Booking a project-based practitioner

Step by step

1. 1

   Tap Book Now and pass the prerequisite gate

   There are two ways to open the booking form:

   • Book Now on the practitioner's profile. The button sits in the action row near the top of their profile and is the primary entry point. You can reach the profile from the Map (tap the pin → tap the practitioner card on the venue sheet → tap their name), from search, from a feed post, or from anywhere their username is linked.
   • + menu inside an existing conversation with the practitioner. Tap the + button next to the message input → Booking Request. This opens the same form, pre-bound to the practitioner you're chatting with.

   Before the form actually opens, two checks run.

   First, the age check runs against the practitioner's policies (if they've set them). If you're younger than their stated minimum, you'll see a blocking alert telling you so. If they accept minors with parental consent and you're old enough to qualify, you'll see a "Parental Consent Required" notice and a Continue button to proceed anyway.

   Second, the prerequisite check runs against the practitioner's own setup. The form only opens if their Services & Pricing, Availability & Schedule, and Policies & Legal info cards are all in place and their booking calendar isn't temporarily closed. If any piece is missing, the form doesn't open — instead you see an explainer and a Notify Practitioner button. Tapping it records a booking interest card on both sides; the practitioner gets a heads-up that you wanted to book before they were ready, and the conversation can pick up later. If their calendar is temporarily closed specifically (rather than incomplete), you'll see a different explainer and the right move is to message them.

   The same gate runs whether you opened the form from Book Now or from the + menu, with one exception in the conversation path: if the practitioner hasn't subscribed to the Booking module at all, the + path doesn't create an interest card — it shows an alert telling you bookings aren't available right now. The interest-card path in that specific case only opens from Book Now on the profile.

2. 2

   Pick what you're booking

   The form opens on a short introduction screen. The next screen depends on the practitioner's discipline.

   Booking a tattoo artist: the form first shows a Process & Pricing screen if the artist has filled in their workflow info — whether they require reference pictures, whether they send design drafts before the appointment, whether they use AI tools as part of their design process, and any free-text notes they wrote on those points. Read it before moving on; some artists won't take a booking without references, others won't.

   The next screen is Booking Type, where you pick one of four:

   • New Tattoo — a custom piece, flash, or any new work. Asks you for size, placement, style, and reference images.
   • Touch-up — fixing or refreshing an existing tattoo. Asks for placement and the reference photo of the existing tattoo (size and style aren't asked — they're already on your skin). At least one reference photo is required.
   • Cover-up — covering an existing tattoo with a new design. Asks for size, placement, style, and reference photos of the existing tattoo. References are required.
   • Consultation — discuss a project before committing. Skips size, placement, style, and references entirely; goes straight to the description.

   Booking a body modification practitioner: instead of an intent picker you see the practitioner's Services menu — implants, scarification, branding, tongue split, ear shaping, and so on. Pick what you want (you can pick more than one if they apply to the same project). After Services you pick a Body Placement (up to three areas) and optionally upload Reference Images.

3. 3

   Describe the project

   Every project-based booking has a required Description field — at least 10 characters of free-text. This is where you write what you want in your own words. For tattoos: the meaning behind it, references to specific sub-styles or artists you're inspired by, anything in the brief that the size/placement/style fields didn't capture. For body mods: medical context if relevant, prior procedures elsewhere, jewellery preferences, any specific technique you're after.

   This is also where the practitioner forms their first impression of the request — the slot at the top of the form is essentially a screen of free text, so it's worth being specific. A vague request gets a vague proposal.

4. 4

   Pick a location and tell them when you can come

   Location comes next. The screen lists every place the practitioner can host you: their resident studio (their home shop, marked Main Studio), any guest spots they've booked (other studios they're visiting for a limited window, marked with the studio's name and the date range), and their independent location if they work privately rather than out of a studio. Tap one to select it. Guest spots that have been cancelled by the practitioner are shown but can't be picked.

