Group services into categories

Optional groupings that make a long service list easy to scan.

Categories are optional groupings that tidy a long service list — Travel health, Ear care, Weight loss. They change how customers find a service on your booking form, and they can carry a deposit rule for every service inside them. They do not change what a service costs, how long it takes, or who delivers it.

What a category actually does

A category does three things and nothing else:

• On the default booking form layout it gives customers a first step — What are you booking? — so they pick Travel health before they see eleven vaccination services.
• It can hold its own deposit rule, which every service inside it inherits unless that service sets its own.
• It gives you a Category column in the services list, and the services search box matches category names too.

That is the whole of it. A category never makes a service bookable, never affects availability, and never changes a price.

Create a category

Go to Booked › Business › Categories. Unlike services, categories are edited in a small inline form on the same page rather than a full-page editor, so adding four of them takes a minute.

• 1Add category — opens the New category form directly above the table. The button disappears while that form is open, so finish or Cancel the one you are on before starting another. The search box goes with it.
• 2Description — optional. Categories without one show a dash here, and show a service count to the customer instead.
• 3Status — the column prints the stored value in lower case, so it reads "active" / "inactive" here even though the dropdown in the form says Active / Inactive. Same thing.

The form itself has four fields.

• 1Name — required, and it is what customers see on the category card and as the heading in a single list. Keep it short: "Travel health", not "Travel health and vaccination services".
• 2Status — Active categories are sent to the booking form; Inactive ones are not. Read the warning below before you use this to hide anything.
• 3Description — one line, shown under the category name on the customer's card. Write it for a customer choosing, not for your own filing: "Jabs and advice before you go" beats "Travel category".
• 4Deposit — overrides your global deposit for every service in this category that has not set its own. Choose Percentage of price or Fixed amount and a second box appears for the number. Leave it on Use global default and a grey line underneath tells you what the category is inheriting.
• 5Save category — writes it and returns you to the list. It appears in the service editor's Category dropdown straight away.

Put services into a category

Categories are assigned from the service, not from the category.

1. Create your categories firstThe dropdown only offers categories that already exist. Its first option is Uncategorised, which is where every service starts.
2. Open each service and set its CategoryBusiness › Services, click the row, then the Category dropdown on the General tab.
3. Click Save serviceSwitching between the service tabs does not save anything — only Save service writes.
4. Check the Category columnBack on the services list, the Category column shows where everything landed. Anything still reading "—" is uncategorised.

One service belongs to one category. There is no way to put "Flu vaccination" in both Travel health and Seasonal clinics.

What customers see

How categories appear to a customer is a per-form choice at Customisation › Booking Form › Layout › Service picking.

• 1A category with a description — the card shows the name and your one-line description. This is the version worth aiming for.
• 2A category without one — the card falls back to a plain count, "4 services". It works, but it tells a customer nothing.
• 3Other — Booked creates this card automatically to hold services that have no category, or whose category was made inactive or deleted. It exists only on this step: you cannot edit it, rename it or give it a description, and it never appears on the Categories screen.

Two things about this step surprise people. A card only appears when its category has at least one bookable service at the branch the customer picked, so an empty category is invisible rather than a dead end. And if only one category has anything in it, the step is skipped and the customer goes straight to the service list — which is why categories do nothing until at least two are in use.

Deposits by category

The deposit a customer pays online is resolved in three levels: the service first, then its category, then your global default. The first level that is not set to "use the default" wins.

This is where categories earn their keep beyond tidiness. Put a 20% deposit on Travel health once and every travel service inherits it, including ones you add next year — new services start on Use category default. While a dropdown is left on Use category default or Use global default, the line underneath spells out what is being inherited.

When categories are not worth it

They are optional, and the empty state says as much: "No categories yet. These are optional — add them if you want to group your services." Skip them when:

• You have a handful of services. Under about six, a category step is one more tap between a customer and a booking. Use Single list, or no categories at all.
• Everything you do falls under one heading. With only one category in play the step is skipped anyway, so you have gained nothing.
• You need a specific running order. There is no way to reorder categories or services. Both lists appear in the order they were created, on the admin screens and on the booking form. If order matters to you, create them in the order you want them and get it right first time — the only fix afterwards is to delete and recreate.

Deleting is quick and unforgiving: the trash icon asks "Delete this category?" once, then removes it. Its services are untouched and quietly lose their grouping on the booking form — nothing breaks, but nothing warns you either. If you are unsure, rename it instead.