For artists coming off spreadsheets, PDF invoices and a very full DM folder. You do not have to move your whole book across to try this. Put one real booking in, take it all the way through, and you will know within twenty minutes whether it suits you.
Settings → Business details. Your business name, your name, your contact email and phone.
Then, and this is the one people skip: your bank details. They print on every quote and invoice your client sees, and on the payment page. Without them your client has nowhere to send the money, so nothing else quite works.
Booked & Busy never holds your money and never takes a cut of it. Your client pays you directly, into your account. There is no fee on it.
Settings → Region & currency if you are outside the UK, so your dates and your money look right and the bank fields ask for the right things.
Settings → Prices. Your standard rates: bridal makeup, bridesmaids, travel, lessons. Two minutes now saves you typing the same figures for the next year, and it is what lets the app draft quotes for you later.
Tap + and add a booking you already have. Client name, date, what it is.
If it runs over several days, an abroad wedding say, set the last day as well and it will sit across your whole diary as one job rather than pretending to be a single morning.
That is it. You now have a job sitting at the first stage.
Everything hangs off a booking moving forward through named stages, and the next step is always one button. You never have to decide what to do next, because the job tells you.
You press the button. The app will never decide a client has paid or a job is done.
And the button does the paperwork, not just the label. Sending a quote stamps the date and switches your client's link on. Asking for the deposit freezes your terms onto that booking. Invoicing assigns the invoice number.
Got it wrong? Move it back a step. It undoes the stamps that belonged to that step. It is a two-tap fix, not a disaster.
Open the booking, open Quote, add your lines. If you filled in your prices they are already there to pick from.
Press the next-step button and the quote is live on their link.
Every booking has one link. Open the booking, open Client portal, copy it, and send it however you already talk to that client. WhatsApp, email, wherever.
Have a look at it yourself first with See what they see. It has your name at the top, not ours. There is no login and no app for them to download.
On that page your client can:
Your bank details are on the quote and the invoice, with the booking reference to quote. Your client transfers the money to you directly.
When your client taps it, an amber card appears on your Today screen saying they say they have paid, with two buttons: yes, it's in and not arrived. You check your own bank and you decide. Nothing about your money is ever out of your hands.
Then: Mark completed once the job is done, and Mark paid once the balance has landed.
Bank transfer is the default and it is the cheapest way for you: nothing is taken off the top.
If you would also like a Pay by card button on your client's link, connect your own Stripe account under Settings → Card payments. It takes a few minutes, and Stripe will ask for your bank details and a form of ID, because you are the one taking the money.
The money goes to you, into your own Stripe account and out to your own bank on your own schedule. Refunds and any disputes are yours, in your own Stripe dashboard. Stripe take their processing fee and Booked & Busy takes nothing at all.
You can switch card payments off for any single booking from that booking's Client portal section, and your client still chooses which way to pay. Bank transfer never goes away.
Reply to any email from us. A human answers, and if it is easier to be shown than told, ask for a call. Being early means the awkward feedback is the useful kind, so send it.
That is the whole test. Take a job you already have all the way through and see how it feels.
Open the app