Setting up your services catalogue

A service in StudioOps is a bookable appointment you offer your customers. The services you set up here become the choices a customer sees on your public booking page. They also drive how long each slot takes in your diary, what (if anything) the customer pays at the booking stage, and — if you've connected Square — what appears in your Square Catalog.

For a nail salon with 10-15 services, getting this right is the difference between a clean day and constant phone calls. This guide walks through a real nail-salon setup as a worked example, then covers everything else.

A note on payment providers. At time of writing, Square is the supported customer-payment provider — full payment at booking and deposits go through Square's hosted checkout. Stripe as a customer-payment provider is on the beta-launch build (today Stripe is only wired up for the StudioOps subscription itself). Bank transfer is supported on invoices already.

1. The worked example: a nail studio with 12 services

We'll set up a nail studio loosely modelled on a real Swindon salon (nailsstudioswindon.co.uk) — these are the kinds of services a typical nail salon runs:

That's 12 services. Setting them up takes about 30 minutes the first time.

The pattern most nail salons land on: full-payment-at-booking for everything under an hour and under GBP 40, deposits for the longer / more expensive treatments where the no-show pain is biggest. Both rules work through Square hosted checkout (currently the supported customer-payment rail — Stripe is on the beta-launch build).

Once these are set up, the booking page shows all 12 services as cards, the customer picks one, picks a slot, and pays. The slot is held for 15 minutes while they're at the Square checkout — if they walk away, it reopens.

2. The defaults you start with

When you sign up, the wizard puts three sample services in place (Consultation, Fitting, Drop-off). These are placeholders aimed at alterations studios. For a nail salon: delete or rename them — they're not your real services. Services in the left rail → click into each → Delete or Save changes with a new name.

3. Adding a new service

Go to Services → Add a service. The fields:

Name

What customers see on the booking page. Keep it short, plain, and customer-facing. "Builder Gel application" is better than "BG/full"; "Acrylic full set" is better than "AC-FULL".

If you've got both ombré gel and ombré acrylic, decide whether they're one service or two. A nail salon that does both at the same price + duration can put them on one card ("Ombré nails — gel or acrylic"). If they're different durations or prices, separate cards.

Duration

How long the appointment takes, in minutes. This is what StudioOps blocks out in your diary — set it to your real working time, including the bit where you're cleaning up after the previous client.

Typical nail-salon durations (use these as a starting point, adjust to what you actually do):

• Express manicure: 30 minutes
• Classic manicure: 45 minutes
• Gel polish or shellac: 60 minutes
• Builder Gel / BIAB application: 75 minutes
• Acrylic full set: 90-120 minutes
• Acrylic infills (3-week): 60 minutes
• Pedicure: 60 minutes
• Combo (mani + pedi): 90 minutes
• Soak-off only: 30 minutes
• Nail art (per nail): 5 minutes (add to the underlying service)

If you find yourself running over consistently, bump the duration up — the slot is yours to set, and a 90-minute slot for a 75-minute service is fine if you want a 15-minute buffer.

Buffer after

Optional minutes added AFTER the service ends, before the next bookable slot. Use this if you need 10-15 minutes to clean, sterilise, or just have a breather. The buffer doesn't show to the customer but it stops them booking back-to-back appointments that you can't realistically deliver on.

Max per day

Optional. Cap on how many of THIS service can be booked across the whole studio per day. Useful for treatments that wear you out (e.g. "no more than 4 acrylic full sets per day"). Leave blank for "no cap".

Price and payment-at-booking

What the customer pays for this service, and when they pay. Three options under "Payment at booking":

• No payment at booking. Free to book. Payment is handled separately (in person, on a separate invoice, etc.). Most nail salons don't use this except for free consultations.
• Deposit required. The booking page asks the customer to pay a deposit before the appointment is confirmed. Set the deposit amount in GBP ; the rest is owed at or after the appointment. Best for longer / more expensive treatments where a no-show stings (acrylic full sets, intricate ombré, anything 90+ minutes).
• Full payment at booking. The booking page collects the full price up front via Square hosted checkout. Best for the bread-and-butter services in a nail salon — gel polish, BIAB, infills, soak-offs. No-shows drop to near zero.

When you pick Deposit or Full payment, the Price field is required — it's the source of truth for what the customer is charged. For deposit services, you also set the deposit amount (it can't be more than the price).

If you switch a service from one payment rule to another, future bookings use the new rule. Bookings already on your diary keep the amount they were quoted at the time.

What each person can do (skill matrix)

If you have more than one team member set up under Settings → Manage staff, every new service starts with nobody ticked. Customers won't see slots for the service until you tick it on at least one person's profile.

For a one-person studio (or one with just the default "Studio" placeholder), every service is automatically ticked on you, so this section is invisible — services just work.

