Waxing and laser hair removal booking software for a cycle and a course
Two businesses share your diary and they are opposite shapes. Waxing brings the same woman back every four to six weeks for years, and one missed rebook is a client who has quietly grown out of the habit. Laser is six or eight sessions sold in a single conversation and then delivered across half a year, where the risk is not losing her — it is her stopping at session four with the money already spent. A diary has to hold both, and most of them are built for one.
Built for the individual professional — one person, one diary.
£0 a month, and not a percentage of a single appointment. No limit on appointments or clients, and no card needed to register. Deposits land in your own Stripe account. Text credits and the AI add-ons are the only paid parts, and both stay switched off until you ask for them.
One diary, two opposite shapes
It is worth naming the two shapes before naming a single setting, because almost every decision further down this page belongs to one of them and the right answer for one is the wrong answer for the other.
The mistake this trade makes with software is treating both halves as appointments. They are not. One is an interval you have to protect and the other is a balance you have to draw down, and they fail in completely different ways: a cycle fails by drifting, a course fails by stopping.
Waxing
She comes back when regrowth decides, not when the calendar month turns. Four weeks, five, six — your interval, per client, repeating with no end date in it.
It fails by drifting. She leaves it nine weeks, the regrowth is past the length you want to work with, the appointment is longer and more uncomfortable than she remembers, and the next gap is ten weeks. Nobody cancelled anything. The rhythm just stopped.
Laser and IPL
One decision, one payment, six or eight sessions to deliver over months, with real gaps between them and a patch test in front of the first.
It fails by stopping. She has had four, she can see a difference, life gets busy, and the last two sessions — the ones that make the result she was actually sold — are never booked. You have her money and you will not get her testimonial.
The cycle half: keeping a four-to-six-week rhythm in the diary
Slotora's repeat is set in weeks, not in months, which is the whole point in this trade: every week, every fortnight, every three weeks or every four, for anything from two dates to twelve, at the same time of day. Dates that collide with something already booked are skipped and you are told exactly which ones were skipped, so a run of eight does not quietly become a run of six.
Two honest details about a run. Each date is its own appointment with its own status — you approve one date, you move one date, and there is no series object sitting behind them to edit or cancel in one go. And a run carries one treatment, so if she alternates a full leg with a bikini you are setting up two runs rather than one.
What the product gives you against the drift
- Put the next run in while she is still in the room. The rebook is thirty seconds at the end of an appointment or a message you never get round to sending, and the difference between those two is most of the retention in a waxing book.
- If she will not commit to eight dates, send her the link and let her set her own run — she can choose the same weekly, fortnightly, three-weekly or four-weekly rhythm for up to eight visits, from her phone, without an account.
- Stack the reminders rather than sending one. The reminder times are a list: forty-eight hours out, twenty-four, and two on the morning itself, if that is what your own no-show pattern asks for. Email is unlimited and costs you nothing; the same reminder as a text is paid from a prepaid credit balance and sends nothing at all until you switch it on. Those are the two channels there are — the notifications on your phone are yours, not hers.
- Make her own changes cheap for both of you. Every confirmation carries a link to move or cancel: moving shuts at whatever cancellation deadline you have set, twenty-four hours out until you move it, while cancelling stays open right up to the start, with any late-cancellation fee shown to her before she confirms. A client who can move a Tuesday herself does not become a Tuesday nobody attended.
When the day she wants is already full she can join the waiting list for that treatment on that day. Five things then free a slot: she cancels, you cancel, either of you moves the appointment, you mark somebody a no-show before their time, or an unfinished deposit checkout lets go of the hold it was keeping.
Be precise about what happens next, because it is narrower than the phrase suggests. The first twenty-five people waiting are emailed the time that came free. Nothing is reserved for anybody and the fastest phone takes it, which is the useful part at eleven at night when you are asleep and the unfair-feeling part for a client who waits to hear back from you. It is email only, so somebody who gave you a mobile number and no address never hears about it. And a slot that frees up inside your own minimum-notice window is not mailed out at all.
