What Booking is for

Booking is a diary for any business whose day is made of appointments: salons and barbers, clinics and therapists, studios and classes, trainers, tutors and advisors, home and field services, garages and repair shops. It also books by the night, for a villa, a cabin or a guest room.

Customers can reach your diary four ways, and every one of them lands in the same place and obeys the same rules:

Your booking page. A page at your own address where a customer picks a service and a free time. No app to download, no account to open.
Your AI agent. A customer asks on WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger or your website chat, and the agent checks the real diary and books it in the conversation.
Claude or ChatGPT. You ask “how does Thursday look?”, “move Yossi to the morning” or “block Friday afternoon”, and it reads and writes the same diary.
The app itself. A walk-in or a phone call: click an empty slot, type a name, done.

One diary, so nothing is booked twice. Because every door checks the same diary before it saves, and checks it again at the moment it saves, two customers can never take the same slot, whether one booked on the page and the other in WhatsApp. No second calendar to keep in sync by hand.

Every appointment carries where it came from: booked online, by the agent, by you in the app, through the API or through Claude. And the diary is never the end of it: each booking lands on the customer's record in your CRM, which your agent, Sales and your AI Helpdesk all read.

Your diary, services and rules

Before anyone books, Booking needs to know three things: what you sell, when you work, and how you like your day to run.

Services. Each one has a name, a length and a price (leave the price empty and the page says “Price on request”). You can also give it:

A category, like “Haircuts” or “Colour”. It groups the services on your page and colours them in the diary.
A “what to bring” note, like “come with dry hair” or “bring your referral”. The customer gets it with their confirmation.
Held online. For a video consultation, add the meeting link once and it goes into every confirmation for that service.
Its own words in each language. The name, the description and the “what to bring” note can be written per language, so an English-speaking customer reads them in English while your diary keeps your own name for the service.

Starting from nothing? On an empty menu, one click loads a hair-salon example you can edit, so you can see how it all fits before you type your own. The Services screen also shows how often each service was booked this month and what it brought in.

Your business details. Under Settings, the business name and description customers see at the top of your page, your address and phone, your currency and your time zone. The address and phone go into the messages, and the time zone is the clock your whole diary runs on.

Opening hours and rules. Set hours for each day of the week; a day with no hours is closed, and two windows in one day make a break. Then the rules that turn your hours into the times a customer is actually offered:

How often a free time starts, for example every 30 minutes.
A gap after each appointment, so you are never running from one customer to the next.
Minimum notice, so nobody books a slot that starts in five minutes.
How far ahead people may book.
How many at once: one of you, two chairs, three rooms.
One-off days: a holiday closes the whole day, and a short day before it replaces the usual hours for that date only, with a note to say why.

The diary. Week, day, month or a plain list. Drag an appointment to move it and the rules check the new time as you drop it. Closed hours are shaded, so your lunch break stays free, and the events from your Google Calendar show as busy. Need an afternoon to yourself? Block it, and nobody can book it. Above the grid, four numbers tell you how the day is going: today's appointments and how many are still to come, the next free slot, how much of today's time is booked, and what is on the books for the days ahead.

Click an appointment to see the customer, the service, the time and the price, where it was booked from, and its full history: when it was made, moved or cancelled, and by whom. Call the customer or open WhatsApp with them in one click, move it, add a “what to bring” note for this visit only, or mark it as visited or as a no-show. You can log a walk-in after the fact, too: your own notice rules don't stop you, only your hours and how many you can take at once.

The “Needs you” card Beside the diary, Booking lists what is waiting on you: appointments that have passed and were never marked, a customer arriving today with no phone number (so no confirmation or reminder can reach them), stay requests waiting for your answer, an empty menu, or a booking page that is switched off. Each one can be handled from the card.

Built around how you work

The rules bend to the business, whether what you sell is a chair, a room, a place in a class, a van on the road or an hour of your time.

Staff, chairs and rooms side by side. Several people, chairs or treatment rooms run in parallel, each appointment sits with the one who takes it, and a regular who always wants the same person gets that person.
Classes with places. A yoga class, a workshop or a group lesson is booked by the place, not by the person, and closes when the last place is taken.
Home and field visits. Travel time between jobs is kept free, and you set the area you cover, so the day makes geographic sense.
Drop-off slots. For a garage or a repair shop, the customer books a time to bring it in, and the job takes as long as it takes.
Stays, by the night. A villa, a cabin or a guest room, with check-in and check-out instead of a start time. More below.

