Prepare your booking software checklist.
Requirements worksheet
Define the job before choosing software. Turn the business workflow into must-haves, disqualifiers, unknowns, and acceptance tests.
Try a fictional example (optional)
Juniper Street Salon
A fictional two-location salon with four stylists, three shared color stations, fixed services, deposits, package credits, customer rescheduling, and one accounting export.
Known facts
- Four adult stylists work across two fictional branches; service and branch eligibility differ by stylist.
- Haircuts use one stylist; color services also consume one of three shared color stations and a cleanup buffer.
- A $30 deposit is required for color services, while package credits can cover selected haircut services.
- The business currently uses a calendar and spreadsheet; no destination product or plan has been selected.
Unknowns
- Whether the eventual product exports package-credit history with stable relationships.
- How a quoted plan prices two locations, four staff, reminders, payments, and accounting export.
- Whether customer rescheduling keeps the original deposit, resource hold, and notification trail consistent.
Stop conditions
- Stop a shortlist if the same stylist can be confirmed at both branches during overlapping travel intervals.
- Stop a color booking if a stylist is free but no color station or cleanup interval is available.
- Stop migration if future appointments, deposits, credits, or stable customer relationships cannot reconcile.
Your worksheet summary
Your checked prompts and notes will appear here as a printable record.
- Business or project name
- Not recorded
- Prepared outcome
- A product-neutral brief you can use for shortlisting, demos, trials, or a build decision.
- Progress
- 0 / 16
Booking model
- Not checked: Name what gets booked: appointment, class place, staff time, room, equipment, or a combination.
- Not checked: Name who books, attends, pays, delivers, changes, and approves the booking.
- Not checked: Record locations, service areas, time zones, capacity, duration, buffers, and travel rules.
- Not checked: Write the cancellation, rescheduling, no-show, override, and recovery rules.
Money and repeat access
- Not checked: Map deposit, remaining balance, tip, tax, fee, refund, credit, receipt, and reconciliation states.
- Not checked: Separate recurring series, classes, packages, credits, memberships, and waitlists.
- Not checked: Record which money or entitlement state must survive an edit or cancellation.
- Not checked: Set a maximum acceptable total cost including plans, add-ons, gateways, migration, and maintenance.
Data and connections
- Not checked: List required calendars, video tools, website, POS, CRM, accounting, forms, and automation.
- Not checked: Define the owner, retry, alert, and manual recovery path for each connection.
- Not checked: List every record and stable identifier required in an export.
- Not checked: Record privacy, role, retention, audit, backup, and deletion requirements needing qualified review.
Decision gates
- Not checked: Choose the hardest must-have to test first.
- Not checked: Write at least three immediate disqualifiers.
- Not checked: Define acceptable workarounds and the manual cost they create.
- Not checked: Keep configuration, integration, process change, current system, and no purchase as valid outcomes.
Write one testable booking rule (optional)
Turn one policy into a rule another person can test.
Describe one booking, appointment, or reservation decision from trigger to evidence. The builder keeps the normal path, stop path, exception, communication, and recovery together instead of hiding them in general notes.
- Requirements builder
Define the wider business workflow, constraints, and route before writing individual rules.
- Specialist guides
Use the relevant guide to find the money, capacity, time, permission, integration, or recovery checks this rule needs.
- Rule builder
Specify one precise decision with pass, fail, exception, communication, recovery, and evidence paths.
- Product-test worksheet
Later, ask each shortlisted product to demonstrate the same completed rule with invented records and saved artifacts.
0 of 9 fields complete
Complete every field before downloading the rule specification.
Still needed
- Rule name
- Applies when
- Check before deciding
- If every check passes
- If any check fails
- Exception authority
- Communication
- Recovery owner
- Evidence to record