The course half: a pass with six sessions on it
A course of laser in Slotora is a pass, and a pass is a small, deliberately narrow object. It names one treatment, a number of sessions, a price and a validity period. She buys it on your booking page — by card, which goes straight into your own connected Stripe account, or by asking for it and paying you in person, in which case it sits as a request until you press Approve. For the card route only the paid webhook can activate the pass, so an abandoned checkout can never become a free course through a well-meant click.
From then on it is a code she types. She enters it when she books that treatment and one session comes off; or she arrives without the code, which after eight weeks she will, and you use her pass for her from her record. The database allows one session per appointment and refuses a second — that rule is there because two scans of the same pass on one appointment once burned two sessions out of somebody's ten.
- One treatment per pass
- The pass is tied to a single treatment on your list. Underarms and bikini on one course is two passes with two codes and two prices, and there is no pass that covers a basket of areas. If you sell combined areas, sell them as a combined treatment and put the pass on that.
- A count, not a subscription
- Six sessions means six. There is no unlimited membership, no monthly plan and no rolling renewal — when the sessions are gone the pass is spent, and it stays visible on her record with nothing left on it.
- A validity period, ninety days by default
- Change it to fit the course you actually sell. A laser course spread over six or eight months needs a validity period that reaches the last session, and the default is nowhere near long enough for one.
- A code, typed by somebody
- Either she types it into the booking form or you apply her pass from her record at the counter. Nothing deducts a session on its own in the background, and there is no job anywhere in Slotora that spends one.
- Money that arrives where you bank
- Pass purchases are direct charges on your own Stripe account. There is no platform fee in the payment code at all — what Stripe charges for the transaction is Stripe's, and nothing else is taken.
The deposit rule is the other half of protecting a course, and it is set per treatment rather than only per business. A lip wax can take nothing while a laser consultation takes a fixed amount and the course itself takes the whole price at booking — whatever the treatment says overrides the general setting, and if a treatment's rule is broken in some way the general setting is what applies — never zero.
Below the card network's minimum — thirty pence in the UK — no fee is taken and no card is kept, which is worth knowing before you put a token deposit on a ten-pound lip wax. And the deposit retention window starts at zero, where zero means a cancelled deposit is refunded; retention applies only strictly inside the window you set, a cancellation landing exactly on the boundary is refunded, and a cancellation you make yourself refunds regardless.
The patch test and the paperwork, briefly
Forms in Slotora reach her as a private link before the appointment, filled in on her phone with no account, and there is a ready patch-test set: whether she has had the treatment before, whether she has ever reacted, a description if she has, the date the patch test was carried out, a required tick confirming she understands one is needed forty-eight hours ahead, and a signature. Every question can be marked as asked at the booking, on the form, or both, and can be scoped to one treatment — so the laser questions go out for laser and a brow wax stays a brow wax.
Anything else you ask — whether she shaved, what sun she has had, how she would describe her skin — is a question you write, in short text, a date, a choice of your own options, or a tick box. If you type by Fitzpatrick, that is a multiple-choice question of your own: the ready-made skin-type question offers normal, dry, oily, combination and sensitive, which is a different scale doing a different job.
Four things Slotora does not do for this trade
- The patch-test date is a record, not a clock. The template stores the date it was carried out and her tick acknowledging the forty-eight hours, and that is the end of the mechanism: nothing in Slotora works out when a patch test has aged past being any use, nothing warns you when you open a booking, and nothing reminds either of you. If a lapsed patch test has to block an appointment in your practice, that check is yours to make and Slotora will not make it for you.
- There is no machine log. Not a device field, not a fluence, not a wavelength, not a spot size, not a settings history — none of it exists anywhere in the product, and we looked rather than assumed. What you have for a session is a free-text note on the client, a separate caution field for the line that has to be read before you start, and photographs on her record. If your insurer or your own standards want per-session parameters recorded, that lives somewhere other than here.
