Second Chances

I guess it was about this time last year when I gave online scheduling a try. That turned out to be a total disaster for me. My area just isn't ready for the part where they have to hold their reservation with a credit card. And I was just not ready to give control of my schedule to strangers without some sort of insurance.

When I disabled the online booking feature of the software I was using last year, I continued to use the service for a while, but eventually it just didn't make sense to be paying $25 a month for something that Google Calendar and/or iCal would happily do for free.

Then it turned out that a lot of clients had really liked the part of the fancy software that sent them text message reminders for their appointments. So I found an app for that that integrates with my Google calendar.

Now the problem is that it's such a pain to look up a client's phone number in my Google contacts. (I entirely fail to understand why Google contacts is so flippin’ slow.) If I do take the time to do that I found out the hard way that it is a VERY bad idea to attempt to copy/paste the number — one slip and that number is gone forever because any attempt to click inside the phone number field opens it up to editing. Add that to auto-save and *POOF* it's a good thing I had my client’s daughter's number so I could get my contact info back!

I'm not the only person in the world who has bemoaned Google's refusal to integrate contacts with calendar. All I want is that nifty feature where I start typing someone's name in the event field and a little drop-down menu pops up with a list of all the contacts whose names have that sequence of letters. Then you scroll down, click on the right name, and VOILA! — the name and corresponding phone number appears in the event field.

Yup — it's come to the point where I am once again searching for scheduling software and test-driving a few options.

I'm in the first week of a 30-day trial of Vagaro and Styleseat just went live with their premium accounts, which will finally support recurring appointments. Neither sync with outside calendars, which I've decided is stupid.

Mostly, the conclusion I've come to is that we need software that was created by a nail tech — not a hairstylist. Our businesses really are just different enough that what works very well for a hairstylist isn't quite ideal for a nail tech — like those recurring appointments that was a deal-breaker for me with Styleseat.

Now all I need is to figure out how to write my own program — or how to afford to have someone do it for me.

Until then ... well, I guess I still have 21 days left to decide.