Provider Bookings: Offering & Booking Services

Provider Bookings

If your business offers appointment-based services — a salon, spa, laundry, or similar — you can list them for clients to find and pay for online.

Becoming a Provider

Enable Provider Management in Profile → Feature Access to get the PROVIDER role. Then go to Dashboard → Provider → Profile to fill in your business name, description, and address — there's no timezone to set, every provider runs on the platform's own timezone. There's no phone number or email to add here either — clients book and message you through the platform, not a direct contact on your booking page.

Repair Shops: RepairersHub

If you run a repair shop (phones, laptops, appliances and similar), choose Repairs as your provider type on Dashboard → Provider → Profile. You then get RepairersHub free of charge: open it from Dashboard → Provider → RepairersHub (or the Open RepairersHub button on your provider dashboard) and you're signed straight in with your Informativ account — there's no separate password. In RepairersHub you can open several repair stores, add your store staff (they get their own RepairersHub logins), book in devices, track repairs and stock, print device QR codes and hand devices back with customer signatures.

Your access follows your Informativ account: if you change your provider type away from Repairs, or your account is suspended or closed, you and your store staff are signed out of RepairersHub within a few minutes. Team members who manage your account on Informativ don't get RepairersHub access through it — add them as store staff in RepairersHub instead.

Online repair payments: once your banking details are approved (Profile → Banking), your customers can pay a repair balance by card. On a repair in RepairersHub, use Payment link to copy the link or send it by WhatsApp or email; customers can also tap Pay online on the repair tracking page. They pay exactly the balance shown on Informativ's secure payment page, and the payment is recorded on the repair in RepairersHub automatically. A link is for a fixed amount: if the balance changes (a part is added or you take cash in store) the old link stops working and a new one is made. A Repair Shop Online Payments commission (see the Pricing page, 5% by default) comes off what you're paid out and is never added to what your customer pays; payments you take in store carry no fee. Your online repair payments are paid out with the rest of your Informativ earnings. To refund an online payment, contact Informativ support (Refund Policy §3.9).

Publishing Your Booking Page

Your booking page only becomes shareable once you hit Publish on Dashboard → Provider — the button unlocks once you have a business name and description, at least one active service (or, for Catering profiles, a slaughter/cooking/deco offering with at least one animal price, cooking package, or deco package), weekly availability set, and approved banking details (Profile → Banking). The dashboard lists anything still missing, and Unpublish (or unticking "Accepting bookings") takes the page offline again immediately. Your booking page lives at informativ.co.za/providers/your-business (older /provider/your-business/book links still work) and is also reachable from your public profile at /u/your_username/book.

Pricing

Each service you list has its own price — set it when you add or edit a service, and it's what clients see as the cost of that service. Separately, your Provider Profile has a single booking fee that applies to every service you offer, and an optional call-out fee if you tick "I do call-outs" (for on-site visits; not available on Catering profiles). The booking fee (plus call-out fee, if it applies) is the only amount Informativ actually collects from the client to secure a booking, through Yoco or PayFast — the rest of the service's price is yours to collect directly from the client, however you'd normally arrange that (cash, EFT, on the day, etc.). Commission is only ever charged on the booking fee actually collected, never on the full service price. Leaving a service's price blank shows clients "Price on request" instead of a figure.

Listing Services

Services are grouped in two levels. First add a category from Dashboard → Provider → Services → Manage Categories — e.g. "Hair Dressing". Then, under that category, add each specific bookable service you offer — e.g. "Braids", "Weave", "Cut & Style" — with its own price and duration. You can also set a buffer time afterward (e.g. cleaning time) before the next booking can start.

Setting Availability

From Dashboard → Provider → Availability, set your weekly working hours per day. You can also add date-specific exceptions for holidays or one-off closures/extended hours.

Public Holidays — Confirming Open / Closed

South African public holidays are managed centrally by the platform (Dashboard → Public Holidays for admins). A week before each holiday you'll get an in-app + email message asking you to confirm whether you'll be Open or Closed on that day — check Dashboard → Provider → Public Holidays to respond. Choosing Closed blocks the day entirely for new bookings; choosing Open keeps your normal weekly hours unless you set custom Opens at / Closes at times for that holiday, plus an optional note. Your response is saved as a date-specific availability exception, so clients immediately see the correct slots when they try to book. You can update it at any time before the holiday.

