One link in your bio, and the men who used to message you book themselves, at a time that is genuinely free, in the length the cut actually takes. No more working through twelve DMs at nine at night, and no more finding out on Saturday morning that you said yes to two people for eleven o’clock.
Blu CutsBook online
Skin fade45m$36.00
Cut and beard1h$45.00
Beard tidy20mBook
Next free3:30 PM4:15 PM5:00 PM
Booked online
9:12 PM
Not a DM you answer later
Deposit
$9.00
25% held the Saturday fade
Slot taken
Off the page
Nobody else is offered it
Every one of these takes something off your phone at nine in the evening and gives it to the man who wants the cut.
Your cuts, your prices, your real hours, on a page you drop into your Instagram bio and your TikTok profile. The reply to ‘you free Saturday?’ becomes a link, and the man books the slot himself while you are still cutting.
The moment one man books eleven o’clock, eleven o’clock is gone from the page. That is the whole difference between a booking system and a conversation: a conversation has no idea what the other conversations already promised.
Take a deposit or the full price at booking through a payment provider you connect, and set it per cut. A Saturday afternoon that somebody has paid something towards is a Saturday afternoon that tends to turn up.
On the paid plans a four-weekly cut goes in as a standing series instead of twelve separate messages, and every visit sits on his record with the number, the guard and what he asked for last time. You stop rebuilding the same booking every month.
Working for yourself means the diary is the only thing standing between you and cutting until nine every night.
Set the hours you are open, the breaks you want and the days you are not working, and nothing outside them is ever offered, so a Sunday stays a Sunday without you having to say no to anybody.
Change it for one week and the page changes with it. If you cut in more than one place, each has its own hours.
Every confirmation carries a link to move or cancel, so a man who cannot make Saturday tells you on Friday evening from his sofa rather than by not turning up.
The slot goes straight back onto your page, where the next person looking at your bio can take it. You do not have to notice, and you do not have to message anybody, which matters most on the day you are least able to look at your phone.
On the paid plans a reminder goes out the day before, which is usually what turns a Saturday no-show into a Friday-night cancellation.
Twenty to nine on a Thursday. You finished at seven, you have eaten, and now you are going through the day’s messages: four Instagram DMs, three texts, two on WhatsApp and a comment on a post. Six of them want a time. Three of them want Saturday.
You answer them in the order you get to them, from memory, with no page in front of you that knows what the earlier replies already gave away. This is the second hour of unpaid work today, and it is the part that produces the mistake.
Picktime turns all of it into a link. The man picks a real slot on a real page, the slot disappears the moment he takes it, and the confirmation and the cancellation link go out without you touching your phone.
3Of the evening’s messages wanting Saturday
1h 10mOn the sofa answering them, none of it paid
Skin fade, cut and beard, beard tidy, kids, each with how long it actually takes you and what you actually charge. Getting the times right is what stops the page selling you a day you cannot physically cut.
Your open hours, your breaks, your days off, and how late somebody may cancel their own slot. Add a deposit on the cuts you want held. Nothing outside those hours is ever offered to anybody.
Drop it in your Instagram and TikTok bios, on your Google Business profile and behind a QR code on your mirror. From then on the answer to ‘you free Saturday?’ is one message with a link in it.
Working one chair means every call arrives while your hands are on somebody’s head.
The free plan is a plan, not a trial. There is no date at which it stops, no card to add, and nothing that quietly turns off in a fortnight.
A booking lands in the calendar already on your phone, and the paid plans sync it both ways, so it moves there when it moves here. Payments run through PayPal, or through Stripe and Square on the paid ones, and the link goes on the Facebook and Instagram profiles men are already looking at when they decide who is cutting their hair.
Picktime runs in a phone browser with nothing to install, and there are iOS and Android apps, which is the whole point when the only office you have is the pocket of your apron. A barber scheduling app you check between cuts is more use than anything that expects you to be sitting at a desk.
It depends whether you want booking or a whole shop platform with a card reader, stock and payouts in it. For a barber working one chair, Picktime is the booking part (a link in your bio, real cut lengths and deposits) free, with no card and no end date.
For a shop rather than one chair, the question becomes what happens when three barbers share a diary and each has his own regulars. Picktime gives every barber his own hours and his own bookable calendar, so the client picks the man as well as the time, and three of you fit on the free plan. A shop that also wants a till, stock and payouts is shopping in a different category, and Booksy and Fresha are the names in it.
The test is whether it works without a receptionist, because you do not have one. Picktime is built for that: the page takes the booking, the confirmation goes out on its own, and the cancellation link in it means a dropped slot comes back to you rather than being discovered on the day. Reminders before the cut are on the paid plans.
Yes. The booking link opens in any phone browser with nothing for the client to install, and there are free iOS and Android apps for you. The free plan has no card and no end date. It is a plan rather than a trial.
Whatever you pick has to hold services of very different lengths on the same chair, which is the part barbering mostly avoids. Picktime gives each service its own duration, so a full head of colour takes ninety minutes on the page and a fringe trim takes fifteen, and nobody has to remember to leave room. What it does not do is split a service around a processing gap, so a colour is booked as one continuous block. If you are running a salon rather than a shop, hair salon scheduling is the page written for it.
That is what the link is for. Put it in your bio and reply to every ‘you free?’ with it. The man picks the slot himself, the slot disappears from the page the moment he takes it, and you stop arbitrating between messages you sent an hour apart.
Yes. Set a deposit, a percentage or the full price per cut, through a payment provider you connect, so a long Saturday slot can hold a deposit while a beard tidy takes nothing. The booking is confirmed once the payment has gone through.
Yes. Set your open hours, your breaks and your days off, and nothing outside them is ever offered. Change it for one week and the page changes with it, so a Monday off next week does not need you to say no to anybody.
The slot goes straight back onto your page for anybody looking at your bio to take. Because clients cancel from the link in their own confirmation rather than by messaging you, you usually hear the evening before rather than at the appointment.
Several chairs Three chairs, three columns, and a bench that can see which one frees up next.
See barbershop scheduling
Deposits Long sittings held by a deposit, booked with the artist whose portfolio it is.
See tattoo studio scheduling
Dates, not slots One Saturday in September, asked for by three people, and held by a deposit.
See makeup artist schedulingFree forever for a barber on his own. No card, no trial clock, and your link can be in your bio in ten minutes.
Google Calendar
Outlook Calendar
Stripe
Square
Facebook