CA Software Systems, the parent company has created it's own SMS facility called ‘SoftSMS’, which will obviously link seamlessly into SoftBooking and also giving the ability to link to other software, such as:

• Salon databases, such as Premier Spa, i-Salon, Salon Active, Salon Genius and many more;
• Hotel databases;
• Car garages;
• General businesses who have representatives to their company;
• Any business who makes appointments;
• Any business who wants to market through SMS texting;
• Clubs, pubs and restaurants;
• Outlook, CSV files and Excel sheets;
• And many, many more...

What to use SMS messages for in your business

• Send a message about an open day or a special event;
• Confirmation reminders 48/24 hours prior to the Clients first appointment;
• Birthday wishes - get your Clients back in through the door for being considerate;
• Seasonal greetings.

Business Texting Fast Facts

• 65% of people send business text messages from their mobile phone on a daily basis;
• 50% of people receive business text messages from a member of their team/ department/ office;
• 47% of people receive business text messages from a colleague;
• 36% receive business text messages from a customer or client;
• 71% of people use business texts for setting 'reminders of meetings and appointments';
• 18% of people used business texts for 'notifying people about new meetings and appointments';
• 14% of people use business text for 'chasing up suppliers or new orders';
• A third of respondents (36%) said that they receive text messages from a customer or client;
• 11% of people receive text messages from suppliers.

A comparison pricing matrix

Moving from Outlook to SoftBooking

In the past, we have found other salons who use Outlook for their diary linked with a paper book. The time restraint to do such a job for very little reward, even to move an appointment must be difficult.

With SoftBooking Pro, an appointment is linked to a; Service, Client, Room and Staff member, and then finally to a payment stage so tracking absolutely every thing that goes on in the salon and report on the data accordingly.

In-house, we made an import from Outlook into SoftBooking as ‘Activities’ so you can at least keep the history of data somewhere. If you have somehow managed to link the appointment with the Client in Outlook, we could easily import the Clients as well as ‘creating and linking’ to their appointments.

Outlook is a great tool to use for personal use, however for using it as a multi-schedule device with numerous amounts of staff and the requirement to link in Clients, Services, Rooms and Staff it isn't appropriate. Outlook is more general therefore as I said, is a great tool for personal use.

SoftBooking seamlessly imports data from Outlook and also has an inbuilt one way synchronisation with Outlook so you can keep all of your contacts information up-to-date with SoftBooking’s contacts. Because of the way Outlooks appointments work, we are unable to synchronise the appointments as Outlook lacks the links required to the relevant service and staff member.

Advantages of Import from Outlook

• Retain all of the data you entered saving yuo time and ultimately money;
• Retain the history of your Clients;
• Retain the history of your appointments;
• Saves having to type it in again;
• Updates your Outlook contacts details.

If you are considering moving from Outlook, or any other software package to more specialised software, give us a call on 0845 680 0014 so we can discuss and advise you.

Why SoftBooking

For every salon, there is always so much to do and often it feels like there just aren't enough hours in the day to do it. In fact, sometimes there really isn't!

We understand that selling products and completing services is just the tip of the iceberg; there's so much more to running a salon than that.

That is why SoftBooking was developed, to give you just a much more time to do the things that ought to be done as well as those that must be. SoftBooking is the complete solution for the day-to-day management of your salon, its intuitively easy interface incorporates:

• On-site installations
• On-site and internet based training
• Support via internet and email
• Remote backup available
• Automatic updates
• Hardware setup

Plus...

• You own the software on purchase
• One off investment cost, no annual fees
• Optional support, 1st year FREE!
• Quick and easy to use
• Great after care
• Constant developments for YOU!

Introduction

Since early 2005, SoftBooking has been aimed at salons, spa's and laser clinics who want to maximise the efficiency of their business whilst providing more time and tools to manage its marketing and increase revenue.

By keeping records of your Client activities, you have the ability to easily look up when and how much a Client has spent at your salon. This ensures accuracy of the day to day running of your salon and your marketing efforts by targeting products and service promotions at the right clients. Together with the SMS and emailing features of SoftBooking, we provide automatic confirmation of bookings and additional marketing functionality for your salon.

Stop your business controlling you, with SoftBooking you take back control

• Store appointments, meetings, training, lunches and breaks
• Affordable and money saving
• One-off investment cost, no annual fees
• Feature rich software at one price
• Automatic Updates via internet
• You own the software on purchase
• One price for all features!
• 1st year support FREE
• Free home user
• Fully integrated Point of Sales