Start from a setup close to yours. Booking comes with ready-made starting points by type of business, like the hair-salon example, with services, lengths and rules already in place. Load the one closest to you and change what doesn't fit.

How customers book

Most customers will meet Booking through your page or your agent. Both only ever offer times that are really free.

Your booking page. The link lives at booking.assistantlabs.io/book/your-name, and you choose the address. You also choose how it looks: the accent colour, the header, rounded or square corners, services as a list or as cards, whether to show prices and lengths, a WhatsApp button and a welcome line. Nobody needs an app or an account. A customer who books gets their own link to see the appointment and confirm it, move it to another free time or cancel it, with no phone call, and a cancelled slot opens again straight away.

Customers abroad read the page in English and see the times on their own clock, with a time-zone picker if they want another one.
Need a break from online bookings? Switch the page off. The link keeps working and shows your phone number instead.
Pick the address once. If you change it later, the old link stops working, so set it before you print it or put it in an ad.

Google Calendar, both ways. If you already live in Google Calendar, keep it. Every appointment can appear there as an event that moves or disappears with it, and anything else in that calendar, like a holiday or the dentist, blocks those hours in Booking. Each direction is its own switch. You can connect by sharing one calendar with us (no sign-in) or by signing in with Google. Your event titles stay on your screen: customers and the agent only see that the time is taken.

Stays, by the night. A service can be a stay instead of an appointment: a villa, a cabin, a room. Opening hours don't apply; each night is free or taken. You set check-in and check-out times, the shortest and longest stay, how many identical units you have and the most guests per booking. Choose whether a stay is booked instantly or on request, with a price per night: on request, the dates are held so nobody else can take them until you answer, and you can set the total price when you approve, or decline it. Listed on Airbnb or Booking.com too? Paste their calendar links, and a night sold there is closed here. Each stay also has its own calendar link you can give them in return.

A time that breaks a rule is never offered. Not on the page and not by the agent. When a customer asks for a time that doesn't work, the agent offers the closest times that do, in the same message.

WhatsApp confirmations and reminders

Most no-shows are people who forgot. Booking can message the customer at four moments, from your agent's WhatsApp number, and on the channel they booked from.

Invitation. You ask someone to book, and the message carries your next free times.
Confirmation. The moment a booking is made, from any door, with the time and the “what to bring” note.
Reminder. A set time before the appointment: a day before, two hours before, both, whatever you choose. Each service can have its own timing, and the customer can confirm, move or cancel in one tap.
Cancellation. When an appointment is cancelled.

WhatsApp only lets a business start a conversation with an approved template, so Settings → WhatsApp messages has a one-step setup: it writes all four in your language, sends them to WhatsApp for approval and switches them on. Nothing goes out until WhatsApp approves them. If some customers need another language, set that one up too, and each customer is written to in their own.

Your own words, where you want them. Prefer your own template? Pick any approved template on your number, including ones you wrote in the Agents app, and choose what fills each blank: the customer's name, the service, the date and time, the price, your address and phone, the “what to bring” note, the video link, the free times, or the link to change or cancel. A service can say something different from the rest, and what you set on the service wins. A message that didn't arrive can be sent again from Claude with one request.

Invite to book. On a service's page, type a phone number and send an invitation with your next free times. The customer just replies in their own words; the reply goes to your agent, which checks the diary again and books it.

Silent until you say otherwise. A message you haven't set up sends nothing. You can also mute one message for one service, for example no reminder for a five-minute call, without touching the others.

No templates switched on? The customer still hears what to bring: when the agent books, its reply in the chat includes the note.

No-shows and empty slots

The empty chair costs more than any discount. Booking works on both ends of it: fewer people who don't turn up, and freed slots that fill again.

Confirm, move or cancel from one link. The reminder and the confirmation carry it, so a customer who can't make it moves the appointment instead of just not coming, and never has to call.
A cancelled slot opens at once. The moment an appointment is cancelled, from any door, that time is free again on the page, for the agent and in Claude.
A waitlist that fills the gap. Customers who wanted a time you didn't have join the waitlist for it. When a slot frees up, Booking offers it to the next person waiting, automatically, and the first to say yes takes it.
Deposits where they matter. Ask for a deposit on the services that need one, like a long colour or a first consultation, so the customer has a reason to turn up and the slot is paid for if they don't.
Know who never turns up. Every visit and every no-show is marked, and it lands on the customer's record in the CRM, so you can see it before you take their next booking.

