For massage therapists working on their own

Massage booking software that reserves the turnaround, not only the treatment

Your problem is not an empty diary. It is the twenty minutes around every appointment that nobody pays you for and that most calendars treat as nothing at all — the linen, the washing, the notes, and a client who needs ten minutes to get her boots back on. Slotora holds that time per treatment, so a day that looks full on the screen is a day you can actually work.

Built for the individual professional — one person, one diary.

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£0 a month · 0% of what you charge · no limit on bookings or clients · no card at registration · text messages and the AI extras run on a credit balance you top up, and send nothing until you switch them on

A sixty-minute treatment is not sixty minutes of your day

Sixty minutes of deep tissue is not sixty minutes of your day. When your hands come off her shoulders you strip the couch, put fresh linen on it, wash your hands and your forearms, wipe down the bottle, write the two lines about her right trapezius that you will want in six weeks, and wait while she comes off the couch slowly and gets dressed. None of that is optional and none of it is quick. On a good day it is twelve minutes. On the day somebody wants to talk about her shoulder in the doorway it is twenty-five.

So a diary that offers ten o'clock and eleven o'clock for two sixty-minute treatments is not offering you a full morning. It is offering a morning you will finish fifteen minutes behind, and the ninety-minute aromatherapy at two is where the arrears land — the client who booked your longest treatment gets your shortest greeting, because you were still wringing out a towel when she rang the bell.

Nobody fixes that by working faster. You fix it by making the gap part of the treatment, so the booking page can never sell a slot that did not include it. That is what this page is about, and it is the only idea on it: everything below either reserves the turnaround or keeps a booking away from a place the turnaround cannot happen.

The turnaround, set once per treatment

Every treatment on your list carries three numbers rather than one: how long it takes, how long you need before it, and how long you need afterwards. The first is the only one your client ever sees. The other two are the ones that decide whether your day works.

The minutes before: Greeting her, reading back what she answered on the form, asking how the shoulder has been since, raising or dropping the couch, warming the oil and leaving the room while she undresses. Five is honest for a thirty-minute back, neck and shoulders. Hot stone needs whatever hot stone needs, and the point is that you say so per treatment instead of averaging.
The minutes after: Her getting dressed, the couch stripped and remade, hands and forearms washed, the bottle and the trolley wiped, and the note written while you still remember which side was tight. This is the one people under-set, because it feels like tidying rather than work — and it is the one that decides whether your next client waits.

Here is the part worth reading twice, because it is the opposite of what most people assume. When Slotora works out what is still free, every appointment already in your diary is widened by its own treatment's buffers — not by the buffers of whatever somebody is trying to book. Your hot stone at eleven defends its own fifteen minutes even when the person on your page is booking a thirty-minute back, neck and shoulders, and the sports massage at four defends its own. You set two numbers once per treatment and you never do the arithmetic again.

Reserved minutes stop your day being overbooked. They do not stop a booking landing somewhere daft. A sixty-minute sports massage dropped at half past two into an otherwise empty Wednesday leaves you two dead stretches either side of it, both unpaid, and a page that offers every legal start time will produce exactly that. Four settings decide where a guest may land. None of them restricts you: you and your own calendar always see everything.

Shortest notice — how soon from now the first bookable time is, two hours unless you change it. At nought somebody can book a treatment starting this afternoon, which suits a therapist with a room and a quiet Tuesday. At twenty-four hours tomorrow is the earliest she is offered, which suits one who travels.
Start-time step — how far apart the offered starts are: five, ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty or sixty minutes, fifteen unless you change it. It never adds a gap after an appointment; the gap is the buffers' job and mixing the two is how people end up with neither.
Where the free times may be — four positions, and this is the setting most worth an evening. Anywhere offers everything that fits. Touching something insists a start meet your opening, your close, or something already in that day (an appointment, a break, or hours you blocked off), and offers at most two starts per free stretch. Only the gaps offers a start solely where a treatment fits between two busy blocks. From opening offers one start per working block, the earliest the treatment fits, and nothing else.
Filling the days you have already started — a separate switch, off until you turn it on. With it on, a day with nothing in it at all is only offered once the days already begun that week are full, counted per person from Monday to Sunday. It is how you stop three clients occupying three mornings that could have been one.

Between them those four settle the argument you have with your own diary every week: whether to take the booking that arrives or the booking that fits. Tightening them does not leave a guest staring at a wall, either — your booking page opens on the first day with something free this month or next rather than on a today that is full, and a day with nothing left on it offers a single tap through to the next free day.

