Online Bookings & Appointments in ServQueue: A Full Walkthrough

ServQueue started as a walk-in queue product. As Australian salons, allied health clinics, and workshops adopted it, the question came up over and over: "this is great for walk-ins, but I also need a booking system." The answer is the Appointments module — a full online booking system that runs alongside the walk-in queue, on the same dashboard, with the same customer chat thread.

This is a walkthrough of how it actually works, what you can configure, and how it connects to Stripe Connect for deposits and full payments.

Appointments is a $39 AUD/month add-on that sits on top of any base plan — Basic ($59), Growth ($129), or Pro ($209). It is not bundled into the base plans; the add-on charge is separate. It unlocks the entire module — public booking page, services, calendar, email reminders, and Stripe Connect deposits — for one flat monthly fee. You enable it in Settings → Billing.

What you get when you turn it on

Once the add-on is active, an Appointments section appears in the top navigation of your dashboard. It has three areas:

1. Calendar / List view — your live booking schedule.
2. Settings — services, booking rules, reminder timing.
3. Public booking page — the page customers see, available at a unique URL per business (e.g. /book/<business-slug>).

That's the whole module. No separate app, no second login, no third-party integration to wire up. The customer chat thread from a walk-in queue ticket and the chat thread from a booked appointment are the same thread — if a customer first walks in, then later books online, you see the full history in one place.

Setting up your first service

A service is whatever your business sells in a time slot: a haircut, a 30-minute consult, a brake service, a colour appointment. From Appointments → Settings → Services you add a service with:

• Name — what the customer sees on the booking page ("Men's cut", "30-minute physiotherapy", "Logbook service").
• Duration — how long the booking blocks in your calendar.
• Price — in AUD. Set to $0 if the service is free to book (e.g. consultations).
• Description — optional, shown on the booking page. Useful for setting expectations ("Please arrive 5 minutes early").
• Payment type — None (free to book), Deposit (partial payment upfront), or Full payment.
• Active / Inactive — a toggle to hide a service from the booking page without deleting it. Useful for seasonal services or temporary stops.

Services drag-and-drop to reorder. The order controls how they appear on your public booking page — put your most popular services at the top.

For most businesses, three to seven services is the sweet spot. More than that and customers struggle to choose; the booking page becomes a menu instead of a path.

Configuring booking rules

In the same Appointments → Settings area you can configure:

• Max advance booking — how far ahead customers can book, in days. Default is 30. Salons running a tight calendar often prefer 14. Allied health practices that book months ahead use 90 or more.
• Cancellation cutoff — how close to the appointment a customer can self-cancel or reschedule. Default is 2 hours. Inside the cutoff, the customer has to contact you directly (a "Contact us" button appears in their reschedule flow).
• Reminder timing — the default reminder email goes out 24 hours before the appointment. You can adjust this or add a second reminder.

Your booking rules apply to every service. If you need service-specific rules (e.g. a longer cancellation window for group bookings), use service descriptions to communicate the policy and handle exceptions manually.

The public booking page

Once you've added at least one service, your public booking page goes live at /book/<your-business-slug>. The page has your business name and logo (set in Settings → Branding) and walks the customer through:

1. Pick a service — a list of your active services with names, durations, and prices. The customer taps the one they want.
2. Pick a time slot — a calendar of available slots based on your business hours, the service duration, and existing bookings. Slots that are full don't appear.
3. Enter details — name, mobile phone, email, optional notes ("longer at the back please").
4. Payment — if the service requires a deposit or full payment, the Stripe payment form appears here.
5. Confirmation — a success screen with the booking details and a confirmation email that goes out immediately, with a link to cancel or reschedule.

The page works on mobile (where 80%+ of customers book from), tablet, and desktop. No app, no account, no password — the customer can complete the whole booking in about 60 seconds.

You can share the URL anywhere you'd share a phone number: Instagram bio, Google Business Profile, your own website, an email signature. For the SEO-curious, this URL is not indexed by Google (it's per-business, served behind your business slug). Your main marketing pages — like /salons or /clinics — are the canonical SEO surface.

The Dashboard side

From Dashboard → Appointments you get two views:

• Calendar view with Day and Week toggles. Appointments appear as colour-coded blocks on a time grid: booked, completed, cancelled, no-show. Tap a block to see the customer's details, the service, any notes, and the chat thread.
• List view — a scrollable list of upcoming appointments, good for end-of-day reviews or printing.

Both views show walk-in queue tickets and booked appointments side by side. The receptionist or owner running the front desk has a single source of truth — they don't need to flip between the queue board and a separate booking app.