Works with your other apps

Booking is one app in your AssistantLabs workspace: the same login, one tap away in the app switcher, and the same customers. Here is how it works with each of the others.

Agents: your AI agent books in the chat. Connect your agent in Booking → Settings → Your agent, or from the Agents app under Settings → Integrations → Booking. The agent can then answer “are you open Thursday?”, find free times for a service, book, find a customer's appointments and cancel one. Choose how it schedules: book in the conversation, send your booking page, or both. Choose the page only, and the agent has no way to book at all. On WhatsApp it never asks for the number the customer is already writing from; on your website chat it asks only when it needs one. And because it reads the customer's record, it knows them before they say hello: their last visit, the person they always see, what they asked last time. More in The Agents app.
CRM: every booking lands on the customer. Each booking adds the customer as a contact (or finds them by phone) and writes a line in their history: requested, booked, moved, cancelled, visited, or didn't show, and whether the agent booked it or they booked themselves. Open the contact in the CRM and the visits are there, next to their conversations, with how many times they came, what they spent and how often they didn't show. One record per customer, built from bookings and chats together. See The CRM app.
Sales: book leads in. In the Sales app, Settings → Integrations → Booking connects your diary. Then you can book a lead in while you have them on the phone, add a booking step to a journey (send the page, or let the agent finish it in the chat), trigger a booking on a lead stage or button, and see every appointment on the lead's timeline. Marking a meeting as held, missed or cancelled on the lead updates the diary too, and a lead who books moves forward on your lead board on their own. See The Sales app.
AI Helpdesk: “can I move my appointment?” closes itself. When a customer writes in to change or cancel a booking, the ticket opens with their appointments attached. Changing or cancelling a booking is an action you can allow, so the agent moves it in the diary under the same rules, confirms it, and closes the ticket as auto-resolved with the reason kept. Anything it shouldn't decide goes to you. See The Helpdesk app.
Marketing: every campaign ends in a booking. Your booking page is the place your posts, ads and emails send people, so a campaign is measured in appointments, not clicks. Because bookings live on the customer record, Marketing can write to the right people: regulars who haven't been in for a while, everyone who booked a service you are promoting, or new customers after their first visit. And the plan it builds with you knows which services fill and which hours stay empty. See The Marketing app.
Tasks: the decisions reach you in one tap. Anything in the diary that needs your answer, like a stay request with its dates held, lands on your Tasks board next to every other approval in the business. Approve or decline in one tap and Booking does the rest: confirms the dates, sends the customer the answer, or opens the nights again. See The Tasks app.
Claude and ChatGPT: run the diary in plain words. Install the AssistantLabs plugin from Claude's plugin directory (Customize › Plugins › Discover, search AssistantLabs, Add), type /al and sign in on first use, and you can check the week, add a service, find free times or nights, book or move an appointment, block an afternoon, offer a freed slot to the waitlist, connect your agent, set up the WhatsApp messages, send an invitation or send a message again. Read-only or full control is your choice when you approve, and you can revoke it any time. The same plugin runs your other apps, so one request can book a lead from Sales, check their CRM record and add a follow-up task. Steps in Connect Claude and Connect ChatGPT.

How to get started

About half an hour, in this order. Each step makes the next one useful.

Open Booking. Go to booking.assistantlabs.io and sign in with your AssistantLabs account. If Booking isn't switched on for your workspace yet, ask for access on the same page.
Add your services. Name, length, price. Or load the hair-salon example and change what doesn't fit.
Set your hours and rules in Settings: opening hours, the gap between appointments, notice, how far ahead, and how many at once.
Share your booking page. Settings → Public page: pick the look, check it's on, copy the link into your bio, your ads and your WhatsApp profile.
Connect your agent in Settings → Your agent, and choose how it schedules. No agent yet? The Agents app and Connect WhatsApp come first.
Switch on WhatsApp messages in Settings → WhatsApp messages. One step; they start once WhatsApp approves them.

Ready to start? The step-by-step guide to setting up Booking

Your diary is in Google Calendar? Connect it in Settings → Google Calendar before you share the link, so your own commitments are blocked from day one.

Wondering where booking fits among everything else you could hand over? What can you automate in your business? maps it by type of business, and the Booking page shows it in action.

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