Nail salon booking software for Canadian nail techs
A gel fill, a new acrylic set and a BIAB overlay are three different lengths of chair time, and the diary should know that before a client picks a slot. Slotora books them online at the times you really work to, keeps the client card your public health inspector expects you to have, and takes deposits into your own Stripe account. 14-day free trial, billed in Canadian dollars afterwards, no commission on any appointment.
Try it for 14 daysAn evening's setup, in the order that matters
Register as a nail tech and twelve starting treatments arrive with lengths and no prices. Change all of it.
Lengths
Time every service the way your hands actually do it
Gel manicure, acrylic full set, acrylic infill, BIAB build, gel removal, repair and a cuticle tidy come pre-filled. A soak-off before a new set is its own line, so a client who arrives wearing someone else's acrylics is booked for the extra twenty minutes rather than eating into the next appointment.
Art
Put nail art in as an extra with minutes attached
An add-on carries both a price and the time it adds. Two accent nails can add ten minutes, a full hand of hand-painted work can add forty, and the diary only offers a start time where the whole visit fits.
Deposit
Ask for a deposit on the long sets only
The deposit rule lives on the service. A full acrylic set can hold a percentage, a fixed sum or the whole price; a polish change can carry nothing. The money goes straight into your own Stripe account in Canadian dollars.
Holidays
Tick off your province's statutory holidays
The hours page lists your province's statutory holidays for the next 18 months — Louis Riel Day in Manitoba, Heritage Day in Nova Scotia, Islander Day on the Island, Family Day in most of the rest. Tick the ones you close and online booking closes with you.
Share
Put your booking link in your Instagram bio
Clients book from a web page on their phone, without downloading anything or creating an account, and they get an email with a link to move or cancel the visit themselves.
What your province asks of a nail table
Nail work in Canada is regulated twice over: once by public health, as a personal service, and in one province also as a licensed occupation. Neither layer is a booking-software question, but both decide what you need to write down about the people in your chair.
In Ontario the personal-service rules sit in O. Reg. 136/18 under the Health Protection and Promotion Act. The Windsor-Essex health unit's guidance to operators reads it as requiring contact details for every client who receives a service, kept on site for at least a year and in a secure place for two more. In Toronto, Toronto Public Health inspects personal service settings under its BodySafe program and publishes the results.
Alberta's Personal Services Regulation names manicures and pedicures among the services it covers, and the province asks a business to notify Alberta Health Services before offering any service to the public. Nova Scotia goes further: its Cosmetology Act counts manicuring, pedicuring and artificial nail enhancement as cosmetology, and no one may practise cosmetology there without a licence under the Act.
What Slotora does about any of this is modest and concrete. Every online booking creates or matches a client card with a name and an email address, the visit history sits on that card, and you can export the whole book at any time. It does not keep your sterilizer log or your disinfectant records — that sheet stays on your wall.
Money at the nail table
Canadian clients pay in more ways than a booking system usually expects. Here is what Slotora records and what it leaves to you.
Tips, kept apart from the bill
When you take payment at the counter, the tip goes in its own box with 10, 15 and 20% buttons worked out from the visit's price, and it never changes what the visit cost. The client's receipt shows the tip on its own line.
A line about where tips go
Your booking page can carry a short sentence on what happens to card tips — for example that they go in full to the tech who did the set. Nothing obliges you to write one in Canada; it simply answers a question clients are too polite to ask.
E-transfers, written down by hand
Plenty of solo techs take an Interac e-transfer to hold a Saturday. Slotora cannot see your bank account, so it cannot spot the transfer arriving; you record it on the booking as a bank transfer, and the balance and the day-end follow.
Cards through your own Stripe
Online deposits, no-show fees and payments by QR code at the desk all go to the Stripe account in your name, at Stripe's Canadian rates. With a Stripe card reader, Interac debit is taken next to Visa and Mastercard.
The subscription, in Canadian dollars
Counted by the people clients can book. After the 14-day trial, with no card asked for when you start.
| A nail tech working alone | C$19 a month |
|---|---|
| Each extra tech on the booking page | + C$10 a month |
| A studio of 6 techs or more | C$69 a month in total |
| Billed yearly, one tech | C$190 a year |
Prices in Canadian dollars. No GST/HST is added at present. Not a cent of commission on sets, fills, gift cards or card payments. Cancel from the plan page whenever you like.
Before you move your nail diary over
Three things a Canadian nail tech should know first.
- No text reminders in Canada yet
- Reminders go by email. Slotora does not send texts to Canadian numbers yet, so if most of your no-shows are clients who ignore email, count on that gap until we say otherwise.
- Québec cannot sign up
- Salons in Québec are on a waiting list until the French version for Québec is ready. Everywhere else in Canada can register today.
- We will not fill your chair from a marketplace
- Slotora's directory is small in Canada. It is software for the clients who already follow you, not a source of new ones.
Nail techs ask
Can a gel fill and a new acrylic set have different deposits?
Yes. Each service has its own deposit setting, so the set can ask for a share of the price while the fill asks for nothing or follows your general rule. A regular you trust can be marked on her own card as never asked.
Does Slotora send my clients a text the day before?
Not in Canada yet. Texts to Canadian numbers are switched off while our toll-free number is being verified with the carriers. Email reminders go out ahead of every confirmed visit, and you choose how far ahead — the day before and two hours before is a common pair.
A client paid her deposit by e-transfer. How do I show that?
Open the booking, record a payment and choose bank transfer as the method. Slotora treats it like any other payment on that visit: the amount still owed drops and the day-end shows it under its own method.
Is there a commission when a client books through my link?
No. Slotora charges a monthly subscription after the trial and takes nothing from bookings, tips, gift cards or card payments. Stripe charges its own fee on card payments, the same as any card machine would.
I work out of a room in my home. Is this for me or for a salon?
It is built for exactly that: one person, one diary, one booking page. If you later take on a second tech, each person on the booking page is counted in the subscription.
Where the provincial facts come from
Read on 10 November 2026. These are summaries for orientation, not legal advice.
- Ontario e-Laws — O. Reg. 136/18, Personal Service Settings — https://www.ontario.ca/laws/regulation/180136 · Read on
- Windsor-Essex health unit — client records — https://www.wechu.org/node/4703 · Read on Client contact details for every client; one year on site, two more in secure storage.
- City of Toronto — BodySafe — https://www.toronto.ca/community-people/health-wellness-care/health-programs-advice/bodysafe/ · Read on
- Alberta — personal services regulation — https://www.alberta.ca/personal-services-regulation-and-standards · Read on
- Nova Scotia Legislature — Cosmetology Act — https://nslegislature.ca/sites/default/files/legc/statutes%20HTML/cosmetology.htm · Read on Section 2 (definition, including nail care) and section 3(2) (licence required).
Time your sets tonight, share the link tomorrow
Put in your services at the lengths you really need, add a deposit to the long ones and tick your province's holidays. 14 days to try it with real clients before the subscription starts.