How Clients Book

Your public booking page lists your active services, each showing its own price. If you run a Catering profile, your slaughtering, cooking and deco offering appears in its own Catering Services section on the same page — clients tick any combination of slaughtering, cooking and deco, pick a slaughter package card and quantity plus the slaughter date and time, and/or a cooking package card and guest count, and/or a deco package card, and choose an event date — and catering-only providers are also listed in the public providers directory. Each cooking package is priced either per guest (multiplied by the guest count entered) or as a flat package price for the whole event, whichever you choose when adding it — the guest count is still collected either way so you know how many people to cook for, it just doesn't change the price for a flat package. Deco packages offer the same choice — flat, or per guest (e.g. table centrepieces priced per head) — except the guest count field only appears when a per-guest deco package is actually picked, since a flat deco package doesn't need one. On Dashboard → Provider → Catering you can also tick which occasions you cater for (weddings, funerals, corporate events, and more) — entirely optional, shown to clients as badges on that same section so they can tell at a glance whether you're a fit for their event. If you offer call-outs, the client chooses whether they'll come to your premises or you'll travel to them — a call-out adds your call-out fee and asks for their address, either picked from their saved addresses or entered fresh (which also saves it to their profile for next time). They then pick a date and one of your available time slots (already-booked times are automatically excluded), and pay the booking fee up front through Yoco, or through PayFast if they choose to save their card for future payments — there's no deposit/balance split on the booking fee itself, and the price summary makes clear that any remaining balance on the service's price is settled with you directly, not through checkout.

Catering bookings work the same way for availability and payment as regular bookings, using the weekly hours you set under Dashboard → Provider → Availability. A slaughter booking picks a slaughter date (on or before the event date) and then an actual time slot on that day's calendar — its length is however long you've said that animal takes to slaughter, clean, and cut, multiplied by the quantity ordered — so two clients can never be given the same slot. A cooking booking checks whether you're open on the relevant day: the client says whether they'll be cooking the night before the event or the day of, and that's the day your availability is checked against. A deco booking (flat price or per guest, depending on the package) checks whether you're open on the event date itself. Either way, the client pays your booking fee through Yoco immediately after submitting, and you're only notified once that payment actually clears — an abandoned, unpaid attempt never reaches you and never ties up your calendar for more than a few minutes. If you cancel a paid catering booking, the client is refunded that booking fee in full automatically, same as cancelling a paid regular booking.

Transport fee: from Dashboard → Provider → Catering Profile & Pricing, tick "I charge a transport fee per distance travelled" and set a rate per km (plus an optional minimum). Once enabled, clients see an "Event location" field on the booking page — they enter the address, and a live-estimated transport fee (driving distance from your profile address, at your rate per km) appears alongside the slaughter/cooking/deco totals. Like the rest of the catering estimate, it's settled directly with you, not through Yoco checkout, and shows on the booking confirmation and your Catering Bookings list.

Managing Bookings

From Dashboard → Provider → Bookings, confirm, start, and complete appointments — a booking's detail page shows the client's call-out address when it's a call-out, and the bookings list/dashboard flag call-outs with a small badge so you can spot them at a glance. If you cancel a paid booking yourself, it always refunds the client in full — the platform's commission already collected is non-refundable, same as equipment rental cancellations.

Scan to start: once a booking is confirmed, you can tap Scan Client QR to Start to open your camera and scan the client's own "My QR Code" (their Profile → My QR Code screen) instead of just tapping Mark In Progress — this confirms it's actually them before starting the service and records their arrival at the same time. The plain "Mark In Progress" button is still there too, for whenever scanning isn't practical.

No-shows: once 10 minutes have passed since a confirmed booking's scheduled time with no arrival and no service started, you can mark it a no-show yourself from the booking's detail page — this costs the client a demerit point and closes the booking out, no refund. If you haven't acted by then, the system now marks it a no-show for you automatically, so a booking never sits stuck waiting on a click. You'll already have been asked "has your client arrived?" a minute earlier, and the client themselves gets a warning that their check-in window is closing 3 minutes before this happens — so this is very much a last resort, not the first response to someone running a little late.

The mobile app has the same tools under More → Weekly Schedule and More → Provider Bookings: a day-by-day view of your working hours and appointments, and a bookings list where you can confirm, start, complete, or cancel from your phone — the same actions, same refund rules, as the dashboard.

Cancellation Fee Schedule

On Dashboard → Provider → Profile, set a waiting period (in hours) and a late cancellation fee (0–100%). If a client cancels their own booking with at least that much notice, they get a full refund. If they cancel inside that window, they forfeit your configured percentage of the booking fee to you, and are refunded the rest — the platform's commission is never refunded either way. Set the fee to 0% if you'd rather always refund clients in full regardless of notice. These terms (plus your own free-text cancellation policy, if you write one) show on your public booking page before a client pays, not just after they try to cancel — so keep them up to date.

Prefer to never refund the booking fee at all? Right next to the Booking Fee field is a "Booking fee is refundable on cancellation" toggle — switch it off and a client who cancels never gets any of it back, no matter how much notice they give, overriding the waiting period and late fee above entirely. Clients see this clearly on your booking page before they pay (a "Non-refundable" badge next to the fee, and the Cancellation Policy card spells it out), and again on their own booking page if they try to cancel. This only affects the client cancelling — if you cancel a paid booking yourself, it's still always refunded in full.

Reviews

Once you mark a booking as completed, the client can leave a 1–5 star rating and an optional comment — they may also get a WhatsApp message inviting them to, straight to that review page. Your average rating and review count show on your public booking page, your dashboard hub, and Dashboard → Provider → Reviews.

