Online booking, on your page and in the marketplace. Your own booking link plus a profile customers can find by service and suburb. You choose whether bookings confirm instantly or wait for your approval.
Booking software for braiders and loctitians, where one booking is the whole day
A knotless install is not an appointment, it is a shift — and a no-show on one does not cost you an hour, it costs you the day and everything you turned away to keep it free. Bookka books in hours rather than slots, takes a deposit that means something, and puts the hair conversation in writing before anyone sits down.
- No commissionon any booking, on any plan
- From $39 a monthflat, however many staff
- 0% in persononly Stripe’s own rate applies
What braiders and loctitians put up with
If none of these are your week, you probably do not need us.
- A six-hour install squeezed into a two-hour slot by a booking app that only understands short appointments.
- A client arriving with no hair, or the wrong hair, after a conversation that happened in direct messages three weeks ago.
- A whole Saturday turned away to hold a booking that then does not turn up.
- Jumbo, medium and micro priced the same, when one takes three hours longer than the other.
- Length, density and whether it is an install or a retwist all settled by text, one message at a time, between clients.
- Takedown done for free because it was never agreed as part of the booking.
What changes
Each one is a thing the product does today, not a thing on a roadmap.
Appointments measured in hours, not slots
A service carries however long it genuinely takes, so a full day in the chair reads as a full day in your calendar and nothing gets booked on top of it.
Size and length change the price and the time together
Jumbo, medium, micro; shoulder, mid-back, waist. They sit as options on one service, each moving the duration as well as the money, so your page can say “from $180” without the four-hour difference being a surprise to either of you.
The hair conversation happens before the booking
What to bring, how many packs, prepped or not — written once into the service and the booking confirmation rather than retyped into every message thread. What is specific to the client goes on her record where you can find it next time.
A deposit that reflects what you are holding
Set per service, so a day-long install carries a real one. The client sees the amount and the cancellation window before paying, and a cancellation inside the window refunds itself without a conversation.
Takedown is a service, not a favour
Added as its own line with its own time, so the two hours before the install are booked and paid for rather than absorbed because nobody raised it.
Custom work gets quoted, not guessed
A style from a photograph comes in as a quote request. You answer with a price and the hours you need, and only then does it take a day out of your week.
What you get
Everything a braiding salon runs on, in one place
Instead of a booking app built for thirty-minute haircuts, a payment link, a message thread per client and a calendar you keep in your head.
Fill the book
Bookings arrive while you are three hours into someone’s head, and at eleven at night.
A calendar per person. Every team member has their own services, hours and schedule, with roles deciding who sees what. Chair renters and multi-location shops are handled as first-class cases, not workarounds.
Services with options, add-ons and quotes. Length variants that change the price, add-ons that extend the appointment, and a quote request for the jobs that have to be seen before they can be priced.
Get paid
The deposit when she books, the balance when she stands up.
Deposits and cancellation policies. Take a per-service deposit at the time of booking, with the balance due on the day. The customer sees the amount and the cancellation window before they pay, and a cancellation inside the window refunds itself.
A point of sale for walk-ins. Ring up services and retail at the counter, take cash or card, or use a WisePOS E terminal. Bookka charges no fee on an in-person payment — only Stripe’s own terminal rate applies, and cash costs nothing.
Gift cards and an online shop. Sell gift cards and products from your booking page, with pickup or post, and refunds and fulfilment tracked in the same place as your appointments.
Bring people back
A retwist every six weeks is the client who pays your rent.
Reminders by SMS and email. A confirmation immediately and a reminder before the day, sent automatically. No-shows are mostly a memory problem, and this is the fix for it.
Bookka Rewards. Points for what people spend or stamps for turning up, redeemed against a catalogue you set. Rewards come off the bill at the till and in the shop.
Campaigns, social and ads. Email and SMS campaigns with single-use promo codes, a scheduler that publishes to Instagram, Facebook and TikTok, and a manager for Google and Meta ads.
Run the place
The admin that happens whether or not you have software for it.
Numbers you can act on. Revenue, bookings, your best services and the regulars who have quietly stopped coming — with exports and custom reports when you need to look properly.
An assistant that does the admin. Ask it about your own figures in plain English. Turn on changes and it will complete bookings, record cash, adjust stock and draft campaigns — confirming before each one and logging every change. It cannot cancel bookings, refund anyone or touch billing.
Xero, and the rest of your stack. Native accounting sync with accounts provisioned on connect, calendar sync so your own diary stays right, and Stripe underneath all of it.