An hourly treatment, a sixty that becomes a ninety, and the block of six

Some of this trade is priced by the hour rather than by the treatment, and a service can be set up that way: the price becomes a rate, she chooses how long she wants from your shortest length up to a ceiling you set, and the total follows. That is one row on your list where otherwise you would keep three. The other way round is just as legitimate — sixty, ninety, and a ninety with hot stones as three separate rows — and it is the right way when your ninety is not simply your sixty and a half.

Then there is the client who booked a sixty and, face-down, ten minutes in, says that the whole of her lower back has gone as well. You cannot lengthen an appointment the next person is already sitting in the waiting chair for. What you can do is put bookings in yourself and overrule your own rules while you do it: you give the date, the start and the length, you pick the person, and it takes no notice of your opening hours, your shortest notice, your days off, your holidays or your time off. It will even sit on top of an existing appointment if you confirm that is what you meant — afterwards both the browser and the app tell you the two overlap. A guest booking online is never offered a time on top of an appointment, and the override still refuses a client you have given neither a phone number nor an email address.

A block of six is a pass, and it is worth setting up properly because it is the closest thing this trade has to a subscription. You choose the treatment it covers, how many sessions it holds, what it costs, how long it stays valid — ninety days unless you say otherwise — and it gets a code of its own. She buys it on your booking page, and every booking of that treatment made with the code takes one session off. The database allows one session per booking, so a code cannot be spent twice on the same appointment however many times a page is reloaded. Two ways to pay: she pays you in the room and you press Approve, or she pays by card and only Stripe's confirmation that the money arrived activates it.

Two honest edges on that. The code is typed — nothing on your booking page recognises a pass by itself and quietly deducts a session, and no page of ours will ever tell you otherwise. And a pass belongs to one treatment: there is no block of six that covers deep tissue in October and lymphatic drainage in November, and there is no unlimited monthly membership. If you sell both, that is two passes with two codes.

What you need to know before she is face-down

A health questionnaire in Slotora is a list of questions you write, hung either on one treatment or on all of them. The second decision is the one that matters and most products do not offer it: where each question is asked. A question can appear at the moment of booking, on a form sent before the appointment, or both — both, unless you change it. The reason that switch exists is worth knowing, because it is a mistake you would otherwise make once: a required question in the booking flow stops the booking until it is answered, and six required medical questions standing between a stranger and her first appointment is six chances to close the tab.

So the usual shape is a short question or two at booking and the rest on a form that goes out by itself a number of hours ahead that you choose — by email, by text, or both. Email costs nothing. A text is paid from your credit balance. She opens a link, answers on her phone, and never makes an account or a password to do it. The request stays marked as waiting until a channel actually carried it, so a form that went nowhere does not sit in your list looking sent.

There is a ready-made one you can start from rather than writing it cold. It asks, in these words:

Are you currently taking any medication? — yes or no, and it has to be answered
If yes, please list
Do you have any allergies?
Are you pregnant or breastfeeding? — yes, no, or prefer not to say, and it has to be answered
Any skin conditions we should know about?
Emergency contact name and number
A signature, required, with your own consent wording above it

You add your own to that: short text, long text, multiple choice, a date, a consent tick, or a signature. A question can be made to depend on another, so the one about which area is giving her trouble only appears once she has said there is one. Every answer is stored with the question's wording saved as it stood on the day, which is what stops a form you improved in March from rewriting what somebody answered in January. Answers and signatures attach to the appointment and stay on her record.

Two things this is not, said plainly. The signature is a picture she draws with her finger and it is stored as a picture: nothing countersigns it, it is not a cryptographic or eIDAS signature, and there is no signed PDF to file anywhere. And Slotora does not read any of it. It records what you asked and what she answered, and shows them to you before she arrives. It does not score an answer, does not flag one, and does not form a view about whether a treatment should go ahead. That judgement is yours and the software has no opinion about it.

One field is worth setting up on your first evening. A client record holds free-text notes and, separately, a caution — and they are not the same box. Notes are where you write that she likes the pressure lighter on the left. The caution is the line every screen showing that person puts at the top, in red, and it travels with the appointment, so it is where the thing you must not miss goes rather than four paragraphs down a note you would have to scroll.

Read this before you plan a mobile week

If you travel to clients, this is the paragraph that decides whether Slotora suits you. A treatment can be marked as happening at the client's address, and the booking then asks her for that address and keeps it on the appointment. That is all of it. Nothing here measures the distance between two addresses, prices a zone or a radius, orders your day into a sensible route, or has the faintest idea that your eleven o'clock is forty minutes across town from your ten. The only thing that absorbs travel is a buffer you set yourself, and a buffer is one number — it does not get bigger because the postcode did.

