When setting up any new account the thought of it can be a bit daunting but we are here to help. You may need a little help finding your way around the software, and in this guide, we are going to help you through setting up your account so you’re ready to take bookings and manage your business.
We will cover:
- Setting yourself up.
- Getting all of your data into Timely.
- Adding Services.
- Adding and managing clients.
- Setting up your messages.
- Business details and location.
- Using the calendar.
- Adding and managing your stock.
Setting yourself up
Now, let’s make sure you’re ready to take bookings. Head to “Setup” then select “Staff” under "Your Business" and you should see yourself listed. To make any changes click edit.
There are a few sections here which we’ll walk you through.
- Staff Details: This information is used for staff notifications and reminders. We will have added the email you signed up with and you can also add your SMS number in here.
- Normal working hours: Set the hours you expect to be working regularly, these are known as rostered hours, you can always adjust these hours from the calendar or the roster. Don’t forget to add regular lunch breaks too!
- Personal info: You can start to make your business stand out here. Your job title, photo and bio will show when clients book online. You can also add a reference number to show on invoices.
Follow these guides if you’d like to add staff who take bookings or set up free non bookable staff like your partner or accountant.
Additional Information: Don’t worry about the online booking settings or the booking option and services areas right now. We’ll go through those after we’ve set up the most important things.
Set this up in Timely: Setup > Staff
For more information see our help guide: How to add bookable staff
Getting all of your data into Timely
When it comes to getting all of your information in Timely you have a few different options. If you’re coming from another system we can usually help you move your data across or if you’re coming from pen and paper we have a few tricks to help you with that too.
- Moving across from another system
We’ve got a team of data import specialists who can help you get your data out of your existing system and bring it over to Timely. For more details on what we can bring over and which system we can help with check out this guide.
2. Moving from pen and paper
Bringing your data over from pen and paper can be a bit daunting but we’ve got a range of ways we can help you with this. We can assist by bringing in things like your clients and products from a spreadsheet or other files and guide you through the best way to gradually shift your appointments over. Check out this guide for more details on pen and paper.
These options are available to anyone on our annual elevate and innovate plans, reach out to our team to find out more.
Adding Services
To manage your services go to "Setup" and select "Services". You’ll see we’ve added a few treatments to get you started. You can edit or delete these if you don’t need them.
We’ll cover a few key points about services below and you can find detailed guides on services here.
Adding a description
This will show when your clients book online and help reassure them that they’re booking the right service.
Pricing your services
You can choose if the price of your service is Fixed or Varies and apply any tax if this is required.
Colour your service
Not only does having your services coloured different ways make your calendar beautiful, it’s also helpful to see at a glance what sort of service is coming up.
Adding time before or after services
We have two options for adding additional time to services.
- Padding time: This blocks out time before or after services and is great for things like cleaning between clients.
- Processing time: This is used when you can see more than one client at a time. You can add processing to one client's service and this will let you see another client in that time. It’s great for service groups (read below) where you might see another client while colour is processing.
Creating service groups (E.g. A cut and colour)
You can group common services together such as “Eyebrow tint and shape” or “Highlights, Cut & Blow Dry”. You’ll need to have created the individual services first. This will now give you the option to add padding or processing time to your service group. Get more details on setting these up here.
Additional Information: If you’re the only person taking bookings you won’t need to worry about resources but if you have multiple staff and equipment or rooms required for services you can manage the availability of those with resources. You can find out about those here.
Set this up in Timely: Setup > Services
Adding and Managing Clients
The client record lets you store everything about your customer like their details, purchase history, forms they’ve filled out, photos and any notes. As we mentioned above, our team can help you bring clients over from another system or a list you might have.
Adding Clients
Clients will automatically be added and updated when appointments are created, if they book online or fill in a consult form.
You can manually add clients using the ‘New client’ button in the client tab and you can edit a client record to add or update their details by searching for the client and then clicking ‘Edit’. For more details on adding or editing clients check out this guide.
Managing Client Records
As you start using Timely your client records will grow with; sales information, forms, gift vouchers/credit, photos, appointment history and much more. You can get all of the details on client records with these guides.
Setting up your messages
Customer messages are included in your monthly subscription and are the best way to keep your clients up to date with their appointments. You can choose to send them by SMS or email. We recommend using SMS as it has a 99% open rate and we have set time respectful restrictions so messages won’t send after 10pm or before 8am.
To get started go to “Setup” and select “Customer Messages” under “Notifications”, here you’ll see we’ve set you up with a reminder message and another message to send to clients if they’re booking gets changed. To make changes to any of these simply click the “edit” button.
Reminder messages
Your reminder messages go out before the appointment to remind your client of their appointment, you have a reminder SMS and Email already set up for you. The email is set to go out 48 hours before the booking and the reminder 24 hours before, you can customise when your messages will be sent. You can also edit what your SMS messages say, try using the placeholder tags (like FIRST_NAME etc) to make your message more personal.
Booking changes messages
Your booking changes messages go out when you book, amend or cancel the appointment to update your client on the status of their appointment. Think of it as a digital replacement for customers' old "appointment card" they get in the salon. You have a booking changes email already set up for you, you can choose to add an SMS if you’d like to. As with the reminder message you can edit what these SMS messages say.