You can also manually create appointments from the dashboard with + New Booking. This is for phone bookings, regulars who don't want to use the online page, or appointments you take in person ("come back next Tuesday at 2"). The flow is identical to the public booking page but you skip the payment step (or take cash / card in person and mark it paid).

Email automation that comes for free

Three emails go out automatically:

• Confirmation — sent the moment a booking is created. Includes service, date, time, and a personalised link to cancel or reschedule.
• Reminder — sent 24 hours before the appointment (or whatever timing you configured). Same cancel/reschedule link.
• Cancellation — sent when the booking is cancelled, with a link to rebook.

The emails come from your business name (configured in Settings → Branding) and have your branding on them. They're delivered through an Australian-region transactional email provider so they land reliably in Gmail, Outlook, and the major ISPs.

There's no SMS for appointment confirmations or reminders. That keeps your SMS quota — included in every ServQueue plan — for the walk-in queue's "it's your turn" messages, which is where SMS adds the most value. Email is the right channel for booking confirmations; SMS is the right channel for live wait updates.

Stripe Connect: deposits and full payments

To take money at booking, you connect a Stripe account in Settings → Stripe Connect. The first-time setup runs through Stripe's standard onboarding: identity verification, bank account details, business information. Takes about 10 minutes. Stripe is a separate company; ServQueue never sees your bank details, and ServQueue never holds customer funds.

Once connected, you can mark services as requiring a Deposit or Full payment. The Stripe form appears on the booking page as the last step. When the customer pays:

• The funds go straight to your connected Stripe account.
• Stripe takes their standard processing fee (around 1.7% + 30c for Australian cards in 2026 — check stripe.com/au/pricing for current rates).
• ServQueue takes nothing extra on top of the $39/month add-on fee — we don't margin on Stripe processing.

If you cancel a booking from the dashboard, ServQueue offers to refund the deposit through Stripe in one click. You don't have to log into Stripe to issue refunds.

For why and when to take deposits, see the deposits playbook post: Reduce No-Shows with Appointment Deposits.

Privacy and AU data residency

Like the rest of ServQueue, the Appointments module stores all data in Australia (AWS Sydney). Customer details from bookings never leave Australian jurisdiction. We're compliant with the Australian Privacy Act 2024.

For health-adjacent businesses (clinics, allied health), no clinical information enters ServQueue — the booking form collects name, contact details, and optional notes, nothing medical. The chat thread is for logistical messages, not clinical content. For the full healthcare angle, see the medical clinics guide.

Migration: bringing existing bookings in

If you're currently using another booking system (Square Appointments, Fresha, Timely, a paper diary), you can migrate in two ways:

1. Manual entry — for small books, just add the upcoming appointments via + New Booking from the dashboard. Takes an afternoon for most salons.
2. Run in parallel — turn the ServQueue booking page on as a second option. Let new customers book through ServQueue while existing bookings finish out in the old system. Decommission the old system after 2–4 weeks.

We don't currently have a CSV import tool. If you have a large existing customer list and need help migrating, email hello@servqueue.com — we can help on a case-by-case basis.

What's not in the module (and what is coming)

To be straight about scope:

• Resource scheduling (stylist-1 vs stylist-2 calendars) is on the roadmap for late 2026. Today, bookings are against the business as a whole, with you allocating staff manually.
• Recurring bookings ("every Tuesday at 3 for 12 weeks") are not yet supported. Customers book one slot at a time.
• Xero / MYOB integrations for invoicing are on the Phase 2 roadmap.
• Group bookings (one slot, multiple customers) — workaround is to set the service duration longer and the customer notes "party of 4".

If you've got a deal-breaker missing from the list, talk to us at hello@servqueue.com — feature requests influence the roadmap.

Try it

The fastest way to evaluate Appointments is to sign up for the 7-day free trial and add the Appointments add-on from Settings → Billing. Add one service, open the public booking page on your phone, and book yourself in. You'll see the customer side and the staff side in one go. All-in pricing for the booking side: Basic $59 + add-on $39 = $98/month, Growth $129 + add-on $39 = $168/month, Pro $209 + add-on $39 = $248/month. Pick the base plan that matches your queue and chat needs; the add-on is the same price either way.

If you're comparing to ScanQueue or Waitwhile, the alternatives page breaks down the differences without hand-waving. If you want pricing for a multi-location salon, mobile mechanic operation, or anything bespoke, the chatbot in the corner of any page can take your details and have the team reply the same business day.