   Scheduling Preferences is the next screen — and it's the longest one in the form, so settle in. Three things to fill out:

   • When are you available — pick Calendar dates to mark specific days or date ranges on a calendar (you can switch between Individual Dates and Date Ranges modes; tap a date again to remove it; you can optionally set a time window per date or range with the clock icon), or pick Weekly pattern to say "I'm available Mondays and Tuesdays" (with optional time windows, either the same for all days or different per day). You can pick both — it's not exclusive. Required. If you picked a guest spot location, dates outside the guest spot's window are disabled. If you picked the resident studio and the practitioner has guest spots scheduled, those dates are blocked too — they won't be at the home shop on those dates.
   • Your situation — three optional flags: "I'm traveling from another city or country," "I'm flexible with my booking dates," "I'm only available during the selected dates" (holiday, business trip, hard window). The flexible vs. time-constrained pair is mutually exclusive; the traveling flag is independent.
   • Multiple sessions — for tattoo and body mod projects that need more than one appointment. Pick how you want sessions scheduled: Consecutive sessions (back-to-back over several days, with a maximum number you're willing to commit to — useful when you're traveling in for the project), Healing period between sessions (about a month between each), My project is small (single session is fine), or I don't know. There's also a checkbox to flag whether you've already done multiple-session work before. The free-text Additional Notes field at the bottom is for anything the calendar/checkbox UI can't capture.

   The information here lets the practitioner propose a sequence of dates that fits both sides. Be specific — vague availability turns into vague counter-proposals, which turns into a longer back-and-forth.

5. 5

   Read the policies, review, and submit (or save as a draft)

   Policies & Legal is the next screen, but only if the practitioner has filled in their policies. You'll see expandable cards for age requirements, deposit refund rules, cancellation policy, aftercare expectations, and anything else they've added. Read them; agreement is a checkbox at the bottom and you can't submit without ticking it.

   The deposit refund rules in particular are worth reading before you submit, because they're snapshotted onto your booking at the moment you submit and apply for the rest of the booking's life — even if the practitioner changes their policies on their profile later.

   The final screen is Review & Submit. It lays out everything you picked: intent or service, size/placement/style and references, the description, location, scheduling preferences, your policy agreement. Two buttons:

   • Save Draft — keeps everything editable and exits the form. Drafts live on your Bookings page under Requests → Draft; tap one to resume from where you left off. Drafts don't notify the practitioner and aren't reserved on their calendar.
   • Submit — sends the booking.

   When you submit, the booking lands in the practitioner's queue with status pending and the practitioner gets a push notification. Project-based bookings always land as pending — there is no auto-confirm path on submit, regardless of deposit, discipline, or anything else. The practitioner has to look at it and propose terms before it can move forward.

   You don't pay anything when you submit. Project-based deposits aren't collected at request time — they're agreed per session during the proposal phase, after the practitioner has confirmed the dates and the price.

6. 6

   What happens after you submit

   The success screen reads "Request Sent!" with a confirmation that the practitioner will review your request and respond, and a Done button. From here the booking starts a back-and-forth that's specific to the project-based model — different from the lock-the-slot-and-go shape of time-based bookings.

   The practitioner opens your request in their Pending tab and starts proposing terms, one session at a time:

   • Date — they propose a specific calendar date that fits one of your availability picks. You can accept, decline, or counter-propose your own date.
   • Time slot — once a date is locked, they propose start time and end time on that date.
   • Duration — they propose how long the session will take; this can also drive the price if they're billing by the hour or the day.
   • Price — depending on the practitioner's setup, the price for the session can be a fixed number, an estimate, or a range. You see whichever shape the practitioner picks.
   • Deposit — once price is confirmed for that session, the practitioner sets a per-session deposit amount manually (not a percentage of the price; they pick the absolute amount). You can accept it or counter; once accepted the deposit becomes payable, either through Stripe Payment Sheet (Apple Pay / Google Pay / saved or new card) or off-platform if the practitioner takes manual deposits.

   One more thing the practitioner can change after submit — the location. The studio you picked when you submitted is inherited by every session by default, so most bookings never see a location proposal. But the practitioner can propose a per-session location change if they need to. When they do, you'll see the proposal on the session — the new address, an optional reason they wrote explaining why, and Accept / Reject buttons. It works the same as the other fields: reject and the session can't be confirmed until they come back with a different location you accept.

   It helps to think of the booking as a project for one client and the sessions as the appointments inside it. One booking = one project; how many sessions it carries depends on what the project actually needs. If your project takes multiple sessions, the whole loop above runs independently for each session — every session gets its own date, time, duration, price, and deposit, agreed on its own. There is no cap on how many counter-proposals either side can make on a given field, and no cap on how many sessions a booking can carry. For a single-session project the loop runs once.

