Booking a tattoo or body modification practitioner from the web

Step by step

1. 1

   Open the practitioner's link in your browser

   The practitioner shares a link in the form inkmap.app/their-username — you'll usually find it in their Instagram bio, on a Linktree, on a business card QR code, or on their website. Open it in any modern browser, on a phone or a computer; the page is responsive either way.

   The page shows the practitioner's name, where they're based, their bio, three of their featured pieces of work, and their social links. Below the introduction, the booking form opens directly — there's no separate Book Now button to tap, the form just sits there.

   If you see a "still setting up online bookings" message instead of a form, it means the practitioner hasn't finished turning on online bookings yet (or hasn't set up the required details). Their social links are still on the page so you can reach out off-platform. If you're signed in to InkMap in that browser, you'll also see a "Notify me when bookings open" button — tapping it lets the practitioner know you'd like to book, which often nudges them to switch bookings on. If instead the page says bookings are paused, the practitioner has temporarily closed their calendar (sometimes with a date they expect to reopen).

2. 2

   Fill in your contact details

   The first form step asks for name, email, city, and country. The email is what the practitioner will use to message you and where every notification goes — typo-check it before moving on, because you can't change it from the web after submitting.

   If you already have an InkMap account and you're signed in to InkMap on the same browser, you'll see a banner at the top of this step that says "We've filled in your details from your InkMap account" — name, email, city, and country are auto-filled from your account. You can edit them before submitting if anything's outdated. If you're not signed in, the fields just start empty.

3. 3

   Tell the practitioner about the project

   The second step is where the project itself gets described. The fields depend on what kind of practitioner you're booking:

   • Tattoo artist — first you pick the intent: New Tattoo, Touch-up, Cover-up, or Consultation. The fields change based on what you pick. New tattoos and cover-ups ask for size, placement on the body, style, references, and a description; touch-ups ask whether the artist did the original work; consultations are short-form. Reference images are uploaded by tapping the upload button — the form accepts photos from your camera roll and reformats them automatically.
   • Body modification practitioner — you pick a service from the practitioner's menu (each service is a card with a name and a short description — no price), then describe the placement on the body and add reference images. The service you pick tells the practitioner what you want done, not what it'll cost: body modification bookings are project-based, so after you submit, the practitioner reviews your request and proposes the actual price as part of their first proposal (covered in steps 8–9). Any price a body modification practitioner shows elsewhere is only a rough indicator — the price that counts is the one they propose for your specific project, and it can differ.

   Reference images aren't always mandatory but are usually expected — they're how the practitioner knows what you actually want before they propose a design and a price. If the practitioner has marked references as required for the intent or service you picked, you'll see an asterisk on the field; if you skip it, the form lets you continue anyway, but be ready to back-and-forth in messages later.

   Long descriptions are fine. The text fields don't have visible character limits as far as you'll hit them in normal use; the more concrete you can be ("forearm, inner side, between wrist and elbow, ~12cm wide"), the cleaner the practitioner's first proposal will be.

4. 4

   Set your scheduling preferences and pick a location

   The third step covers when you can come and where you want it to happen.

   • Single-session vs multi-session — pick whether you can dedicate one sitting or you're OK with the practitioner splitting the work across multiple appointments. Some pieces are one-and-done; others have to be broken up.
   • Back-to-back tolerance — only shown if you picked multi-session. The question is whether you're OK with sessions running on consecutive days (useful for travel-clients) or whether you want them spread out by weeks.
   • Preferred days and time ranges — you can mark which days of the week you're available and what time-of-day windows work for you (morning, afternoon, evening). The practitioner uses this to propose a date that actually fits.
   • Date ranges — you can also block specific dates you can't make, or mark a window of dates you'll be in town if you're travelling.
   • Location — the practitioner's available locations show up as cards. For most practitioners that's just their home studio. If they're a guest artist somewhere else for a few weeks, you'll see those guest spots listed too with the dates they're hosted there. Pick whichever works for you.
5. 5

   Read the practitioner's policies and check the box

   The fourth step lays out the practitioner's policies and legal terms — age requirements, deposit refund rules, cancellation policy, aftercare expectations. Each policy is in its own collapsible card. Tap to expand and read.

   The deposit refund rules are particularly worth reading. Whatever they say at the moment you submit is snapshotted onto your booking and applies for the rest of the booking's life — even if the practitioner changes their policies on their profile later, your booking sticks to the version you agreed to.

   At the bottom there's a single checkbox: "I have read and agree to the practitioner's policies." You can't move to the review step until it's ticked.

6. 6

   Review everything and submit

   The fifth and final step is a summary screen — every detail you entered, all on one page, so you can scroll through and double-check. The contact info, the project details, the references, the scheduling preferences, the location, the policy agreement.

   If anything's wrong, scroll down and use the Back button to step back through the form; everything is preserved. When you're happy, tap Submit Booking Request.

