A tanning salon without overlaps: every sunbed gets its own calendar

Friday, six in the evening, peak season before the summer holidays. A client walks in straight from work for a "quick ten minutes" — the notebook says Sunbed 2 is free. Except someone is already lying on Sunbed 2, because your colleague wrote this morning's phone booking into the wrong column. Now you have two people and one device: one waits, the other checks her watch, and you apologise to both.

Or the other way round: a client calls, you see "taken" and turn him away — while the sunbed sits empty, because that appointment was cancelled by a message nobody copied over. Free on paper and free in reality are two different things — and you pay for the difference every day.

This article is about how to organise bookings when it's not a person being reserved but a device — and how every device gets its own calendar, so overlaps physically can't happen.

A tanning salon doesn't sell your time — it sells the device's time

A hairdresser books herself: if she's free, the slot is free. In your business the bottleneck is the hardware, not the human. There's one person at reception, but the client is received by a sunbed or a vertical booth — and each takes exactly one body at a time.

That changes the maths of the schedule:

• Appointments are short. Ten to twenty minutes plus changing and cleaning — the day runs in small tiles, and one wrong tile shifts everything behind it.
• Clients don't wait. Someone who comes for ten minutes of tanning won't sit twenty in the waiting area — she'll leave, and next time go straight to the competitor two corners away.
• Paper doesn't know which device. A notebook with three columns works while one person holds the pencil. The moment bookings arrive by phone, by message and over the counter, the columns get mixed up.

So the question isn't "is the slot free" but "is the device free" — and the schedule has to know that by itself, without your head as the only database.

Every device gets its own column in the calendar

In Appointa you enter each device — a horizontal sunbed, a vertical booth, a hybrid with collagen — as a resource of the Equipment kind. Internally you call it whatever you like ("Sunbed 1 — old turbo"), clients see a tidier public name, and each gets its own colour and up to five photos.

The calendar then has a Staff | Resources toggle: one click and instead of columns per employee you're looking at columns per device. Every appointment sits in its device's lane, servicing and cleaning show up as grey unavailable bands, and you drag an appointment onto another device if the client would rather have the vertical after all.

To make it work, you switch on the "Requires a resource" field on the service and pick Equipment. From that moment every tanning appointment automatically reserves one free device alongside the staff member — and two appointments in the same lane physically cannot overlap.

Online slots that vanish when every device is busy

The biggest win is on the booking page. A slot is only offered online if there's a free staff member and at least one free device — when all three sunbeds are taken, those slots simply don't exist. A clash can't be booked, because it's never offered.

The client doesn't choose anything either — the system assigns a free device automatically, and the confirmation screen shows an extra row, e.g. "Equipment: Sunbed 2". If two people race for the last free device in the same second, the system locks both the slot and the device in a single transaction: one gets the booking, the other gets a clean message that the slot has just been taken — nobody ends up with a double-booked sunbed.

When staff book from the calendar, they get a dropdown of devices with the busy ones marked; it defaults to "Any free one", and for the client who wants the vertical specifically you pick it.

Changing lamps without angry clients

Lamps wear out, and one day Sunbed 1 has to stop. In a notebook that means crossing things out and hoping nobody writes an appointment over the top; in Appointa you simply block the device — with a reason.

A block can cover part of the day ("lamp change 8–12", the device works again from noon) or the whole day for servicing. That device's slots disappear from online booking instantly. And if the block runs over already-booked appointments, the system warns you and asks you to confirm it explicitly — so you call those two clients the day before, instead of them standing changed and ready in front of a switched-off machine.

The client sees the device in the app

Each device carries up to five photos. A client who books through the app sees the assigned device in the appointment details, and a tap opens a sheet with its name, kind and a full-screen photo gallery. For a new client torn between the sunbed and the vertical booth, that's the difference between "I'll come and see" and a booking made the night before.

The day-before reminder names the device too ("Equipment: Vertical").

Reminders and the waitlist: short slots, fast turnover

A ten-minute no-show sounds trivial, but a tanning salon lives off turnover — ten empty minutes at peak time is a slot someone else wanted. That's why every appointment gets an automatic reminder the day before: by email and push, and — with the SMS add-on enabled — by SMS for clients without the app, with a one-tap cancellation link. Whoever can't make it cancels the evening before instead of simply not showing up. We laid out the whole arsenal against empty slots in the guide to reducing no-shows.

And when a slot does fall through, it doesn't have to stay a hole: the waitlist automatically offers the freed slot to the first person who was waiting — the notification goes out immediately, including to clients without the app.

A 10-session package that counts itself down

A tanning salon without packages barely exists: "10 × 10 minutes" is a window-display classic. The problem is the record-keeping — a punch card the client forgets, loses or disputes: "I've been six times, not eight."

In Appointa the package counts visits down by itself: the client buys 10 sessions, the system deducts them one by one, and you both always see the same number — "3 of 10 left", in black and white. When a package nears its end you see it in time and suggest a renewal while the habit is still warm. The money for the package is taken at the salon, through your own channels — Appointa doesn't touch payments, it only keeps the tally. More in the service packages guide.

What "free on paper" really costs — the maths

Say a ten-minute session is €8 and a ten-session package is €70.

• An overlap at peak time. The client who came for ten minutes and waited twenty doesn't come back. A regular who visits twice a week through a three-month season is around 25 visits — about €200 handed to the competition because of one wrong column in a notebook.
• A forgotten block. A lamp-change day with eight appointments booked on that device means eight apologies and a reshuffle — half a day on the phone and at least a couple of clients who never rebook.
• Falsely taken. If distrust of the notebook makes you keep a "buffer" and you turn away three bookings a day that were actually free, that's €24 a day — over €500 a month of revenue that never even got a chance.

On the cost side: the Starter plan is free up to 30 appointments a month, and devices as resources are included in every plan — and they don't count as staff seats. For a salon that outgrows Starter, Pro is €20 a month: less than three lost sessions.

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Two clients, one sunbed — and you in the middle? In Appointa every device has its own column in the calendar, online slots vanish when all devices are busy, a lamp change is a block with a reason instead of a crossed-out page, and confirmations and reminders (email and push, and by SMS with the SMS add-on for clients without the app) keep short appointments on track. Ten-visit packages count themselves down. Try the demo for your industry — free, no card required. And the Starter plan is free — up to 30 appointments a month.

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Frequently asked questions

Does the client have to pick a device when booking online?

No. The client picks the service and the time, and the system assigns a free device automatically; which one they got is shown on the confirmation screen and in the day-before reminder. If a client wants a specific device, staff pick it from the dropdown when booking, or drag the appointment into another lane on the calendar.

What do I do when lamps are being changed or a device goes in for servicing?

You block the device — for part of the day with a reason ("lamp change 8–12") or for the whole day. Its slots disappear from online booking instantly, while the other devices keep taking clients as normal. If the block overlaps appointments that are already booked, the system warns you before you confirm — so you can call those clients the day before, not at the door.

How do I run a 10-session package without a punch card?

With a package that counts down: the client buys 10 sessions, the system deducts a visit each time, and you both always see the same number — "3 of 10 left". No lost punch card, no argument about the visit count. Payment stays at the salon, through your own channels — the system only keeps the record.

Do I pay extra when I add more devices to the calendar?

No. Devices as resources are included in every plan, the free Starter included, and they don't count towards the staff limit — a sunbed is not a staff seat. Each gets its own column, colour and photos, and you choose a plan purely by the number of appointments and staff.