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. Booked’s set-up journey walks you through all four in about a quarter of an hour, with your opening hours and prices to hand. This is what it asks, what it creates, and how to do the same by hand.

First, activate your licence

Until a valid key is entered, the whole admin is replaced by one card headed Connect this site to your Booked account. 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.

The set-up journey

Until your site has at least one branch, one service and one member of staff, Booked opens on the journey instead of the Dashboard. It runs in six timed sections down the left, tells you roughly how long is left, and nothing is created until you say so at the end of section four. Save and finish later keeps your place (each person who signs in has their own); a Continue set-up card on the Dashboard brings you back, and the same journey can be started any time from Settings Company details.

• 1The six sections — each with an estimate, and a running total underneath. A tick replaces the number as you finish one, and a dash marks one you skipped; click any section you have already reached to go back to it.
• 2What you do — picking a trade sets the defaults that follow: a ready-made service list, the usual hours for a business like yours, the gap between start times (thirty minutes for a studio or gym, fifteen for the rest) and which features are switched on. Something else has no ready-made services. Continue waits until you pick one.
• 3Let the assistant do the typing — Read my website reads your pages (about twenty seconds) and drafts your branch, hours, services with prices and your team; Paste my price list does the same from a few lines of text. Every line is yours to check and change on the screens that follow. Start from the pharmacy list adds the ready-made list and moves you on.
• 4The timer and Save and finish later — the clock runs per section. Leaving keeps your place; the Dashboard shows Continue set-up until you finish.

The sections after that:

1. Your businessBusiness name, phone and Email for confirmations (where replies to booking emails go, and where Booked sends you an alert about each new online booking), then the branch — its name (blank means the business name), address and Opening hours. The trade you picked has already filled in the usual hours; if they are empty, Use the usual hours for a business like yours fills the week in one click. + Add interval makes a lunchtime close; Apply to all days copies a day across the week. Staff start with these hours and can differ later.
2. What you offerA table of services — name, group, minutes and price. Add the pharmacy list drops in the ready-made set to untick and edit; Add a service adds a blank row. Where the assistant drafted a service from your website that did not say how long it takes, the row is marked and a note under the table says the length was estimated.
3. Who takes appointmentsJust me if it is only you, or Add a person with a first name, last name and an optional email for their own login later. Everyone gets the branch hours and every service to start with. Create these and continue needs at least one service and one person, and is the first moment anything is written — up to here, nothing exists.
4. Taking paymentsThree choices: Booked Payments, set up without leaving the journey (your business details, the bank account payouts go to and a photo of your ID); My own payment provider, connected later under Payments; or Not now. Nothing about your services changes either way.
5. Put it on your siteMake the page creates a booking page for you (or finds the one you already have), then Booked watches the diary. Open the page, book something, and the journey ticks itself off when the booking lands; Finish without a test skips it. The finish screen shows how long each section took, runs a quick check for anything that would stop times showing, and offers to open the diary and show you round.

• 1Add the pharmacy list — the ready-made set for the trade you picked, already grouped. Untick what you do not offer rather than deleting it; you can tick it back later.
• 2A row — name, group, minutes and price are all editable in place, and the bin removes the row. A row the assistant drafted from your website is marked where the site gave no length; check those first.
• 3Skip for now — Your business, What you offer and Who takes appointments can each be skipped, and the finish screen marks every section done or skipped. Continue stays grey until at least one service is ticked.

Check your region and company details

The journey fills in your business name, phone and email. One screen it does not ask about changes what everything else inherits, so look at it before you add anything more by hand. Under Settings Region & currency set Country, Time zone, Currency and Time format: prices everywhere use that currency, and changing it later does not convert prices already set on your services. Then check Settings Company details: the name and contact details there go on every email, receipt and the booking form. The address boxes are your own business details; each branch keeps its own address under Locations, and that is the one customers see.

