

2. 02

   Your business and your country

   Name the business, choose Canada as the country and pick what you do. The country fills in Canadian dollars and a starting time zone of Toronto, shown on the form under Time zone, currency and language; open it to change them if you already know you are elsewhere.

3. 03

   Your postal code, in Settings

   Type it the way Canada Post prints it, A1A 1A1. Its first letter tells Slotora your province, and from the province come your time zone, your list of statutory holidays and, later, the address Stripe needs before a card reader can be paired. There is no separate province box to fill in, so the two can never disagree.

4. 04

   Services with real prices

   Your trade gives you a handful of starter services with their prices left empty. Put in what you actually charge, in Canadian dollars; until at least one service has a price, your salon stays out of the Slotora directory, although the booking page itself works from day one.

5. 05

   Hours, holidays and the rest of the wizard

   The setup wizard then walks through working hours, team, booking rules, payments and sharing your page. On the hours screen, tick the statutory holidays you close for; the list is your province's, not Ontario's by default.

Time zones: where a guess would be an hour wrong

When you save your postal code, a salon still on the Toronto default moves to its province's zone. A zone you picked yourself is never overwritten.

What to check once the wizard is done

Open your booking page the way a client would and look at the first free time it offers. If it starts an hour early or late, your time zone is the culprit: Settings → Time zone, currency and language, then save. Every appointment, reminder and price change from a date runs on the zone you see there.

Look at your hours screen once more. It should be headed “Statutory holidays (automatic closing)” and list your province's days. If it says it can't tell your province from your postal code, the code is mistyped or missing, and only the five holidays every province shares are shown until you fix it.

Dates and money appear the Canadian way: amounts in Canadian dollars, and dates in the format Canadian English uses. Your clients see the booking page in English unless they switch language themselves.

Questions about signing up from Canada