Booker Reviews

Excellent for booking appointments for guests. Easy to pull up upcoming and past bookings with names and dates.

This is a wonderful program that hasn't failed us yet. We have our employees using this program with no issues at all.

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.

Admin backend is solid and reliable.
Lots of options to customize. Too many at times since finding just the right setting can take 15-20 minutes or require a phone call to customer service.

Customer front end is weak and confusing. Booker does not allow certain booking options (CF2) to be used in iFrames. This forces you to send customers to a 3rd party website (not yours) to make appointments. Fixes and feature requests come slowly if at all.
If you are interested in using Booker be sure you know what you are getting into before you commit. It is very difficult to get 100, 500, or thousands of customers to move to a new appointment system if you later decide Booker is not what you expected. Get used to what Booker looks like now and be okay with that for the long haul. Don't plan on being able to add a feature of even getting Booker to fix bugs. Booker will show you a long list of "fixes" and revision numbers of updated software. I have never known any of these updates to address a bug of concern we had with the SaaS. Customer requests are ignored and bugs are described as features. Yes, they really are! For example, in some places staff names are sorted by first name and in other places they are sorted by last name. This does make it feel like you are using different software products and will infuriate you at times.
Different interfaces all work differently. In other words, they all feel like different products. We use the admin interface, the Booker iOS app, the Booker customer app, CF1, and Facebook app. That seems like lots of great options until you realize how disjointed and different they all are. You are not merely learning one software package, you really have to learn them all.

It is user friendly, very detailed and easy to use, accessibility 24 hours, and very much inexpensive. I would recommend that you give it a try today.

Creating packages and reports could be alot less hassling.. work needed as it relates to credit card processes.

The software Looked better than it actually worked

The software Not as user friendly as others

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.

I liked the ease of integrating new specials or services we were offering. It was generally easy to navigate and was also integrated with our website which was convenient and allowed guests to easily book online.

At the time I was using Booker, I experienced many times where the program would freeze out would have really slow load times which made it difficult during high volume times at the spa.

the system has amazing features and reports that make running your business very easy because you have inmiate access to your information and database.

It's a little bit hard to get the reports and see the customers previous payments and visits, but once you get the software it is easy.

Being one fully integrated system is fantastic. Online booking and instant gift certificates are terrific features. We also enjoy being able to define specials that can easily be applied. I have found the customer service people to be very helpful.

Booker still struggles with the bugs in their releases, although things have improved greatly in the last couple of releases. The product would benefit from an ad hoc reporting tool to enable customers to define their own reports.

low monthly cost
great customer service
integrated customer relation and special features
great reports and accounting
log into your business from anywhere

I'm not crazy about how the software runs on my iPad at the moment but I'm pretty sure the new booker.com iPad App release in November 2014 will resolve this issue

I love the way Booker works directly with my web page. My clients and potential clients can book right from my web site, purchase gift certificates from the comfort of their homes or offices, and print them or email them right from their computer without having to come to my office. I am often in service with a client and don't have a lot of time to answer or return calls during my work day let alone meet people to hand deliver gift certificates. I don't have a receptionist or assistant to assist in these matters. I love the fact that I have my very own App to give to my clients so they can save ME to their phones and book on line any time of the day or night, without having to try to find me first. I'm just a click away. The best part is that after you set up your booker to work with your website, it just makes scheduling my clients appts soooo much easier. They get an email notification with Appt details and directions. Then an appt reminder 24 hrs before their Appt so they can click the confirm button, so I don't have to make confirmation calls the day before, then a text reminder notification 3 hours before their Appt which cuts down on no shows, and late cancellations. I love it!!

I have 2 locations and Booker does not have a place to differentiate either location. So when my clients book on line, there is no way of telling them which days I am at one location and which days I am at the other. So when they are looking at my open appts, they don't know which location they are booking for. This kind of takes my 5 star Status and brings it down to a 3 because this causes my clients much confusion when trying to book, and me soooo much stress, because what good is it if I always have to call them anyway when they are trying to schedule on line?? This defeats the whole purpose of online scheduling. This needs to be fixed and upgraded. Another thing. The mobile app is limited to its back of the house functionality. It's very easy to schedule appts, but looking up Gift Certificate numbers and entering them for payment after a client redeems them is time consuming and not user friendly. I also wish I had Email/ text Marketing built in so I could send my clients daily, weekly and monthly specials. There are days that I would love to send out a quick text telling my clients what time slots I have available. This would be soooooo easy since all of their contact info is already in the system. I would also like to see yearly reports and just imagine how great it would be if the accounting software was built right in! All in one place! Now that would make Booker the leader in the industry!

I appreciate that my clients can book online and purchase gift certificates when I'm too busy to answer the phone. It's also super easy checking out clients, but best of all is that I'm able to manage our calendar for both therapists and clients, and reschedule with ease. I love that I am also able to track client history and their progress. As we get busier and our client base grows, it can become more challenging to manage paper files and this has helped us cut down on paperwork, thank goodness!

There is definitely a learning curve with Booker and there have been times when I've been unsure of how to do something, and have had to contact their support team. One of the glitches that annoys me, is that when I add a new staff member, it adds or populates their name in the calendar even before their official start date! It can be confusing. The same happens when I terminate a staff member or switch them to 'inactive' - then their name and client appointmentss that day, all disappear from view. This is probably one of the more frustrating things for me. I also wish I could do a bit of my own customization like removing things from a drop down table that do not able to me.

