Booker Reviews

Booker is a godsend for so many salons. It is very user-friendly and they have implemented the use of embedded training videos for all the features; this is a wonderful tool and works very well for people who are visual learners, which most stylists happen to be. For salon managers and owners, Booker offers a variety of tools: time-clock, sales tracking, inventory, tip allocation, expenditures/budgets, etc. Being a web-based software, it's very easy to add a widget or embed a link on your website and/or Facebook page to allow customers to easily schedule themselves for services. In addition, there is a built-in point of sale system that makes it easy to check out clients without needing to switch over to another program and/or system.

The downside to being a web-based software: if the server is down or there is an issue with the website, you cannot access your calendar or your point of sale system. Booker has been awesome enough to provide a separate website where they allow you to report issues of the system being down and also announcing known issues. Their customer service makes up for this issue.

Very easy to use and customize. Easy to access from anywhere.

Expensive and lots of down time. Expensive for adding more features. Lots of reporting issues but customer service isn’t helpful

Has good features for booking, retail
inventory and gift certificate sales and accounting.

Very expensive, glitches, constant price increases. Would gladly pay if
The reporting side warranted the price.

Salesmen are very attentive, attempt to find questions to any answers and are quick to return calls. Software is very clean and easy to use as long as you stay within their realm of "basics".

Unfortunately, if you have any type of development background this software will not allow you to utilize it unless you upgrade to the API. Prior to purchase we were told we would have Full Access to all features and everything was 100% customize-able. However, there are areas of customization you still need to have a "Super User" (call in to tech support + talk to a manager) to change. Example: Accepting cash in office.

The second issue I had is their merchant processing. They don't have syncing with Amazon Pay (primary issue we were told could be done with this software), PayPal or Square. You are charged additionally to use their merchant processing (and with companies my accounting had never heard of/didn't want to use). Again, while promised we would be able to find a work around, eventually it was found even with upgrading to a higher tier with API access, there was an extremely slim chance that different integration methods was possible.

Third: The price. Please understand if you desire to let one company manage everything then this software is helpful. However, if you don't then per month charge is rather high when other simple services are free or offer nearly every feature Booker does for 1/5th the price. So, do your research and speak with both Sales force and Tech support before making a decision.

I like how easy it is for people to book appointments, how it keeps track of room usage, payroll and other functions. Great that is can be used on smartphones for booking appointments on the fly, notifications via text and email!

System slow downs have been awful the last few months, we have had intermittent notification glitches (ie people not getting notified of appointments), problems with people thinking they booked appointments but for some reason it didn't go through this needs to be better - customers are unaware that it didn't go through because of missing information on their end - a tiny red star doesn't really cut it for people to see. Should say somewhere - at the end if you do not get a pop up saying Thank you for your appointment - you are missing information or your selection didn't go through. I wish there was a more integrated system for marketing that allows target marketing, I didn't like having to purchase yet another system like Mail Chimp and now HireFredrick. Really gets very expensive.

Smart, friendly people in customer support that live in NYC or SoCal. They really know their stuff and try hard to help you. And they don't speak English as a 3rd language or live in Bangladesh!

Well thought out, elegant interface.

Booker needs to hire more/task more programmers to fix glitches in the system—fixes trickle in, but far more slowly than other SaaS providers in other industries.
Feels like they are resting on their laurels with features—slow to fix or add features

The way it organizes everything.

There are a few suggestions I have had that are business needs (would make things easier) and was never able to resolve working them out. They are still I consider serious concerns. There is nothing available to meet those needs, so I just modified and tweaked and moved on.

Ease of use.
We run multiple locations. Being moblie friendly and able to book from anywhere helps us be able to grow.

I am a return customer. I've used booker in the past. We stepped away and are coming back cause the others where not fitting our needs.

V2 does not have the on line store set up for product purchases. It is not fully built out to the structures of V1. But I was promised by the end of the year.

Your preferred merchant ... not sure I'm finding their value. The sales guy said they would be sooo much lower than Square. But I'm needing to jump through hoops to get the data from first data.

I like that I can work remotely and that there is a phone app that allows our technicians to view there schedules.

There's no fast way to make a group booking. It would be great if when making a reservation you could choose the number of those appointments to make and have the information automatically repopulate for those reservations.

When I first signed with Booker, I liked the merchant services fees were better than Mindbody Online. Also, I liked that I locked in a significantly cheaper monthly rate as opposed to Mindbody.

The automatic emails at the time, could not be turned off. It didn't work with my type of business. Also, I hated the company that handled their merchant services. They put my account on hold after trying to cancel their services. A ridiculous customer service representative froze my account so then no deposits could go through affecting my payroll. No one told me that canceling my services with Booker would affect the merchant services or my ability to receive deposits. Absolute jerks.

Easy and efficient, Booker helps us keep connected with our clients in various ways, including text/e-mail/etc. It's been very helpful with clients that can confirm via e-mail and have something to refer to, besides a phone call. The ease of learning the software has been awesome and the customer service is top notch!