- There is no waxing category and no laser category. Slotora's trade list runs nails, hair, barber, beauty, lashes, massage, fitness, yoga, psychology, coach, tutor, tattoo, photo, childcare, pets and other, and waxing lives inside beauty — which is why the sign-up link on this page says beauty and why the starter list you are handed already carries a brow wax at fifteen minutes, a lip wax at ten, an underarm at twenty, a bikini at thirty and a full leg at forty-five. You can rename anything and add anything. But you will not find your trade's name in a dropdown, and being told that now is better than hunting for it on a Sunday evening.
- And being listed will not fill your diary. You can appear in our public directory, searchable by treatment and by town, at no cost, with a booking through it charged the same nothing as every other — and it is small. There is no figure anywhere in our own code for how many people browse it in your town, so we are not going to invent one. You appear only once you have a live treatment with a real price on it, and you can keep out of it altogether. Plan on the clients you send your link to.
Straight answers before you set anything up
Can I set a five-week rhythm rather than a monthly one?
Yes, and weeks are the only way Slotora counts a repeat. From your calendar: every week, every two, every three or every four, for two to twelve dates, at the same time of day, with any clashing date skipped and named. Five weeks is not one of the four intervals, so the honest answer is that you would book a four-week run and move the dates you want later, or set the run to every week and use it as a shape to edit. A guest setting her own run from the link gets the same four rhythms, for up to eight visits.
How do I sell a course of eight laser sessions?
As a pass: the treatment, eight sessions, the price, and a validity period long enough to reach the eighth — the default is ninety days, which is not long enough for a course spread over months, so change it. There are two ways she can settle it. Either the card goes through on your booking page and the money arrives in the Stripe account in your name, or she requests the pass, hands you the money however you normally take it, and the code only comes alive once you have said it did. From then on the code is what spends a session, one per appointment, and the database will not let a single visit swallow two.
Can one course cover underarms and bikini together?
Not as one pass. A pass names a single treatment, so two areas is two passes, two codes and two prices. The way round it, if you sell them together, is to make the combination its own treatment with its own length and price and hang the pass on that instead.
What happens when a regular leaves it nine weeks and everything is booked?
She joins the waiting list for that treatment on that day. Five separate events put the hour back on sale — a cancellation from either side, a move by either side, a no-show marked before the time comes round, and a deposit checkout somebody walked away from — and each of them sends one email, naming the hour, to the twenty-five longest-waiting. No hold is placed on anybody's behalf, so the first to book has it. Email is the only channel this uses, and if the hour that opened is already inside your own minimum-notice window nobody is told at all.
Can I take a deposit on the laser course but not on a lip wax?
Yes — deposits are set per treatment as well as for the business, and the treatment's own setting wins. Nothing on the wax, a fixed amount on the consultation, the full price on the course. Below thirty pence in the UK no fee is taken and no card is saved at all, and the deposit retention window starts at zero, where zero means a cancelled deposit is refunded.
Will Slotora stop me booking somebody whose patch test has expired?
No, and it will not tell you either. The patch-test date and the forty-eight-hour acknowledgement are stored as answers on her record; nothing reads them, nothing counts the days and nothing warns you. Treat what Slotora holds as the record of what she told you and keep the decision about whether a test still stands where it is now.
Does my intimate waxing client have to make an account to book?
No. Your booking page opens in the browser on her phone at an address of the form slotora.io/b/your-name — she picks the treatment, picks a time, leaves a name and a way of reaching her, and that is all. The confirmation, the reminder and the form link all arrive without a password anywhere.
The two halves, set up step by step
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 salonsSet up one cycle and one course, and see the difference on your page
Registration takes a few minutes and no card. There is no waxing or laser trade to choose, so pick beauty: you are handed a list that already has the waxes on it with real lengths, and you add your laser treatments beside them. Then put one pass on a course of six, set a four-week repeat on your next full-leg client, and your booking page is live.