The Bookatu blog
Practical, no-nonsense advice for service businesses. Cutting no-shows, building steady income, getting found online, and keeping more of what you earn.
Why your booking page is your colour, and your dashboard is ours
When you set your brand colour in Bookatu, it paints your booking page, your emails and everything your clients touch. It does not paint the dashboard you work in. That is a deliberate choice, and it is the same one every tool you trust makes. Here is the thinking.
How to put your services on sale without discounting everything
You do not have to edit every price by hand to run a promotion. Put a whole category on sale in one place, let the discount come off automatically at checkout, and switch it back off when the week is over.
How we ship features that touch money without changing anyone's price by accident
A pricing bug is the kind you cannot take back once a card is charged. Here is the discipline we use to add discounts, staff pricing and sales to the booking flow without a single price moving until we mean it to.
How much photo storage do you actually need?
The honest answer is that it depends on what you shoot, not on a number on a pricing page. Here is a plain guide to what fills up a gallery, what your clients downloading never costs you, and how to size your plan without overpaying.
Set the hours you actually work (and let clients book around them)
Weekends only, evenings after a day job, three long days and four off. Your booking calendar should match your real life, not a default nine to five. Here is how to set opening hours per day, per person, with buffers and notice that protect your time.
Add a Book Now button to your website or Instagram bio
You already have a website and a bio link. Paste one line of code, or drop in your booking link, and turn the visitors you already get into booked appointments, with no plugin and no commission.
Booking software for photographers: book, deliver and get paid in one place
A plain guide to booking software for photographers: take deposits that stop no-shows, deliver private proofing galleries that sell the extra shots, and keep 100% of every booking with 0% commission.
Introducing Pay as you go: no monthly fee, pay per team member
A new way to pay for Bookatu, built for businesses that are just starting out or seasonal. No subscription and no commission. Pay US$8 per team member a month, with a US$5 minimum in any month you have a team, and nothing in a month with no team.
One Platform, Seven Trades: Who Bookatu Is For
Bookatu is one booking and payments platform that reshapes itself for your trade, whether you run a salon, a gym, a restaurant or a photography studio. Here is why a tailored tool beats a blank calendar, with a day-in-the-life example for each.
Preview, pick, pay, download: private galleries that sell your photos for you
A private online gallery lets clients browse a safe watermarked preview, choose their favourites, and pay for extras before they download. Here is how that one flow saves you hours and earns you more.
Photo Proofing That Protects Your Work: Watermarks, Low-Res Previews, and Pay-First Downloads
Proofing is where most photos quietly leak. Here is how watermarked low-res previews, baked-in marks, and payment-gated downloads keep your full-resolution work safe, plus the honest limits of stopping image theft.
Event-driven by design: how one payment becomes loyalty, retention, and a receipt
A booking platform lives or dies on consistency. Here is how a single Stripe payment fans out into loyalty points, retention, a receipt and a ledger entry, why every effect is gated on a real state change, and where we are taking the architecture next.