Choosing management software for a medical spa or aesthetics clinic in the UK

A medical spa or aesthetics clinic does not run like a hair salon, even when it shares a postcode with one. The first visit is often a consultation rather than a treatment. Consent has to be recorded for each treatment category. Practitioners hold different qualifications, so not every booking can go to whoever is free. Clients return on cycles of weeks or months, often on a course or a membership, rather than every five weeks for a trim.

Most booking software was designed for the trim. This guide sets out what a UK clinic should look for instead, using Salon100X for medical spas as the worked example, including the places where it still leaves work to your team.

Where clinic bookings differ

Four things change the shape of the software you need.

• Consultation first. New clients usually book a consultation, and only then a treatment. Your booking page needs to offer the consultation as its own bookable service.
• Consent every time. A signed record per treatment category, stored where you can find it in a year.
• The right practitioner. Some treatments can only be delivered by named people. "Any available" cannot apply to everything.
• Longer cycles. Reviews, rebooking and follow-up run on a different clock, so your reports and automations need to cope with a client you last saw three months ago.

Digital forms and consent

This is the first thing to test in any demo. Ask to build a consent form yourself, send it to your own phone, sign it, and find the PDF afterwards.

Salon100X includes a form builder with text, choice, photo, signature and consent fields. A form can be completed before the visit through a signed link, or in the clinic on a tablet in tablet mode. Completed forms download as PDF.

Two honest gaps. Form submissions are not shown on the client's profile screen, so reception finds them through the forms area rather than the client record. And forms are not enforced per service at the point of booking, which means the check that a consent exists before treatment stays a human step at reception. Both are stated on the diary and clients page so nobody is surprised.

Client records that survive staff changes

A clinic's client record should show the whole relationship, not just the next appointment. In Salon100X the profile shows upcoming, past and cancelled appointments, lifetime revenue, number of visits and average spend, the client's top five services, and their loyalty points, membership, gift cards, packages and recent orders. Search works by name, email, phone or client code.

One thing it does not do is import your existing client list from another system. Clients create their own record the first time they book online, and your team adds the rest by hand. If you have a large list, plan for that before the switch and ask us what the fastest route is for your size.

Booking with the practitioner in mind

Online booking runs as a six-step wizard: location, service, optional package, staff, date and time, confirm. Clients can choose a named practitioner or "any available", which merges every eligible practitioner's free time. Slots come in 30-minute steps up to 90 days ahead. One service per online booking; your team can build multi-service appointments from the diary.

Set your consultation up as a bookable service, and list each treatment against the practitioners qualified to perform it on their staff profiles, so the booking page only offers the right people. Confirmation emails go to the client, the practitioner and the location owner.

What is not there: no deposit at booking, no appointment reminders on any channel, and no cancellation or no-show fees. The cancellation notice window defaults to 24 hours and the Booking Assistant respects it when a client asks to cancel or move. If deposits are central to how your clinic runs, say so on the demo and we will tell you plainly whether the software fits you today.

Courses, memberships and gift cards

Clinics sell time in bundles. Salon100X handles three of them.

• Memberships are billed as Stripe subscriptions, with a two-day grace period if a payment fails.
• Gift cards can be bought online from £1 to £10,000, and issued in the clinic.
• Packages can be created by staff and bought online by clients.

A caveat on packages: the software does not count sessions down against a course when a treatment is delivered, so keep your own tally per client. Details are on the payments page.

Reports a clinic owner will use

The reporting is the strongest part of the product, and it suits a clinic well. There are 30 reports with date, location and staff filters, each exportable as CSV or PDF, and any of them can be emailed to you daily, weekly or monthly. The ones clinic owners tend to open first are sales by service, sales by staff, new versus returning clients, rebook rate, no-show rate, and the demand heatmap by weekday and hour.

If you run more than one site, the owner dashboard totals every location and lists each one's performance. Each location has its own manager login, settings and Stripe account. See multi-location.

Marketing a clinic within the rules

UK rules do not allow prescription-only medicines to be advertised to the public. That shapes what you can do with the marketing tools inside any software, not just ours. Build campaigns and review requests around consultations and treatment categories, and have someone check every piece of creative before it runs.

Salon100X sends a review request by SMS four hours after a completed visit and sends four and five star ratings on to your Google, Trustpilot or Facebook page. SMS needs your own Twilio account. Email and SMS campaigns to client segments are included on the same basis. If you would rather have the campaigns handled for you, our growth team works with medical spas on consultation-led offers only.

A checklist before you sign anything

1. Build a consent form in the demo and sign it on a tablet.
2. Book a consultation as a client on your phone, then find that booking in the diary.
3. Ask which practitioners can be restricted per service, and how.
4. Ask what happens to a booking made inside the cancellation window.
5. Ask for the list of reports and pick three you would read every Monday.
6. Ask what the software does not do, and get it in writing.

Clinics that run through those six steps usually know within an hour whether the software fits. If you want to run them with us, book a demo and bring your own consent form.