That leaves you two honest ways to work. Build the worst realistic journey into the after-buffer of every visiting treatment and accept that some of your days are padded for a drive you did not make; or keep visiting work to days you plan yourself and let your booking page sell the room. What you should not do is assume the diary will protect a travelling afternoon, because it will not, and you would find that out on the afternoon.

A smaller one while we are being plain: photographs are a flat list, not a pair. You can keep your own pictures on a client's record with a caption, and a guest may attach up to three of hers to a booking, but the product shows them in the order they arrived and has no before-and-after view that puts two of them side by side. And every one of them is a picture that gets uploaded — no screen anywhere in Slotora asks you to paste a link to an image, which is a decision rather than an oversight.

The questions therapists ask first

Can the gap be different for different treatments?

Yes, and it should be. Each treatment carries its own minutes before and its own minutes after, so a thirty-minute back, neck and shoulders can take five and ten while hot stone takes fifteen and twenty. The part that catches people out is which buffers apply: an appointment already in your diary is widened by the buffers of its own treatment, not by the buffers of whatever is being booked around it. You never have to set every treatment to the longest one you own.

I charge by the hour. Does that work, or do I need a row for every length?

It works. Set the treatment to be priced by the hour instead of by the visit, give it a shortest length and a longest, and the guest picks how long she wants inside that. The price follows the time. If your ninety is not simply your sixty plus half of it — which it usually is not, once the oil and the linen are counted — then list the lengths separately instead and price each one properly. Both are supported and the product has no preference.

Can I send the health questions before the appointment instead of at booking?

Yes, and that is the setting to find first. Each question is marked as asked at booking, asked on the form, or both. Put a short one or two in the booking flow and the rest on the form, which sends itself however many hours ahead you choose, by email or by text. She opens a link and answers on her phone without making an account. Email costs nothing and a text comes off your credit balance, and the request is not counted as sent until a channel actually carried it.

What stops a no-show costing me the whole hour?

Two different things, and they are worth telling apart. A deposit is money taken when she books — a percentage of the price, a fixed amount, or the whole thing — and it goes into your own Stripe account, not ours. A late-cancellation or no-show fee works the other way: she saves her card when she books and the charge comes off it afterwards, with the no-show fee taken automatically an hour after the appointment should have ended. That hour is your window to undo a no-show you marked in the wrong row, and you can switch the automatic charge off and decide each one yourself. Below the card network's own floor — thirty pence in the UK — there is no fee at all and no card is kept.

A regular wants the same hour every fortnight. Can she set that up herself?

She can set up to eight of them from your booking page, weekly, fortnightly, three-weekly or four-weekly. From your own calendar you can put in anything from two to twelve at the same time of day, and where a date clashes with something already there it is skipped and you are told which, so you do not discover it in week nine. Each of those appointments is its own booking with its own status, though — moving one moves one, and there is no way to edit the whole run at once. A repeating booking also cannot carry two treatments in the same visit.

Can I offer pregnancy massage only on the days I am set up for it?

Yes. A treatment can be restricted to particular weekdays, which is separate from your working hours: your hours say when you are there, the treatment says when that treatment is on, and a guest is only offered a time when both are true. It is the same setting that lets you keep hot stone to the two days the heater is out.

Do my clients need an app, and can I text them a reminder?

No app and no login — your booking page opens in the browser on her phone, and the confirmation and the reminder arrive by email. Something reaches her inbox ahead of every confirmed session, twenty-four hours out to begin with and changeable to whatever suits you, and you may stack several of them: two days, one day, two hours. Email is free and uncapped. A text is the other channel, sent through our SMS provider and paid from a credit balance, and it sends nothing at all until you turn it on. Those two are the only channels there are — there is no WhatsApp, and the notifications that ping your own phone are yours, not something a client ever receives.

Is it genuinely free, or does a percentage turn up later?

There is no monthly fee and no cut of what you charge, no cap on bookings or clients, and no card is asked for at registration. Card payments are not on the paid list either: they run through your own Stripe account and Stripe's transaction fee is Stripe's, the same as with any terminal. What does cost money is optional and stands apart from the diary entirely: a topped-up balance that texts are drawn from, the same kind of balance for anything the assistant writes or draws on your behalf, and telephone answering bought as a block of minutes before you use it.

Where each of these settings actually 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 salons

Put the turnaround in tonight, before your next full day

Registering takes a few minutes and no card. Add your treatments at their real lengths, give each one the minutes you need before and after it, set your hours, and your booking page is live on an address you can send to anybody. The next full day you work will be one you can actually finish on time.

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