The front desk

The front desk is for places where a booking needs more than one person's free hour: a clinic, a salon, a spa, a studio. A client books a visit, like a first visit made of an intake, an assessment and a scan, and Rookery only offers a time when every step fits: every person, every room, and every gap people and rooms keep. It reserves all of it together, or none of it.

Set it up

Owners and admins set it up in Settings → Front desk:

• Places: where visits happen, with an address and a time zone. Days, and the time rooms are fixed, follow the place's zone.
• Rooms and things: a room, a piece of equipment, a vehicle or a place. Give it plain-word features ("bed", "ultrasound"). It takes one booking at a time, or several at once (a sauna with 6 places). It can keep minutes free before and after each use, for cleaning or travel, and have rules: the longest booking, how far ahead, who can book it, or that a booking waits for a manager's yes.
• People: who takes visits. Skills, one a line; a skill with a date ("ultrasound until 2026-11-20") is a qualification, and Rookery stops offering them for it from that day. Their days and hours, and the gaps they keep: time to get ready, time for notes after a client, a break after hours back to back, and a lunch that floats inside its window. Clients never see the gaps.
• Services: what clients book. Steps go in order, in any order, or side by side (a couples massage), with a short wait between them if you like. Each step needs a person ("someone who does massage") and maybe a room ("a room with a bed"). A room can be fixed the day before: the visit holds "a treatment room" when it's booked, and gets a real one when the whole day is known.

A new service gets its own booking link, turned off until it has steps. Turn it on in Settings → Calendar. The link's Most per day, week and month apply to each person's visits.

What clients see

The booking link shows the service, how long it takes start to end, and its price. When people charge different prices and the client hasn't picked anyone, it says "from $90". Change who's coming lets them pick who they'd like to see.

They pick a day, then one of a few start times: the best fits, with the least waiting between steps. A day with nothing says why in plain words, like "No room with a bed is free Thursday morning." Picking a time shows the itinerary: each step with its time, who it's with and where. Book reserves every step at once. If someone else just took a part of it, they're told "That time was just taken" and pick another.

Their email has the invite for their calendar and the whole itinerary. Change time moves every step together, and Cancel lets go of every person and room.

When rooms are fixed

Rooms that wait are fixed at 6 pm the day before, in the place's time zone, and at once for a visit booked on the day itself. Until then the desk shows the room Rookery would give it today, marked "for now".

Your day

Front desk → My day (/desk/me) is your day on a phone. A large card shows who you're with now, or next: the step, the room, and the visit's chain, like "Massage · you → Sauna → Facial · Jo, 11:00". Their answers from the booking are under Team only: clients never see that, and neither does anyone outside your team.

When you're done, Hand on passes them to the next step, with a line for whoever's next if you want. Under the card is the rest of your day: when you're free, and when lunch fits.

The whole desk

Front desk (/desk) shows a day lane by lane: every person, then every room and thing. Pick a visit to see it in every lane it touches, with its steps and notes. A sauna's lane says how full it is, like "3 of 6". Under the lanes, free rooms are called out ("Room 2 free 2–4 pm"), and beside them is Who's in today, with their hours and lunch.

When the day slips

Nothing moves and nothing is sent until a person says yes.

• Running late: pick a visit, say by how much, and press Running late. The card shows what it changes, in order: free time takes it first, then lunch slides within its window, then the bookings after it move until a gap takes the rest, and which clients that reaches. If someone's lunch can't fit in its window any more, you pick: move the clients, or have lunch past its window. Apply moves the times, and Quill drafts a short note to each client whose time moved. The notes wait in Needs your yes, unless you turn on Let Quill send running-late notes on its own in Settings → Front desk; then they go after a 10-minute undo.
• Off today: Mark off today beside a person shows what happens to each of their visits: a swap to someone with the same skills at the same time, a move to another time that day, or a new day when the client asked for them by name or nothing fits. Do all of this applies everything; Look at each one lets you pick. Swaps and moves send the client their updated invite, saying why. For a new day, Quill drafts a note with the days that work, for you to send.

Health details

Rookery isn't set up for HIPAA. Treat what clients write in a booking's answers as sensitive notes: they're shown to your team only, on the desk and in the conversation, and never on the client's own pages.