- Ease of use
- Mobile application
- Partnership with Frederick
- Easy to book online
- Aesthetically pleasing
- Easy access to customer service (with real people!)

There are certain limitations to the software that I don't quite endorse, and would love to have more accessibility to customize the features inherent in the system. For instance, we would love to be able to format, on our own, the infrastructure of the Administrator, Reservationist, and Staff roles to allow for certain levels of access to information. Although we have found a way to "Macguyver" the system, we'd love for there to be a more direct system for integrating digital SOAP notes, as well as intake form and profile management by the client when they log in to book an appointment. There have been other, very slight issues, which have caused some annoyance to our clients - such as the automatic CC authorization process when opening orders, or when clients are unable to cancel upcoming appointments online at their convenience (so long as it does not violate our 24-hour policy).

I like the fact that Booker can be used for multiple locations and is helpful with daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly statistics. I can use the data to determine what I need to do differently regarding sales, promotions, etc. I can also use the data to determine what services, promotions, etc. are going well and should definitely be continued.

The customer support is lacking. It has been so frustrating to speak to so many different reps. The notes they take and calls they log has been very inconsistent, making follow-through to a resolution impossible. Even when issues have been pushed through to technical support or the development team, we have gotten little to no helpful feedback. I feel the software could use some updating to improve on the ease of use. Mostly, I feel customer support reps should be trained to actually offer "support," rather than offer a "pat" answer and such as, "This is not a Booker issue," or "I can't really tell you why that is happening, call us again if the problem reoccurs." Overall, our experience has been frustrating. In all fairness, our particular "case," which includes many different issues has been escalated to someone in management, but this has taken several months.

I love the client profile. You can look back and see everything he/she has bought, what services they got, and you can also make notes about the client if they are allergic to anything or have any preferences during their appointment! With this feature, we can see everything we need to know about the client's appointment when we print out the itinerary for the day. This way, we have all of the up-to-date info for the client and mistakes are less likely to be made. I love that.

I would love to see the "document storage" feature to become compatible with tablets and phones. I would like to see our service providers be able to look at their phone or tablet and see their clients profile before they perform their service. I love that we have gone paperless and have stored all of our Client Intake Forms on Booker, but I would like to see easier access to them.

Booker makes it easy to book clients, review accurate data, see clients shared to a membership, easily manage gift cards and online certs, easily view status changes of a membership, provide great auditing capabilities...

The customer support is extremely lacking. We also couldn’t get all the reports we needed and had to use a custom developed Stage 1 reporting system that was insanely slow. Our franchise switched systems to a MUCH inferior system due to the poor customer service. The Booker company doesn’t seem interested to work to improve the system based on the client needs. It’s got a great core but there were several bugs that would go on for years and the typical response would be a time consuming workaround, rather than addressing this issue and providing timelines.

Ease of access from anywhere, availability of online booking

Online booking is clunky (hard to just say when is Niki available this week). Booking needs more robust features (only allow certain services at certain times)

Books couples massage requiring two therapist (this is a great feature and booker is one of the few that have). Super flexible GC system that allows the service , not the price of the service to show up (very important for spas).

No mobile options for people to purchase on phones. Also swiper/tablet options requires 5 steps to charge and close (not near as simplified as square). Online booking system is good, but could be vastly improved with one little coding tweak (it bases everything on the start of business day instead of appointments that are already booked, leaving gaps and missed appointments). I could explain this really quickly and booker would be the best by far, because you are the only one's that book couples massage.

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.

So I have been using it at two salons since January and I have been through starting up both salons and starting them up differently. The first salon did not want online booking, is a specialty salon where we have hair cutters and hair colorists, and we did not accept credit card tips. So I had to make it easy to book clients for two or someone's three different stylists. Then the other salon London alley wanted online booking, credit card tips were added, and also stylists typically did all the appointments for the client. So I had to set it up with bookings that made the online booking friendly and easy to use. I absolutely say if I ever had a problem I could call up Sabrina or any of the booker people and they would walk me right thru it. The system is for people who are idiots or people who know how to use a computer. Since we brought it in my clients have thanked me for streamlining the appointment setups, the confirmation email and texts, and even the thank you emails.

Only one day did the system have some errors and it wasn't even bookers fault. And if the system ever goes down you just go back to using the clover by itself and booker can help you after put the orders into the system.

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.

Customer service is fantastic, and tool is very intuitive overall.

I would like more functionality to be available or integrated, like POS systems, functionality on ipads and iphones, robust loyalty program, integration with Smartwaiver.

This software is so easy to use and break down to new trainees! The keys on the side of the screen make it that much easier to learn and get going with your schedule!

Sometimes it freezes when there is a system update, it can be very inconvenient when you are checking out a client because it'll either freeze or go extremely slow, but it's very rare that this happens so no worries!

This software is very easy to use for everyone who is running a Spa and Salon. Our spa receptionist like the fact that it is so user friendly for all Spa Booking purposes ,appointment scheduling to payment processing
This software offers a lot of reports to accommodate from statistics to financial reporting.

We had some issues with customer service in the beginning, but it has gotten much better now.