   You can find the booking afterwards on your Bookings page under Requests → Pending. Tapping it opens the booking detail page, which is also where the conversation with the practitioner is wired up — every booking gets its own thread, and a timeline of every proposal made on every session lives on the same page.

   Confirmation happens at the session level. The moment a session has all its fields agreed, it's locked in as a real appointment and the booking shows up under Requests → Confirmed. If other sessions on the same booking are still being worked out, the booking also keeps a card under Requests → Pending — same booking, two cards, one per state. A booking can move between only-Pending, only-Confirmed, and both-at-once over time as sessions get added or fields get re-opened.

   If the practitioner declines your request outright (or proposes terms that don't work for you and the back-and-forth doesn't converge), you can drop it from the same booking detail page; the booking ends without taking up a slot on either side.

Frequently asked questions

I tapped **Book Now** and the screen says **Notify Practitioner** instead of opening the form. What happened?

The practitioner's setup isn't ready for live bookings — usually one of their Services & Pricing, Availability & Schedule, or Policies & Legal info cards is missing, or they haven't subscribed to the Booking module yet. Tapping Notify Practitioner records an interest card on both sides so the practitioner knows you wanted to book and can come back to you when they're ready. Nothing is reserved on a calendar; it's a heads-up, not a real booking.

Why does my booking land as **Pending** instead of confirmed?

Project-based bookings always land as **pending** at submit. The price and the schedule aren't locked by the platform up front — they're agreed session by session: date, time, duration, price, deposit. As soon as the first session has all of those accepted, that session is locked in as a real appointment and the booking starts showing up under Requests → Confirmed (in addition to Pending if other sessions on the same booking are still being worked out — same booking, two cards). There is no auto-confirm path on submit. (Time-based bookings do auto-confirm at submit when there's no deposit, because the price and slot are already pinned by the time you tap Submit — that's the main shape difference between the two models.)

I picked **Consultation** as the intent — why are the tattoo size, placement, style, and reference steps skipped?

Consultation is the "let's talk first" intent. The form recognises that the whole point is that you don't have those details locked yet — that's what the consultation is for. Description is still required so the practitioner has something to read; everything else is something you'll work out together. If the consultation goes well and you decide to actually book the work, you'd come back and start a new request with the right intent.

I picked a guest spot as the location — does that limit which dates I can pick on the scheduling step?

Yes. Guest spots have a defined start and end date set by the studio that's hosting the practitioner; dates outside that window are disabled on the calendar with a banner explaining why. The practitioner can only see clients at that studio during the guest-spot window. The other way around: if you pick the practitioner's home studio (their Main Studio) and they have guest spots scheduled in the future, the days they'll be away are blocked — tap a blocked day and you'll see an alert telling you which guest spot they'll be at and when.

Can the practitioner change the location for a specific session after I submit?

Yes — but only as a proposal, not unilaterally. The location you picked at submit is inherited by every session by default; the practitioner can propose a per-session location change at any point. They can attach an optional reason explaining why. You'll see the new address on the session with Accept / Reject buttons. Reject works exactly like rejecting a date or price — the session can't be confirmed until the practitioner comes back with a different location you accept.

Do I pay anything when I submit the request?

No. Project-based deposits aren't collected at request time. Once the practitioner has confirmed a date, time, and price for a session, they propose a per-session deposit amount and you pay that — through the Stripe Payment Sheet on the booking, or off-platform (cash, bank transfer, Revolut, etc.) if they take manual deposits. The deposit is per session, not per booking, so a multi-session project has multiple deposit moments. If the practitioner doesn't ask for a deposit on a given session, that session simply doesn't have one and the booking moves forward without it.

Can I save the form and come back later?

Yes — the Save Draft button on the final review screen keeps everything editable and exits the form. Drafts live on your Bookings page under Requests → Draft; tap one to resume from where you left off. Saving a draft does not notify the practitioner and does not reserve anything on their calendar — only submitting does.

I'm under the practitioner's minimum age. What happens?

If the practitioner has set a minimum age and you're below it, the Book Now button shows a blocking alert before the form even opens. If they've also said they accept minors with parental consent and you're old enough to qualify under that, you'll see a Parental Consent Required notice and a Continue button — tap Continue to proceed; you'll need parental consent in person at the appointment. If you're below their parental-consent age too, the alert blocks the booking entirely and there's no way to push past it on the app side.