Everything braiders and loctitians need, in one tool
All of it on every paid plan unless the card says otherwise. Where something is limited by plan, the pricing below says so rather than this list hedging each line.
Services that run for hours
An install can be booked as the six or eight hours it really is, and the calendar protects the whole of it.
Size and length as priced options
One service carrying jumbo through micro, and shoulder through waist, each setting its own time and price so the menu stays short.
Takedown and retwist as their own services
Booked and charged in their own right, with their own durations, instead of being tacked onto the front of an install for free.
Deposits sized to the booking
Set service by service, so a full-day install carries a serious one and a quick retwist does not.
Hair and prep instructions in the confirmation
Written once onto the service so every client gets them automatically, rather than depending on you remembering to send a message.
Quote requests for custom styles
Reference photos come in as an enquiry you price properly, before the day is committed to it.
Private notes per client
Her density, her parting, her tension tolerance, what she brought last time — kept with the business and readable before she arrives.
Automatic reminders
A confirmation on booking and a reminder before the day, which matters more here than anywhere: a forgotten appointment is a forgotten day.
Your own booking page
A link for your bio that takes bookings and deposits around the clock, plus a marketplace profile people find by service and suburb.
Pay on the day, 0% from us
Card, cash or a WisePOS E terminal when she stands up, with nothing taken by Bookka on an in-person payment.
Hair, oils and gift cards
Sold at the counter or through an online shop with pickup or post, and vouchers straight from your booking page.
Mobile and home studios work the same
The dashboard runs on a phone, so a home studio or a travelling chair is the same job as a shopfront.
Pricing
One flat price, not one per chair
No commission on any plan, including clients who find you through the marketplace. Paid plans start with a 14-day trial.
Free$0/monthTesting & side hustlers5 bookings per monthUp to 2 team members
Business$39/monthSolo barbers & growing businessesUnlimited bookings & instant auto-confirmUp to 5 team members & 1 location
ExecutiveBest value$69/monthMulti-chair shops & serious businessesEverything in BusinessUp to 20 team members & 2 locations
Booking software for braiders and loctitians, answered
Still curious? Get in touch — we reply fast.
Yes. A service carries whatever duration you give it, and the calendar holds the whole block — so an all-day install cannot have a lunchtime trim booked on top of it. This is the single thing most general booking apps get wrong for braiders: they assume an appointment is under two hours and start fighting you the moment it is not.
Keep one service and put size and length behind mutually exclusive options. Each option sets its own price and its own duration, so choosing micro down to the waist produces both a bigger number and a longer booking automatically. Your page advertises the service as “from” the cheapest combination, which is the honest way to show a range that wide.
Put the instructions on the service itself — how many packs, which type, prepped or not — and they go out in the booking confirmation to every client without you sending anything. Anything particular to one client lives on her record, so it is in front of you before she arrives. There is no pre-appointment form she fills in, so what she tells you still has to be written down by you.
The deposit is set per service, so you can hold a day-long install with a meaningful amount and leave a retwist with a small one or none. The client sees the deposit and your cancellation window before she pays. Cancel inside the window and the refund is automatic; outside it, the deposit is yours. Because it is agreed up front, it stops being an argument you have to have afterwards.
Yes, as its own service with its own time and price, or as an add-on to the install. Either way it goes into the booking before the day rather than being discovered at nine in the morning, which is what turns it from a favour into work you are paid for.
Yes. The dashboard works on a phone, so you can take the booking, the deposit and the balance from anywhere, and Bookka takes nothing on a payment taken in person. Your booking link works the same whether the chair is in a salon, a spare room or someone else’s lounge.
Confirmations and reminders go out automatically by SMS and email on every booking. For the ones who have drifted, your numbers show who has not rebooked and how long it has been, and you can send them a campaign with single-use promo codes. What Bookka does not have is standing recurring bookings, so a regular six-weekly retwist is rebooked rather than repeating by itself.
No commission on bookings, on any plan, including clients who find you through the marketplace. There is a free plan for five bookings a month, then Business at $39 a month for up to five people and Executive at $69 for up to twenty. Online card payments cost 2.2% + 30c, all in and GST inclusive on Australian cards. In person Bookka takes nothing at all — you pay only Stripe’s own rate — and cash, your own EFTPOS machine and a gift card being redeemed cost nothing. Everything settles into your own Stripe account rather than ours.
Not quite your trade?
Bookka runs the same way for anything booked against a person’s time. See every trade we have written up.