Yes, updates are available to those who purchase support. Updates can be attained by an Automatic Update on SoftBooking, which checks the web site for any updates from your current version.

Yes you can, with our built-in internet backup service, at a minimal cost of £99 per year, you can have a backup of your very important database on our FTP site. It is so easy even my six year old nephew can do it. Having an off site backup is worth its weight in gold.

With SoftBooking comes a 'training mode' state. This means that you can run SoftBooking using a training database to actually be able to show payments going through, create bookings, add dummy clients and so on.

Yes, this is not a problem. The cost of the Server version will be deducted from your initial cost to keep costs low. An engineer will have to come in and set it up; making sure your network is working and SoftBooking is setup to talk over the network.

SoftBooking was fully tested on Vista with a result of 95% that worked fine. All of the issues have been ironed out and we are confident to sell it to users using Vista.

Once or before your 30 day trial is up, on the SoftBooking trail form click 'Activate your product', after that just follow the three steps to activation. All you have to do is tell the operator your code, and the operator reciprocates with another code for you to enter in - all done!

Would you believe it, SoftBooking comes standard with one FREE home user license. The reason for this is because you can only run SoftBooking at one time, either at the salon or at your home. This is generally used to do back office functions for example reporting, tidying up the database and son.

SoftBookings' main principle is to make descent software at an affordable price. People would say, if it's so cheap it's not worth going with it. In our eyes, our competitors are selling the same product for much, much more than our price - we believe that SoftBooking will sell a lot more if the price is right and the level of service goes hand-in-hand with the quality.

Our room facility is available from the options screen. Setting up a room is very easy, all you have to do is select the treatments and the number of treatments that can be done at one time that the room can accommodate and that's it - SoftBooking takes over all validations on the booking screen.

SMS reminders can be sent, our system uses the Skype engine to send the message. This is mainly due to the fact that Skype has a very cheap rate to send SMS messages. You can also send a specific SMS to a specific Client - found on Client Card under Records tab.

From the main Client list, you can select as few or as many Clients as you wish to send a printable document, or an email. With the grid functionality, you can use the filter to only show the Clients you want to send to, for example: 1. You can filter the list by date of birth, only showing people over the age of 60 to send a mail shot. 2. Select all of your 'best spenders' and send them a £5 off voucher. 3. You can even filter by the post code, send out strategic mail to a certain area of the country.

SoftBooking comes equipped with a 'Merge Clients' facility. This is found on the left hand bar when looking at the main Clients list. You select the duplicated Clients from the list, then click on the 'Merge Clients'. A form will appear asking you to create a true Client information, this is so that you may have put a mobile number in one record and a telephone number in another so you would take the information from both Client to make a final version. Click 'Merge' and only one Client will be left containing ALL information from other Clients, including: 1. General Details 2. Records (CRM) 3. Images 4. Invoices 5. Sales totals added together 6. Contraindications 7. Treatment Plans 8. Minute Cards 9. Bookings 10. Courses And that's about all... It is a large, very useful function which will be used rather a lot as how many times you may enter Smtih or Smthi instead of Smith.

When making or editing a booking, there is check box below the staff members name called 'Therapist Requested?'. If you tick this box if the appointment is moved from one staff member to another, a warning message is displayed stating the therapist is requested, are you sure.

Contraindications are now an essential part of SoftBooking, trying to cut out any mistakes regarding treatment done on Clients or alternatively products bought. In options, Client Card, the core contraindications list is changeable to give the list of illnesses, allergies etc you want. A standard list is supplied with SoftBooking so you don't have to set it up from scratch. On the Client Card, there is a contraindications tab which contains the core list for the user to tick and enter a description if they have the specific contraindication. This procedure is the same for products and treatments. When a treatment is selected or a product is bought by the Client, a check is done for any contraindication discretion - in which case a warning or a stop message is displayed.

Machine cards are on the Client Card as a tab. Either from the Client Card or from the options, machines can be set up for laser clinic machines or electrolysis machines. The user can set what column are to be displayed on each machine giving a very robust system for what ever machines the salon may be using.

Setting up minute based products/treatments can be done. This can be setup either on the products or the treatments, as there is a tick box at the top of the entry screens for 'minute based'. If the minute based is ticked, a tab is enabled for the user to enter a matrix of descriptions, minutes and costs. If a Client buys x amount of minutes, the minutes go on to the Client Card. It is the same when minutes are used, they get taken off the Clients minute card. When purchasing minutes, the system rather cleverly works out the 'best deal' for the Client from the price matrix.

As the data is the property of the salon, SoftBooking allows the exporting of data on any grid you find on the system by right mouse clicking on the grid or on the left hand panel under 'Grid Options'. Exporting facility includes: 1. Print preview 2. Open in Excel 3. Open in XML 4. Save to a CSV file (comma separated) Please note: This does however only apply to administrators onto the system as I'm sure the salon wouldn't wish for a 'bad' member of staff to take their Client list.

When the staff member has never logged in before, if they type 'password' as the password, a dialog box appears asking for what they want their password to be set as. To change their password, an administrator can go to their Staff Card and click on the button 'Reset' next to the password. Again, it sets the password to 'password' for when they go back in to set it once again.

This can be done by multi-selecting either treatments or products and right mouse clicking on a selected item. In the menu there is a list of items under Set Product Group(s) (or Set Treatment Group(s)) containing all groups available. If the user selects a group, all of the selected items will be set to the selected group.

This can be done by multi-selecting products and right mouse clicking on a selected item. In the menu there is a list of items under Set Supplier(s) containing all Suppliers available. If the user selects a Supplier, all of the selected items will be set to the selected Supplier.

On the Clients, Products, Treatments, Suppliers, Purchase Orders and Staff grids, any column shown in the grid, the search criteria will go through each column field. Please note: On the Client grid, there is a additional function where if you are searching for a name, you may enter 'John Smith' or 'Smith John' or 'Mr Smith' or 'John Mr'. Basically it swaps all of the search string into any possible combination between spaces.

Just like with any other product, such as Outlook 2003, you can right mouse on the column headers which displays a list of available fields. This list will have ticks by the already displayed column, just click on the field and it will be displayed.

Grouping the grid by a field is more of an advanced feature however it can be deemed as very useful. On the left hand side panel, under 'Grid Options', there is link called 'Show Group Header', click on this and the top of the grid will show a blue empty bar. Once enabled, just click on any column and drag it to the blue bar and let go. This will group the data by the specified column. To remove it, drag the column back to the other columns and drop it back in a position. For example: This can be especially useful on Treatments when grouping by Treatment Group, the grid will therefore show what treatments are under what group...

No, the booking system has lots of validations so when a booking is being moved or copied, it does numerous amounts of checks to make sure it can fit.

In the Options, System Setup - there is a tab called EOD Reports, in here you can specify what reports you require to run for the End of Day routine.

In the Options, Commission Structure - there are settings on Treatments and Products asking what percentage the staff member gets on either. The commission is automatically done thereafter via the payment screen as there is a column for each item paid for with which staff member gets the commission. Please note: There are reports where the information is available to see and a Commission Modification where an administrator can go through and change any anomalies.

So simple, when SoftBooking closes it prompts to run the backup. From the backup itself, click on the '...' button in the backup area and select your memory stick drive. Then click 'Backup' and that's it. Simple.