• 1The rail — Settings is split into sections down the left, in five groups, with a Find a setting box on top, and opens on Company details. Sections you can change have a Save at the top right, and a bar at the foot reminds you while anything is unsaved.
• 2Country — a searchable list. It sets the defaults for addresses and phone numbers, and the assistant stamps it on every branch it builds.
• 3Time zone — set it to your own city. Appointment times, and which ones have already gone, are actually worked out in WordPress’s time zone (WordPress Settings › General), so make the two match; if they differ, a warning here says Your two time zone settings disagree. Pick a city there too, not a fixed offset from UTC, so the clocks change with you in spring and autumn.
• 4Currency — the symbol on every price and total; prices are entered in it. Time format switches between 24-hour and 12-hour clocks.

Building it by hand instead

Everything the journey does, you can do under the Set up group of the sidebar — in this order, because a person is asked which branches they work at and which services they perform, so both have to exist first.

1. Locations › Add locationName and address in The basics and Address on the Details tab, then the Opening hours tab. A new branch starts with no hours at all.
2. Services › Add serviceName, length and price on the General tab. Staff and branches can be attached from either side.
3. Staff › Add staffDetails on Profile, working hours on Hours & time off, then 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 intervals: 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 or Save changes (Add location, Add staff member or Save service on a new one): switching tabs writes nothing, and 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.

Adding more with the assistant

After the journey, the Guided setup assistant under Settings Company details adds more from a short chat: it asks what you do and where, your 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 — and "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. Running it again is safe: a branch, service or person with the same name as one you already have is reused, not created twice. 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 Works at and Hours & time off tabs. It never asks about payments, deposits, messages, branding or the booking form, and it needs an active licence and spare AI allowance; if it is unavailable, build by hand.

Payments, booking rules and messages

Open Payments in the sidebar and press Turn on Booked Payments. There is no separate merchant account to open, payouts go to your bank on the schedule you choose, and the processing fee is printed on the card before you turn anything on. Then finish the short verification with Finish setting up (about five minutes, with your ID and bank details to hand); if more detail is needed later, the button reads Add the missing details. Below the card, Use your own provider → is the advanced route for an account you already have, but it leaves onboarding, disputes and payouts to you.

Under Settings Booking rules, the Deposits card sets the default for every service; a category or a single service can ask for a different deposit, or none. Deposits can only be switched on once payments are set up. Look at approval while you are there: on a fresh install Auto-approve new bookings is off, so every booking arrives as pending and the Dashboard and the bell count how many are waiting. Time slot interval sets how far apart start times fall — fifteen minutes to begin with, or thirty if you picked Studio or gym in the journey.

Under Messages the customer emails are already written and switched on — booking pending, approved, changed, rescheduled and cancelled, the payment receipt and the refund email, the two waiting-list emails and the package receipt — along with a reminder email the day before each confirmed appointment (under the Reminders tab) and a nudge for customers who still have a service’s questions to answer. You do not need to add video links, group names or payment details to them: Booked puts those in where they apply. The To your team alerts are on too, and go to your business email when a customer books online, cancels or moves from their account, joins the waiting list or buys a package; see Team alerts. Texts stay off until you press Switch on texts under Text messages. To prove that email leaves your website, use Send yourself a test under Settings Emails & texts.

Put the form on a page and take a test booking

The journey's last section makes a booking page for you. Doing it by hand, open Booking form, then the Default form: copy its shortcode, [get_booked], and paste it into any WordPress page. To match your website, pick a Preset or adjust the Style tab and watch the preview change as you go.

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 and in the Diary within seconds;
• an email lands in the inbox you booked with — while bookings are approved by hand that is the pending one, not the confirmation. If the service takes a deposit, nothing arrives until you have paid, and then the confirmation comes with a receipt;
• a New booking alert lands in your business email;
• the Dashboard's Today panel (headed with your business name) lists it, if you booked for today.

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.

Related: Guided set-up and Show me around, Move your data in from another system.