Services are what your clients book. Adding one is quick, but a service only reaches your booking page once a few other things are in place, and that is where most of the confusion lives. This guide covers every field, the links a service needs, and the full list of reasons a service never shows up.
Add a service
Go to Services, then New service. Only two fields are truly required:
- Service name.
- Duration (in minutes). This is what reserves the right amount of time on the calendar.
Everything else has a sensible default. Price defaults to 0, the service starts Active and set to show on the booking page, and on creation it is automatically offered at all your active branches.
That last point matters: a brand-new service auto-selects every active branch, so it appears right away. When you later edit a service, branch selection is manual, so if you add a branch afterwards you have to add it to existing services yourself.
The tabs on a service
When you open a service, the settings are grouped into tabs:
- Service: name, description, category, duration, price, the Active switch, and the Show on booking page switch.
- Advanced: deposit, sales tax, commission rate, processing time, and buffer before/after.
- Branches: "Offered at branches."
- Staff: "Staff who perform this," plus per-staff commission overrides.
- Resources: rooms or equipment that must be free for the booking.
- Forms: intake or consent forms attached to this service.
- Inventory and Variants: available once the service is saved (see below).
The links a service needs to be bookable
A service can save with no branch, no staff, a price of 0, or switched off, and Flowesce will let you. Each of those is a valid state, but each one silently keeps the service off the booking page. To be bookable, a service needs all of:
- Active (the switch on the Service tab).
- Show on booking page turned on.
- At least one branch under "Offered at branches." With no branch, it never appears, because the booking page lists services by branch.
- At least one staff member under "Staff who perform this." With no staff, the service produces zero available times.
If any are missing, the dashboard booking readiness card will call it out by name.
Duration, processing time, and buffers
- Duration is the full appointment length.
- Processing time is a hands-free gap in the middle (think of color developing). During processing, the staff member is freed up to start another client, but any room or equipment the service needs stays held. Processing time has to be less than the total duration.
- Buffer before / after is padding around the appointment for setup or cleanup. Buffer-after has a side effect worth knowing: the appointment plus its after-buffer must finish before closing, so a 60-minute service with a 15-minute after-buffer in a salon that closes at 18:00 stops offering starts after 16:45.
Variants (length and price options)
Variants let one service offer options, like "Short hair" and "Long hair," each with its own duration and price.
- The moment a service has any active variant, the service's own base price and duration are ignored and the customer must pick a variant. So if you add variants, set them up fully.
- A variant can carry its own deposit and its own inventory list (see below).
- Removing a variant archives it rather than deleting it, so past appointments that used it stay intact.
Inventory used by a service
On the Inventory tab (after saving), list the stock a service consumes per appointment, for example "1 tube of color." When you mark that appointment completed, those quantities come off automatically and are logged. Nothing is deducted at booking time, only on completion. See inventory for the full picture.
Two things that trip people up:
- A variant's inventory list replaces the service's list when that variant is booked, it does not add to it. So a variant with its own list deducts only that list.
- An empty variant list falls back to the service's list. There is no way to make a variant consume nothing if the parent service has a list, just set the variant's list to the smaller amount you actually use.
Deposits
Turn on Require a deposit on booking in Advanced and set an amount. Flowesce works out the deposit in this order: a per-appointment override first, then the variant's deposit, then the service's deposit, then your business default, then zero.
One gotcha: if you switch on "require a deposit" but leave the amount at 0 and have no business default, the booking is created as deposit-unpaid with a required deposit of 0, which is a stuck state. If you require a deposit, set an amount somewhere.
Commission
Set a commission rate in Advanced (the service default), or per person on the Staff tab (an override for that staff member on this service). Flowesce uses the most specific rate it finds: the per-staff override, then the service rate, then the staff member's own default, then your business default, then zero. Setting any level to 0 deliberately opts out of the levels below it.
Bundles and packages (a quick note)
- A bundle packages several services into one bookable item at one price. If a bundled service has variants, you must pin which variant the bundle uses.
- A package sells a number of prepaid sessions a client redeems later.
Both are separate from a plain service and live under Services. A single service is all you need to start taking bookings.
What can go wrong
- A service does not appear on the booking page. Run the four links above: Active, Show on booking page, at least one branch, at least one staff member. Missing a branch or missing staff are the two most common, and both produce a service that simply is not there.
- You added a new branch and an old service is missing from it. Branch selection is only automatic when you first create a service. Open the older service and add the new branch under "Offered at branches."
- You toggled Show on booking page on an existing service and it still shows (or hides) wrong. Save the service after toggling, then refresh the public page. If behavior still looks off, the page caches briefly.
- You added variants and the base price stopped applying. That is intended: once a service has variants, the base price and duration are ignored and the customer picks a variant.
- A booking is stuck as deposit-unpaid for 0. You required a deposit without setting an amount anywhere. Set a deposit amount on the service, variant, or business default.
- Processing time will not save. It has to be less than the total duration.
What's next
If your services are set up but the page still shows nothing, work through Why your booking page shows no available times. To make stock come off as you complete appointments, set up inventory.