   A couple of things worth knowing about the form before you commit:

   • The form autosaves to your browser as you type, with a 24-hour expiry. If you close the tab in the middle of filling it out and come back later, you'll see a "We saved your progress from earlier — Continue / Start fresh" prompt at the top. Pick Continue to pick up where you left off, or Start fresh to wipe and begin again.
   • Drafts aren't visible to the practitioner — only submitting sends the request. Closing the tab or hitting Start fresh costs you nothing.
7. 7

   The success screen and the confirmation email

   After submitting, you land on a success screen confirming the request was sent. Two things happen on this screen depending on whether you have an InkMap account:

   • Signed in to InkMap on this browser — you'll see a "Your booking has been linked to your InkMap account" notice. The booking is now visible in your in-app Bookings tab too, alongside any other bookings you have.
   • Not signed in — you'll see a "Get the InkMap app for the full experience" card with App Store / Play Store links. Installing the app is optional; everything works from the web link otherwise.

   A few seconds later, a confirmation email arrives at the address you submitted. The email has a subject line like "Your booking request was received" and contains:

   • A summary of what you sent.
   • A button labelled Track your booking that opens the booking management page on the web.
   • A note that the practitioner will review your request and get back to you with a proposal, and that you'll get an email when there's an update.

   The Track your booking link is your home base for everything else — proposals, messages from the practitioner, deposit, cancellation, review at the end. Bookmark the email or pin the link; if you lose it, you can request a fresh email from your booking page.

8. 8

   Wait for the practitioner's first proposal

   Project-based bookings always start as pending — the practitioner has to look at your brief and then propose the actual scheduling. Until they do, your booking page just shows your submitted details with a "Waiting for the practitioner to propose" banner.

   How long this takes is entirely up to the practitioner — there's no fixed deadline and no automatic reminder, so it might be the same day or it might take longer. When they do propose, you get an email titled "New proposal from [practitioner]" with a button straight to the booking page.

   The proposal can include any combination of date, start and end time, estimated duration, price, deposit amount, and location — sometimes all six fields, sometimes just a price and a deposit on session 1 with the date to be confirmed later. The practitioner also might send the proposal across multiple sessions if your project needs more than one sitting.

9. 9

   Accept or reject what the practitioner proposed

   Open the Track your booking link. Each session in the booking shows up as its own card, with every proposed field listed. Each field has a coloured dot showing its status:

   • Orange — the practitioner has proposed this and it's your turn: accept or reject it (and for the deposit field, this is your cue to pay). The booking is waiting on you.
   • Green — accepted (by you, by the practitioner, or both).
   • Red — rejected — the practitioner will follow up with a fresh proposal.
   • Yellow — waiting on the practitioner (their move next).
   • Grey — nothing proposed for this field yet.

   Pending fields have Accept and Reject buttons next to them. You can:

   • Accept a field — locks it. Once accepted by both sides, the field is final.
   • Reject a field — opens a message box where you can say why you're rejecting ("a Saturday would be better", "the price is more than I can stretch to", etc.). The practitioner then sends a new proposal for that field. This is how it works everywhere on InkMap — as a client you accept or reject and leave a note; you never type in your own date or price. The practitioner is always the one who proposes the actual values, both on the web and in the app.

   You can stage multiple accepts and rejects across multiple sessions before submitting them all together — useful when you want to accept the date but reject the price, or accept session 1 entirely and reject session 2. A floating bar at the bottom of the screen tracks how many responses you've staged and gives you a single Submit Responses button to send them all in one go. The practitioner gets a single notification covering everything you submitted.

   If you reject a field, the practitioner gets a heads-up and can come back with a new value. There's no back-and-forth limit — keep going until both sides agree on every field.

10. 10

    Pay the deposit when it's the right time

    Once you've accepted everything except the deposit, the deposit field on the session card switches to a Pay Deposit button. Web deposits are paid by card through Stripe: the button opens a secure payment widget right in the page (saved cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, plus a new card form). You pay there; the deposit is auto-confirmed within seconds and the session moves toward confirmed.

    Paying by card through Stripe is the only way to pay a deposit from the web — there's no "I paid in cash" option on the web booking page. (Manual deposits, where you pay the practitioner directly and they confirm receipt, exist only inside the InkMap app, for registered users.) If the practitioner proposes a deposit but hasn't connected Stripe yet, the deposit field shows an "online payment unavailable" message instead of the pay button. In that case, message them from the booking page to sort it out — usually by paying another way, or by installing the InkMap app and continuing the booking there, where manual deposits work.

    The whole booking only flips from pending to confirmed once every session has every field accepted and every required deposit paid and confirmed. Until that happens, the booking page keeps showing the pending banner.

11. 11

    The booking is confirmed — what to expect next

    When everything is locked, the booking page replaces the proposal cards with a clean confirmed view: the date, time, location, total price, and any deposit you've paid. You'll also get a booking confirmed email summarising the same thing.