Sometimes (rarely), Booker operates in slow speeds. People cannot click to confirm via text message, and it would help if they could. There have been a couple of times where Booker has been down during business hours and it became really hectic trying to get things sorted during that time, but other than that, we appreciate the apologies about that and the constant communication about issues.

It is great for when someone can book in the middle of the night for the following day. Clients say it is easy.
So many great features, of which I can grow into.

Mobile and Desktop versions are not recognized by devices I believe.
I had to have separate link in website because Mobile users were getting Desktop version, and then the font and graphics are too small.
The Mobile version looks nothing like the desktop version. It is confusing.
It is too hard for a non-programing type to get the versions to look good.
POS, working with SubLyme, Integrity, and Trustwave all a major pain in the butt. For a small small business like me, there has to be something more like Square which is where I have gone back to!

It has a lot of useful features, sadly very few of them work as expected.
- membership processing
- gift certificates
- embedded special codes for marketing
- pixels for marketing
- cancellation policy implementation
- customer service availability
- appointment scheduling
- sales reporting
- freezing memberships
- mail campaigns and marketing

ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING with this software requires a work around.
-I have lost members because the software randomly double and triple charges them each month and doesn't represent it in the recent orders tab so it looks as if it hasn't
- freezing members is great, but then booker charges them for ALL the months they have been frozen
- you cannot put special deals on for the holidays on gift certificates = no holiday gift certificate promos
- special codes for marketing do not auto populate for orders and cannot be found from within the order
- pixels for marketing from their marketing tools do not work
- cancellation policy is great but if the person does not have a cc on file then you cannot close the order which makes it impossible to close the drawer at the end of the night
- groups often book under the same name , booker requires you to CANCEl that appt rather than just changing the name - ridiculous
-sales reporting is not customizable, past membership reporting cannot be done. it only shows current numbers regardless of the date you enter. kind of hard to measure growth
-members may freeze their monthly billing, no benefits are accrued but when you take the freeze off it autocharges all previous unpaid months
- customer service is available - but they are often unknowledgeable and can only submit requests to development and they take months even years before they fix your problem.
- the marketing tab does not load on my booker if im running from chrome.

running payroll reports there is pretty much nothing else.

It is impossible to get it set up appropriately, after 4 months of phone calls, I still never got the appropriate credit cards to run internally. I was able to set up an acct with their third party processing but could never actually link that to closing appointments. It was a full time job to communicate with customer service and after 4 months this was never rectified.
Their rates doubled from when I signed on and are now even with mindbody yet the service and function is not as good. I am open seasonally and so when I signed on I very clearly asked if I would not be charged for the months I am closed and was very clearly told that I would not be charged. When I went to put my account on vacation mode I was told this is not an option.

After using a few other spa software companies we switched to Booker 3 1/2 years ago. We like the fact that we can run both our locations off of the parent company. It is also a lot more user-friendly for both our employees and our guests through the online booking platform. I like the Frederick option as well.

I would like some more detailed report options. I didn't' appreciate the cost going up when MindBody bought out Booker.

It is pretty simple to use, and they work on improving it often. We were able to edit our membership even though when I called, they told me it could not be done.

They have taken some features away that make it very inconvenient. The Brand level is separate from the location levels, so we have to change locations on our screen when we need to do certain things. Also, their customer support is not very good. They prefer you email them, which works in some cases, but most of the time you need more than an email to convey the issue. Second, I have called more than once to find out how to do something, and they were wrong. Last time, I called to see if we could edit our membership to include more than just one service that the benefits could be used for. He told me no, unfortunately I'd have to cancel all of our memberships, make a new one, and then resell all of them. This would take far too long. I did some digging and found the solution on my own, and it was not only possible, but really not that hard. They also update during our open hours. Since we're 6 hours different, it's not surprising but it is very inconvenient to have our system down during that last hour or two of our day.

It's super easy to customize, visually appealing, and overall a very user friendly booking system.

I wish there were a few more customization options, (i.e. a way to make reminder lists for the administrators with notifications options, etc.)

Everything is easily accessible, can have multiple accounts for managers and staff

Sometimes the system glitches or CC/cash amounts aren’t matching up with the POS system at the end of the work day.

You can book wherever you are.

That you can't be on the phone and pull up booker to book an appointment without wifi.

User-friendly easy to use

Not being able to see all my appointments on my calendar without having to click each day.

Booker software for salons is a easy efficient scheduling software perfect for our single space salon. It is easy for the staff to use and navigate with very little training required. It is very intuitive. Inventory is easy to manage and reports are quite comprehensive

It does seem to have some hiccups now and again where the software is unavailable which can be very frustrating when trying to book an appointment or check out a client.

How easy it is to use. Everything being in one place is extremely convenient and helps keep my business running smooth!

I do get very annoyed when the system is down or is running slow. The app could use some updating. It is not as easy to use as the computer system. I usually just use it to check what appts i have.

Easy navigation

Sometimes it will not let us book a certain room because its not registered under a particular person however it does not tell us this when we are trying to book a room. It just gives an error message. Possibly stating how to fix the error would help as its not always obvious to the end user what is missing.

How easy and convinent it is

Too expensive for 1 person.