Clinic and treatment room bookings on Shopify
Aesthetics clinics, physios, osteopaths and treatment rooms need two kinds of resource, the practitioner and the room, and often a deposit to protect a long appointment. Booking Slot models both and stores every booking in Google Cloud's London region.
The problems this solves
- A treatment needs both a free practitioner and a free room
- Patients book a consultation and a treatment on the same day and you want them back to back
- Late cancellations on hour-long slots are expensive
- Medical-adjacent data needs to stay in the UK
How Booking Slot handles it
Practitioners and rooms
Attach a service to the practitioners who deliver it and the rooms it needs. A slot is offered only when both are free.
Deposits and cutoffs
Take a deposit at booking and set how late a patient can reschedule or cancel themselves.
Reminders with self-service
SMS and email reminders carry a manage link so patients reschedule rather than no-show.
UK data residency
Bookings live in Firestore in europe-west2 (London). See the privacy policy for the full processor list.
Choose the clinic preset during setup and these defaults are filled in for you.
Two resources, one appointment
A clinic appointment is rarely just a person's time. A treatment needs the practitioner who delivers it and the room it happens in, and if either is busy the appointment cannot run. Most booking apps model one or the other, which means the second one is tracked on a whiteboard and occasionally gets it wrong.
In Booking Slot a resource is anything with a calendar that can only be in one place at once, which covers practitioners, treatment rooms, and specific equipment. A service is attached to the practitioners who can deliver it and the rooms it requires.
The availability calculation then has to satisfy all of them. A forty-five minute treatment at two o'clock is offered only when that practitioner is free at two, the room is free at two, and neither has a buffer running into it. A clinic with three practitioners and two rooms genuinely can only run two treatments at once, and the picker reflects that rather than selling a third.
The room is a resource too. A clinic that only tracks practitioners is one whiteboard error away from two patients in the same room.
Buffers, turnaround and the appointments that need room
Clean-down, notes, restocking and simply resetting a room between patients all take time that is not the appointment. Buffers in Booking Slot are set per service rather than per clinic, so the services that need turnaround get it and the ones that do not are not padded.
A fifteen-minute follow-up might carry no buffer. A treatment that needs the room cleaned and the couch changed might carry fifteen minutes behind it. The buffer blocks the practitioner and the room, so it never shows as bookable, but the patient is not charged for it and it does not appear on their confirmation.
Appointment lengths are arbitrary intervals rather than slots on a grid, so a twenty-minute review and a ninety-minute first assessment sit on the same calendar without either wasting time.
- Buffers per service, blocking practitioner and room
- Any appointment length, not a fixed half-hour grid
- Per-practitioner hours, including clinics that run on set days
- Time off for annual leave, training and standing commitments
Deposits and cutoffs on long appointments
An hour-long appointment cancelled at short notice is an hour that cannot be refilled, and it is the reason most clinics end up asking for something upfront.
Booking Slot takes a deposit as a line in your normal Shopify checkout, set per service as a fixed amount or a percentage. A first assessment might carry a deposit where a ten-minute review carries none. The money lands in your usual payout and shows in your usual reports, with no second payment provider involved.
The reschedule cutoff is the other half. Set how late a patient can move or cancel their own appointment, and the manage link in their confirmation stops working beyond that point. Twenty-four or forty-eight hours is typical for appointments of any length.
Refunds stay with you. Booking Slot does not hold the money and does not apply a cancellation policy of its own; what you charge for a late cancellation is your policy, stated on your own pages.
Where the data lives, and what should not be in it
Booking Slot stores bookings in Firestore in europe-west2, which is Google Cloud's London region. For a UK clinic that keeps the question of international transfers off your privacy policy entirely, which is a smaller piece of paperwork than it sounds until you have had to write it.
The data processing agreement is section 12 of the privacy policy. It applies automatically to every merchant, so there is nothing to request, sign or chase.
The important boundary: Booking Slot is a booking system, not a clinical records system. It holds who, when, which service and which practitioner, plus contact details for the reminder. Clinical notes, assessments, consent records and treatment histories belong in your practice management software, which is built and regulated for that purpose. Do not put them in a booking note field, on any platform.
What it costs a clinic, and what it does not do
Plan limits count resources, and rooms count. A single practitioner working from one room is two resources, so most clinics start on Starter at fourteen ninety-nine or Growth at thirty-nine ninety-nine rather than the Free plan. Growth covers eight resources and adds booking at the counter and Google Calendar for each practitioner. Pro at seventy-nine ninety-nine is unlimited. Annual billing takes twenty percent off.
What it will not do yet: recurring course-of-treatment bookings where one purchase books six sessions, automatic back-to-back scheduling when a patient wants a consultation and treatment the same day, waitlists, and multi-location. All are on the roadmap. Video consultation links are added manually to the confirmation template rather than generated.
What it does do is make it impossible to sell a practitioner or a room twice, on any plan, and keep the data in London while doing it.
Questions about Shopify booking app for clinics
Can I store medical notes against a booking?
No, and you should not try. Booking Slot is a booking system, not a clinical records system. It holds who, when, which service and which practitioner, plus the contact details needed for the reminder. Clinical notes, assessments, consent records and treatment histories belong in your practice management software, which is built and regulated for exactly that. A useful rule: if a piece of information would need to follow the patient into their medical record, it does not belong in a booking app, on any platform. Bear in mind too that service names appear publicly on product pages, so name them as you would on a price list.
Can certain treatments carry a longer turnaround than others?
Yes, buffers are set per service rather than per clinic. A fifteen-minute follow-up might carry none, while a treatment needing the room cleaned and the couch changed carries fifteen or twenty minutes behind it. The buffer blocks both the practitioner and the room, so it never appears as bookable time, but the patient is not charged for it and it does not show on their confirmation. The alternative, which plenty of clinics resort to, is padding every appointment to protect the few that need it, and over a week that is a lot of lost capacity.
Can a patient book two services in one visit?
They can add two linked products to one cart, each with its own time, so a consultation at ten and a treatment at eleven is one order and one checkout. What the app will not do yet is suggest the second appointment back to back with the first, so the patient picks both times themselves and may leave a gap. Automatic back-to-back scheduling is on the roadmap. In practice, most clinics handle it by booking the second appointment at the desk after the first, which goes on the same calendar through Shopify POS.
Do you provide a data processing agreement?
Yes, and there is nothing to request or sign. The DPA is section 12 of our privacy policy and applies automatically to every merchant who installs the app. It names every processor in the chain and sets out the terms. All booking data is stored in Firestore in europe-west2, which is Google Cloud's London region, so for a UK clinic there is no international transfer to document in your own privacy policy. That is a smaller piece of paperwork than it sounds until you have had to write it.
Try Booking Slot free on your store
Install in a few minutes, link one product and take a test booking. Free for one resource and 20 bookings a month, then flat pricing from £14.99.