Spa and wellness booking software for Canadian spas
December and Mother's Day sell your gift cards; January and February are when they come back as bookings. Slotora sells the cards on your own page, books every therapist and every treatment room without double-booking either, and leaves reset time after every treatment. Billed in Canadian dollars, after 14 days to try it.
Start a 14-day trialGift cards that sell while you are closed
A gift card is bought on your booking page and paid by card through your own Stripe account, or sold at the desk and recorded there. The buyer gets it by email with a printable card; the person receiving it can check the balance on its own page and spend it over several visits.
Because gift card money goes straight to your Stripe account and Slotora takes no commission on it, the December rush costs you nothing beyond Stripe's processing fee. If you would rather not sell cards online, they can be hidden from the page and sold at the counter only.
Packages work the same way for treatments. A five-massage package, or a spa day built from three different services, is sold once as a pass and used visit by visit with its code.
Running the floor
The problems of a spa are problems of rooms and turnaround as much as of people.
Rooms as a hard limit
Three treatment rooms and a steam room are pools with a count. Attach them to the treatments that use them, and the booking page never sells a fourth massage at two o'clock because a fourth therapist happens to be free.
Reset time between guests
Up to four hours of buffer before and after any treatment. Ten minutes after a facial, thirty after a body wrap — set per service, invisible to the guest.
Therapists on split shifts
Each therapist has their own hours, breaks, services and one-off dates, so a Saturday double shift or a Tuesday off is set in the diary, not remembered at the desk.
Health questions before the treatment
Pregnancy, blood pressure, allergies and recent surgery asked and signed before arrival, with the answers on the guest's card for the therapist.
Spa pricing in Canada
One price for the whole spa, counted by bookable therapists and capped. Rooms are not counted.
| One therapist | C$19 a month |
|---|---|
| Three therapists | C$39 a month |
| 6 therapists or more | C$69 a month, no matter how many |
Prices in Canadian dollars. No GST/HST is added at present. Gift cards, packages and deposits carry no commission.
Against Square, Mindbody and Vagaro
Square Appointments in Canada has a free plan for one location, a Plus plan at $35 a month per location and Premium at $85, with 2.5% on in-person credit cards and 2.8% plus 30 cents online. Its card rates are lower than Stripe's standard Canadian rates, which is worth knowing if most of your revenue is taken by card.
Mindbody's pricing page puts room and resource management on its Accelerate and Ultimate plans rather than its entry plan. Vagaro lists spa and medical spa software on its own site. Slotora's room limits and buffers are part of the one Canadian plan.
Before a spa signs up
- RMT receipts
- If registered massage therapists work in your spa, their clients will want a receipt with the RMT's name and registration number to claim on their benefits. Slotora's payment email does not print one. Connected to QuickBooks or Xero, Slotora attaches the invoice from there, which can.
- Email reminders only
- Spa guests are reminded of their treatment by email, since Canadian texting is not live.
- No spa memberships
- A monthly membership that charges the guest automatically is not offered in Canada yet. Packages and gift cards are.
- Québec spas
- Cannot sign up until the French version for Québec is ready.
Spa owners ask
Can a gift card be spent across several visits?
Yes. It carries a balance, and each visit takes what it costs until the balance is gone.
Can I stop two massages being booked into one room?
Yes. Set the room as a resource with a count of one and attach it to the massages; the diary will only offer times when the room is free.
Can I sell a spa day made of several treatments?
Yes, as a package pass that covers the services in it. The guest books each treatment with the pass code.
Do I pay more for more rooms?
No. The subscription counts the people clients can book, not the rooms they are booked into.
Is there a commission on gift card sales?
No, none at all.
Put your rooms in first
Add your treatment rooms, three treatments and two therapists, then try to overbook a room through the page. When you cannot, add the rest. Then open your booking page on your phone, the way a client would on a snowy Tuesday evening, and book yourself a treatment for next week from start to finish.
Sources
Prices and plan details as Square, Stripe, Mindbody and Vagaro publish them.
- Square — Appointments pricing (Canada) — https://squareup.com/ca/en/appointments/pricing · read
- Stripe — Canadian pricing — https://stripe.com/en-ca/pricing · read
- Mindbody — pricing — https://www.mindbodyonline.com/business/pricing · read
- Vagaro — pricing — https://www.vagaro.com/pro/pricing · read