Request for Quote (Custom Requests)

Sometimes a client wants something your standard booking options don't cover — an after-hours time, or a call-out you haven't enabled. Your booking page has a "Request a Custom Quote" link for exactly this: the client describes what they need, picks a preferred time (which can be outside your set availability), and optionally asks you to come to them. You'll see it under Dashboard → Provider → Quote Requests and can either quote a price — either the full amount, or just a deposit percentage of it if you'd rather collect the rest yourself — or decline if you're not interested, with an optional reason. If the client approves and pays what's due (the full amount, or just the deposit), it becomes a normal booking on your Bookings page, managed exactly the same way as any other appointment. You have 48 hours to respond to a request before it's shown as overdue to the client (it won't auto-close, so you can still respond late). Catering profiles get this link too — since a catering profile has no individual listed services to anchor a request to, a client's request there is a general enquiry about your slaughtering/cooking/deco offering rather than a specific one; once approved and paid it's confirmed and the payment credited to your account directly (there's no separate booking record for it — coordinate the rest with the client yourself, the same way you already do for the rest of catering).

Asking for a Deposit Instead of Full Payment

When you quote a custom request, you can set a deposit percentage from 0–100% alongside your price. At 100% (the default) the client pays the full amount to confirm, same as before. Set it lower and the client only pays that percentage through Informativ to confirm the booking — you collect the remaining balance directly from them yourself, however you'd normally arrange that (cash, EFT, on the day, etc.) — Informativ doesn't track a due date for it or chase it up. Your booking page and dashboard always show both figures clearly: what was paid through the platform, and what's still owed to you. Platform commission is only ever charged on the deposit you actually receive, never on the balance. If you later need to cancel a deposit-based booking, the refund (and any late-cancellation fee, per your usual notice-period settings) is worked out from the deposit alone — the balance was never processed by Informativ, so it's unaffected either way.

Waiting List & Cancellation Offers

If a client tries to book a time that's already taken, they can join the waiting list for that exact date and time instead — no payment up front, just the same details a normal booking would need. If any booking for that slot is then cancelled (by you or the client, whenever it happens), the freed spot is offered out automatically: first to whoever already has a later appointment with you that same day for the same service (in case they'd rather move earlier), then to whoever's been waiting longest for that exact time. Each offer comes with a response window of up to a few hours — sooner if the cancellation happens close to the appointment itself. Someone waiting only pays once they actually confirm the spot; if nobody takes it, it just goes back to normal booking. You can see who's waiting for what, read-only, from Dashboard → Provider → Bookings → Waiting List — there's nothing for you to do, the whole process runs on its own.

Changing an Appointment Time

Clients can't reschedule a booking — there's no "change time" option, on the website or in the app. A client who needs a different time cancels the booking (your usual waiting period, late-cancellation fee and refund rules apply, exactly like any other cancellation) and then books again for the new time, paying the booking fee for the new booking. A cancelled booking's page has a Book Again button that opens your booking page. The one exception is a move-up offer (see "Waiting List & Cancellation Offers" above): if an earlier spot opens up the same day for the same service, the client may be offered it and can accept — their booking simply moves earlier, no extra payment and no cancellation fee — or decline and keep their original time. Clients can accept or decline a move-up offer from their booking page on the website or in the mobile app.

For Clients: Managing Your Bookings

Every booking you make shows up under Dashboard → Provider → My Bookings — you don't need to be a provider yourself to see this. From there you can view a booking's details and cancel it yourself. The booking page shows exactly what you'd be refunded (and any cancellation fee you'd forfeit) before you confirm — see "Cancellation Fee Schedule" above for how that's worked out. You'll also get a reminder about 24 hours before a confirmed appointment. The mobile app now shows the same list and lets you view and cancel a booking from your phone too, with the same refund rules — and accept or decline a move-up offer. You can't move a booking to a new time yourself; see "Changing an Appointment Time" above. Any custom quote requests you've sent are separate, under Dashboard → My Quote Requests — see "Request for Quote" above. If you joined a waiting list, or you're offered an earlier same-day spot, you'll find those under Dashboard → My Waiting List and on the booking's own page respectively. If a provider quoted you a deposit rather than the full amount, your booking page always shows both what you paid through Informativ and what's still owed directly to the provider — a cancellation refund is worked out from your deposit only, never the full quoted price.

When you arrive for a confirmed booking, the provider checks you in — either by scanning the "My QR Code" on your own Profile page/app, or by starting the service manually. If you haven't been checked in a few minutes after your appointment time, you'll get a push notification warning that your check-in window is closing. Once it's been 10 minutes with no check-in, the booking is automatically marked a no-show (the same thing that happens if the provider marks it themselves), which costs you a demerit point and isn't refundable — so it's worth showing up promptly and having your QR code ready.

Email Notifications & Invoices

Both you and the client get an email whenever a booking is confirmed or cancelled — the same information as the in-app/WhatsApp notification, just in your inbox too. Once a booking is confirmed, the client is emailed a PDF invoice automatically; either of you can also view or download it any time from the booking's detail page ("View Invoice"). If a booking is later cancelled, its invoice is marked accordingly.