3 Best Scheduling Platforms for Beautypreneurs

Finding an efficient scheduling platform is crucial for a beautypreneur. With administration time being limited you truly depend on an automated process from hosting your virtual portfolio to listing your services and collecting the payments for you. It’s a service that you must have in order to thrive, be successful and limit your stress levels. So, where do you even begin to find the right scheduler for your business? A good place to start is by identifying what is important to you and the structure of your business. You may not want to automate payments right now which means that’s a feature that would be low on your priority list. I’ve tried so many platforms to help my beauty business run smoothly and not cause stress on my clients. To help you long your journey I’ve put together my top 3 platforms, although there were many these three I remained consistent with for long periods of time. Keep in mind my priorities will differ from yours so identify what’s most important for you before seeking out a platform.

1. VCita. This platform is a one stop shop. It manages your clients, offers billing and invoicing. If you’re looking for a complete business management tool for your business to minimize your no shows, increase your revenue, and create an efficient, flawless experience for your clients then you should look into VCita. It offers a free 14-day trial before you will be asked to make a choice of what plan level you wish to participate with.

2. Book Like A Boss. A freelance all in one booking platform that provides a multitude of features. I particularly love this platform for the simple fact that you can also sell your virtual products such as ebooks and increase your bottom line. It’s not overly complicated to set up and you can truly plug and play to customize this platform to truly brand it for your business. It allows you to add your logo, sync your calendar; you can also upload your portfolio so that potential clients can see your work before booking with you. It also gives your client multiple payment options such as paypal, stripe, credit card or you can set your services up to be paid offline so that you can give the client an option for cash or check if you choose. If you’re just starting out and have both products and services I say go for this fashionable platform to get your systems automated and your business booming. This platform does have a free version and paid plans depending on what services you want to utilize. There’s a $9 monthly plan that works perfectly for anyone who is starting out as a freelancer.

3. StyleSeat. I used Styleseat for many years when I first started because it was free and it helped make my business automated and collected my payments for me. Over the years this platform has only a paid version if you want to utilize the scheduler for your clients. Its free version only allows for you to be listed in their directory without the scheduling capabilities. I listed this as number three on my list because I would only recommend this platform if you have the $25-$35 monthly to pay for a scheduling platform. It may not be cost efficient for someone just starting out and not making consistent cashflow to maintain the monthly charge. I used the $35 monthly version and to be honest it does the same functions as a free version of a scheduler. It does automate your business and allows customers to put their credit cards on file and will charge it automatically one hour after their appointment time to ensure you get paid for your services.

There’s two cons that I have to mention because if I didn’t I wouldn’t forgive myself if your business took a financial hit. Please be careful when using this service due to I’ve have at least 3 situations where the platform was hacked and people posing as photographers and/or potential clients booked with me and their intentions were to scam me out of money. I am a savvy business owner and understand how business work and specifically how I run my business so when they posed certain payment options to me I quickly informed them of the only payment options I provide and would not deviate from them. Do not deviate from your processes just for clients and/or money, you will eventually pay for it in the worst way later.

I hope this helps my beautypreneurs out there. If you're not a beautypreneur that's cool because the great thing about VCita and Book Like a Boss they can be used for any business. Let me know if you have used any of these booking platforms and what your experiences were.