Please be aware: You cannot edit the content of the email booking changes or reminder messages.
Additional Information: Don’t worry about the “Send Consult Form” section for now we’ll cover that in another section.
Other messages
With Timely you can send a range of messages for different things. We’ll list the different types of messages below and you can follow the guides to set those up when you’re ready.
Follow up messages can be sent up to 4 weeks after your client has been for their appointment. These are a great way for you to send aftercare information, thank your clients for booking with you, ask for Google reviews and ask for feedback.
With rebooking messages, you can remind your clients who haven't rebooked for a particular service, to book again in order to maintain their look. Include a link in your message so your client can book in from their phone.
These can be used to send an SMS to a group of clients. You can send based on when the client was last in, what service they had or just message everyone to tell them you’ve got a new system and they can now book online. Your SMS allowance is not able to be used with SMS Campaigns but we will always let you know the cost prior to sending
Additional information:
- You can add additional text that will appear at the bottom of all emails from Timely in the Email Setting section - this is good for giving directions or parking information.
- If you need to stop a message being sent that is still pending go to Messages then Sent Messages and hit “Stop all pending messages”
Set this up in Timely: Setup > Customer messages
For more information see our help guides:
How to set up client Reminders
View all guides about messaging in Timely
Business details and location
To get you started we’re going to make sure your business details are correct and your clients can find you by adding your social media, logo, and website. Then we’ll set up your store location.
Click Setup in the main menu and choose Business Details:
Business Details
- Double check that all of the details you entered when you signed up are correct
- Add your website link so it shows on things like emails, gift vouchers and online bookings
- Upload your business logo so your clients recognise it’s you
- Add your Instagram and Facebook accounts so your clients can find your socials
- You can also add a business description here that gets used on the free mini website
Set this up within Timely: Setup > Business details
For more information see our help guide: How to set up your business details
Setting up your location
To get you started we’ve set up a location for you, you’ll find this under Setup and Location. We’ll need you to add some more information like your phone number and address so clients can find you, to add this information click edit on the location.
If your location is fixed make sure that your address is correct so that you’re sending clients to the right place.
Additional information:
- You can have as many locations as you like for free and you can use mobile locations if you go to your clients
- If you have more than one location, to make sure your locations show up nicely on the map, start typing and select your address from the list
Set this up in Timely: Setup > Locations
For more information see our help guide: How to add locations
Using the calendar
Before we take a closer look at the calendar itself let's get the calendar set up. First head to “Setup” then select “Calendar Settings” under Your Business. There are a couple of important sections here that you will want to check:
Display Settings - Under this section you can choose how you want your calendar to be set up. You can decide things like the first day of your week and the intervals of your calendar booking slots (5, 10, 30 mins etc).
Appointment Settings - Here you can choose whether to have your appointments automatically set to confirmed (most businesses will use this) or pencilled in. A pencilled in booking means you or the customer needs to confirm the booking before it’s accepted.
Set this up in Timely: Setup > Calendar settings
Making bookings
Now let's head to the calendar. When you make a booking from the calendar you simply click the time on the calendar that you would like to book, you will have the option to add an appointment or busy time. You can then add your clients details or search for a client already in your database and add the services that the client would like.
Additional information: Once you have started to make bookings you will notice there are different symbols that will appear on the appointments, they mean that you can quickly glance at your calendar and get some information about each booking. You can see what each one means, as well as the calendar icons, here.
For more information see our help guides:
Walk-ins buying products
If you have an existing or new client that wants to make a purchase, such as a product or a gift voucher but doesn’t have a booked appointment, you can do this using the sale tag in the top left corner of the calendar screen, this will open a sale box.
Additional information: You can also make a sale from your client file under the “Sale” tab.
For more information see our help guides: How to take a walk-in sale
Waitlist
When you’re on the calendar you will notice a little arrow on the left hand side, if you click that it will open the Sidebar, where we have the Waitlist. Simply add their name, treatment and any details, then when a spot is available click the calendar icon and select where you want to add them on the calendar.
Additional information: You can let your clients add themselves to the waitlist when booking online by turning on the waitlist feature here: Setup > Waitlist
Set this up in Timely: Calendar
For more information see our help guide: Using your calendar
Adding and managing your stock
In order to sell your products to clients you need to set them up within Timely, you can also store all your professional products within Timey too! To get started head to “Setup”, click “Products” under Stock.
Adding your products to Timely
Like clients and services we can help you set up your products in Timely by bringing them over from your existing system or helping you import a list of your products and quantities. You can also add these in yourself one by one.
Setting up professional and retail stock
Retail Stock
To add Retail Stock simply click “New Product” and select “New Retail Product”, then add your product details. Along with all the basics such as the product name, cost/retail price and the quantity you have, we would add pictures to make it easier to look at which products your client has purchased in their client file.
For more information see our help guide: How to add products
Professional Stock
To add Professional Stock simply click “New Product” and select “New Professional Product”. Don’t worry about the Supplier and Supplier product code we’ll look at that when we look at ordering stock. We’d recommend you set an alert level for your stock so we can let you know if a product is running low and needs ordering.
For more information see our help guide: How to add professional Stock
Additional Information: You can easily manage your stock levels in Timely with stock ordering, bulk adjusting stock or just updating the levels as you notice changes.
Set this up in Timely: Setup > Products