    Between confirmation and your appointment date, the practitioner might:

    • Send messages through the booking — you can reply right from the booking page.
    • Add a follow-up session — if the work needs more sittings, they'll add a session, the booking moves back to pending until you accept and pay the new session, then it returns to confirmed.
    • Adjust an existing field after the fact — they can re-open a confirmed field to propose a change. You'll get a fresh email and can accept or reject the change, exactly like the first proposal.

    If anything changes on your side before the appointment — you can't make the date, you need to reschedule — the easiest move is to message the practitioner from the booking page and let them re-propose.

12. 12

    Cancel from the web if you need to

    If you need to cancel before the appointment, scroll to the bottom of the booking page and tap Cancel booking. A dialog asks you to confirm and offers an optional reason field. If you've already paid a deposit, the dialog also reminds you that the practitioner's refund rules decide whether the deposit comes back to you.

    After confirming:

    • The booking moves to cancelled, with you marked as the cancellation party.
    • Both you and the practitioner get a cancellation email.
    • Any deposit goes through the practitioner's refund-eligibility rules — they may auto-refund, partially refund, or retain depending on what was set when you submitted.

    Cancellation is final — there's no undo. To rebook, start a fresh request from the practitioner's inkmap.app page.

13. 13

    Leave a review after your appointment

    After your appointment date passes, the practitioner marks the work as completed. You'll get a final email titled "Booking completed — [practitioner]" with a Leave a Review button that opens the review form on your booking page.

    The review form on the web takes:

    • Cleanliness rating — 1 to 5.
    • Comfort rating — 1 to 5.
    • Communication rating — 1 to 5.
    • Photos of the finished work — optional, but useful.
    • A written review — open text.

    Once you submit, the review is publicly attached to the practitioner's profile (your name appears as you set it on the booking; you can mark it anonymous if you prefer). You can edit the review later from the same email link if you change your mind, but only the most recent version is shown. Reviews go one direction only — practitioners don't rate clients on InkMap.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need an InkMap account to book?

No. The whole flow — submitting, responding to the proposal, paying the deposit, leaving a review — works through the email link without an account. If you do have an InkMap account and you sign in on the same browser before submitting, the booking automatically links to your account afterwards and shows up in the app's Bookings tab too. You can also link a booking later by signing in to the app with the same email address you used on the web form.

I lost my confirmation email. How do I get back to my booking?

Search your inbox (including the spam folder) for emails from bookings@inkmap.app — every email you've ever had on the booking has the Track your booking link. If you genuinely can't find any of them, you'll need to message the practitioner directly (through their social links or, if you have InkMap installed, through the app) and ask them to resend. There's no public lookup-by-email surface on the web for security reasons.

Can I propose my own date and price instead of just rejecting theirs?

No — and this isn't a web limitation. On InkMap, clients never fill in their own date or price; the practitioner is always the one who proposes the values. As a client, your tools are Accept and Reject. Rejecting opens a message field where you say what would work for you ("Could we do the 15th instead?" or "Can the price come down to 800?"); the practitioner reads it and sends a fresh proposal with adjusted values, which you then accept or reject. It works exactly the same way in the InkMap app — installing it doesn't unlock any counter-proposal controls, because there aren't any for clients.

What if the practitioner never replies to my request?

There's no automatic reminder and no time-out — the booking simply sits as pending until the practitioner sends a proposal. How long that takes is entirely up to them; there's no promised response time. You can cancel from the booking page at any time and try a different practitioner.

I paid by Stripe but the booking is still showing pending. What happened?

Stripe payments confirm via webhook within seconds in normal conditions. If a few minutes pass and the deposit is still showing pending, refresh the booking page first — sometimes the screen just hasn't picked up the update. If it still looks pending, message the practitioner; they can check the deposit on their side. Money you paid Stripe is never lost; if the booking is later cancelled, refunds run through the practitioner's refund rules and Stripe processes them back to your card.

The practitioner proposed a deposit but there's no way to pay it — it says "online payment unavailable." What do I do?

That means the practitioner hasn't connected Stripe yet, and paying by card through Stripe is the only way to pay a deposit from the web. Message them from the booking page — they can set up Stripe (InkMap nudges them to in the app), agree to handle the deposit another way, or have you install the InkMap app and continue the booking there, where you can pay a deposit manually.

Is my data safe? What does the practitioner see?

The practitioner sees your name, email, city, country, the project details and reference images you submitted, and any messages you've sent on the booking. They don't see your phone number, exact address, or anything you didn't put in the form. The booking link is a long unique token — only people you forward the email to can open it. If you want to revoke access, the only way is to cancel the booking, since the link stays valid as long as the booking exists.

Can I install the app later and find this booking there?

Yes. Install InkMap, sign up or sign in using the same email you used on the web form, and any web bookings tied to that email will automatically appear in your app Bookings tab. From there you get push notifications and the full in-app chat. (The proposal responses work the same as on the web — accept or reject with a note.) Bookings from the web that you started before installing the app stay where they are; nothing is lost in the move.