Your first 30 minutes

The fastest sensible path from a fresh install to a booking form your customers can use.

A booking form only works when four things line up: an open branch, a service, a member of staff who can deliver it, and a page to put the form on. This is the shortest sensible route through all four — about half an hour, with your opening hours and prices to hand.

First, activate your licence

Until a valid key is entered, the whole admin is replaced by one card headed Activate Booked. Every screen behind it is locked, and your public booking form shows visitors nothing. Paste the key from your Booked account (it starts gbk_) and press Activate; the page reloads into the real app. The key then lives at Settings Your plan.

Set your company and localisation before you add anything

Two tabs, two minutes, and they change what everything else inherits. Under Settings Company, fill in Company name, Email and Phone. The name and the phone number are printed in every customer email — the name in the subject line, both in the sign-off — and the email address is what your messages are sent from unless you set a different sender under Emails & texts. The address boxes here are your own business details, not a branch, and customers never see them.

Then open Region & currency, before you create anything: any branch the assistant builds takes your Country, which is also used when you set up payments, and Currency sets the symbol against every price.

• 1The tab rail — ten tabs down the left, and Settings opens on Company unless the link that brought you here names a tab. The Dashboard checklist does not, so you usually have to pick the tab you wanted yourself.
• 2Country — a searchable list. Branches created by the assistant take this country.
• 3Timezone — recorded against your account, but nothing else in Booked reads it. Hours, and the cut-off for times that have already gone, come from your WordPress site's timezone.
• 4Currency — the symbol on every price and total. Time format switches between 24-hour and 12-hour clocks.

The setup checklist on your Dashboard

While setup is outstanding, the Dashboard opens on a card headed Finish setting up Booked. It tracks six jobs and offers a choice: hand the first three to the assistant, or work through them yourself. The card loads only for administrators and anyone else given the Booked settings permission — other managers see the Dashboard with no card and no explanation.

• 1Progress — a percentage and an "x of 6" count, rising as records appear rather than as things become correct.
• 2Your two routes — Set up with the assistant opens a short chat that builds branches, services and staff. I’ll do it myself hides the card.
• 3Set up on the payments step — it opens Settings on the Company tab, not Payments. Click Payments in the rail yourself.
• 4The two steps that never tick — nothing marks these done, so they stay outstanding however much you do. Treat them as reminders, not progress.

Ticks count records, not completeness — a branch with no opening hours still ticks step one. And Booked reopens on the last screen you used, so the card can seem to vanish; click Dashboard to find it.

Let the assistant build the first version

The assistant aims to finish in about four to seven plain questions: what you do and where, your opening hours, your services with their length and price, and who delivers them. Vague answers are fine — "usual hours" becomes Monday to Friday, 09:00 to 17:00. "That's everything" ends the interview.

• 1The opening message — "Help me set up my business." appears on your side of the chat although you did not type it. That is the assistant starting itself off.
• 2Proposed opening hours — read this line. If it reads No opening hours set, that branch offers no times until you add hours.
• 3Staff and their services — each person is attached to the services they were named against. Anyone not matched is attached to all of them.
• 4Create all of this — the first moment anything is written. Start over throws the plan away and restarts the interview.

The assistant only ever adds — it never edits or removes what you have, so describing the same pharmacy twice gives you two of every branch, service and staff member. With more than one branch, expect to tidy up: it links every person and every service to every branch it created, and gives everyone the first branch's hours as their working hours. Correct that on each person's Locations and Times tabs.

It never asks about payments, deposits, reminders, branding or the booking form, so when the chat ends you are three steps into six. It also needs an active licence and spare AI allowance; if you see "The assistant is unavailable right now", build by hand.

Building it by hand instead

Everything the assistant does, you can do under Business — in this order, because the employee editor asks which branches a person works at and which services they perform, so both have to exist first.

1. Locations › Add locationName and address on General, opening hours on Times. A new branch starts with no hours at all.
2. Services › Add serviceName, duration and price. Staff and branches can be attached from either side.
3. Employees › Add employeeDetails on General, working hours on Times, then Locations ("Works at") and Services ("Can perform") — which is why branches and services come first.

The hours grid runs Monday first and takes more than one interval a day, so a lunchtime close is two rows: 09:00–13:00 and 14:00–18:00. Use Apply to all days with care — it copies that day onto all seven, weekend included. And nothing is saved until you press Save location or Save employee: switching tabs writes nothing, the back arrow discards the lot.

A time appears on the customer's form only when all of this is true:

• the service is offered at that branch;
• the staff member works at that branch and can perform that service;
• the branch is open that day and the staff member is working;
• the branch, the service and the staff member are all set to Active.

Miss one and the branch or service quietly disappears from the form, with no warning in the admin. An empty times list is nearly always a missing link or missing hours.

Payments, booking rules and messages

Go to Settings Payments. Booked Payments is marked Recommended: no separate merchant account, no paperwork, and automatic payouts to your bank. The all-in processing fee is printed on the card before you turn anything on. Press Activate — it’s instant and finish the short verification; if more detail is needed later, a Complete verification button appears. There is an advanced route for bringing your own provider, but it leaves onboarding, disputes and payouts to you.

Deposits sit on the Bookings tab and stay locked until payments are verified — a deposit has to be collected somewhere. Look at Auto-approve new bookings while you are there: it is off on a fresh install, so every booking arrives as pending and the Dashboard reports how many await approval. Time slot interval sets how far apart start times fall — anything from 5 minutes to 1 hour, and 15 minutes to begin with.

Under Customisation Notifications seven customer emails are already written and switched on: pending, approved, cancelled, rescheduled, changed, refunded and payment received. Use Send test to post one to yourself — the quickest proof that email leaves your website. Despite the checklist calling this step "Confirmation & reminder messages", there is no reminder template in the box.

Put the form on a page and take a test booking

Open Customisation Booking Form. The default form needs no configuration — copy its shortcode, [get_booked], and paste it into any WordPress page. To match your website, set the Universal colour scheme first (Accent, On accent, Card, Page, Text, Muted, Border), watch the live preview, then Save colours. Every form using universal colours updates together.

Then view that page and book something. You are done when all of this is true:

• the page lists your services, and choosing one offers real times;
• the booking appears under Bookings within seconds;
• an email lands in the inbox you booked with — while auto-approve is off that is the pending one, not the confirmation;
• the Dashboard's Your business panel shows counts above zero for Locations, Employees and Services.

If the page is blank where the form should be, check the licence — an unactivated site shows visitors nothing at all, and shows a logged-in administrator a grey hint in place of the form. Delete the test booking, and you are live.