For a multi-tech nail salon: after adding a service, go to Settings → Manage staff → [tech] → Services [tech] can do and tick the techs qualified for it. Example:

• Maya does manicures + pedicures + gel polish + shellac (4 ticks)
• Sarah does everything Maya does PLUS acrylics + BIAB + builder gel (7 ticks)
• Lola is the nail-art specialist — manicures + gel polish + nail art (3 ticks)

A customer booking Acrylic full set only sees Sarah offered. A customer booking Gel Polish sees Maya, Sarah, and Lola (and an "Any available" option to let StudioOps pick).

See the Setting up the people customers can book with guide for the full picture.

4. Editing or removing a service

Click any service on the Services page to edit. You can change name, duration, price, and description at any time — changes affect future bookings only. Existing appointments keep the price and duration they were created with.

To remove a service, open it and click Delete (technically a soft-delete: it disappears from the booking page but stays linked to historical bookings for your records). Any historical bookings against that service stay in your diary; you just won't be able to take new bookings for it.

5. How services appear on your public booking page

The booking page at studioops.uk/your-slug/book shows each service as a card:

• Service name (large)
• Duration (e.g. "60 minutes")
• Price — plus a note about deposits / full-payment-at-booking if either is set

The customer picks one, then picks a date and time from the available slots. Your working hours (set in Hours) and your team's per-person hours + skill matrix determine which slots are visible.

6. How services appear in Square (when connected)

If you've connected Square under Settings → Payments, StudioOps mirrors every service to your Square Catalog automatically:

• Every service in StudioOps gets a matching Square Catalog item + variation with the name, price, and description from StudioOps.
• When you edit a service in StudioOps, the change syncs to Square in the background.
• When you archive a service in StudioOps, the matching Square item is archived too.
• If a sync fails (network blip, Square rate limit, etc.), the failure surfaces on the service detail page with a Retry now button.

Don't edit your catalogue in the Square dashboard. StudioOps is the source of truth — anything you change in Square will get overwritten on the next sync. Use Settings → Square → Re-sync all if you ever want to force a full reconciliation.

This means a nail salon setting up 12 services can add all 12 in StudioOps and have them appear in Square (for counter sales, POS, gift cards, etc.) without ever opening the Square dashboard. See Payments: Square and bank transfer for connecting your Square account.

7. Naming and pricing tips for a nail salon

A few patterns that work well:

Use the customer's language, not the trade's. "Builder Gel" or "BIAB" works because customers Google those terms — don't translate them to "structured gel" if your customers don't say that. "Soak-off" is what people search for; "Removal" is more polite but less searchable.

Lead with what they want to buy. Sort the services from most-popular to least, and the most-popular one is the first card customers see when they land on the booking page. That's usually gel polish or BIAB for a typical nail salon.

Don't overload the menu. 10-15 services is the sweet spot. If you find yourself with twenty, see if you can consolidate — most nail salons can combine "Gel Polish (hands)" and "Gel Polish (feet)" into a Mani / Pedi service split rather than four separate cards.

Keep prices honest. The price the customer sees on the booking page should be the price they pay. Surprise add-ons on the invoice damage trust quickly. If nail art is genuinely per-nail, list it that way ("GBP 5 per nail") and let the tech tally at the end.

Deposits for the expensive stuff, full payment for everything else. The threshold most nail salons land on is around GBP 30 — under that, full payment at booking; over that, deposit + balance. Adjust to what feels right for your average no-show rate.

8. From service to booking to quote (and to Square)

The flow for a typical nail-salon transaction:

1. Customer picks a service and books a slot.
2. Full payment at booking — Square hosted checkout takes the price; the appointment lands on your diary as confirmed.
3. The appointment appears in your diary on the day, with the tech (from the skill matrix) attached.
4. On the day, the customer arrives, the service runs, they leave.
5. The Square Catalog sync means the service + price is already in your Square Reader, so any add-on (nail art, an extra treatment) gets tapped through Square at the counter.

For one-off bespoke work (a GBP 200 commission for elaborate nail art, a wedding-party booking with 5 sets at once) you can raise a separate Quote from the customer record. The quote can include the service fee if you charge one. The customer accepts the quote; you convert it to an invoice; they pay via Square or bank transfer (whichever rail you've picked for that invoice).

Services drive the standard booking end of the workflow. Quotes and invoices drive the bespoke / large-ticket end. They join up at the customer record.

See also

• Setting up the people customers can book with — staff/team profiles, hours, skill matrix
• Setup checklist: getting your StudioOps studio ready — first-week TODOs
• Booking rules and your cancellation policy — how slots are filled and cleared
• Setting your minimum booking lead time — controlling how far ahead customers must book
• Payments: Square and bank transfer — connecting Square + the deposit / full-payment-at-booking flow
• How StudioOps compares to Setmore — if you're weighing up the two
• Frequently asked questions — common questions about StudioOps

If you get stuck, the StudioOps help centre at studioops.uk/help has search and a ticket form. For anything urgent, email help@studioops.uk.