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Booking setup
A first enquiry should help a client explain their idea. Start with the standard questions, then shape the later booking and preparation steps around your studio. The enquiry form, booking terms, digital waivers and staff checklist each have a different job.
Set up the client journey
Open Settings → Booking setup. The four stages follow the customer's journey:
- Enquiry form: choose which existing questions are hidden, optional or required when the client sends a request.
- Terms & cancellation: set your booking wording and cancellation or refund rules for review after quoting, before the client agrees or pays.
- Digital waivers: optionally publish your reviewed consent wording, health questions and health-data privacy notice for private client forms.
- Session checklist: set staff checks and references to your preparation, consent and aftercare documents for use before tattooing starts.
Owners and admins manage all four stages. Other business managers can manage the enquiry form but do not gain access to financial terms or preparation settings. Service prices and durations belong in Services; working hours and buffers belong in Booking hours.
These stages are not one large customer form. Publishing terms or a checklist does not add an agreement checkbox, medical questions or waiver to the initial enquiry.
Phone and walk-in appointments use the same studio terms, digital waivers, session checklist, artist duration/buffer settings and station rules. There is no separate switch to enable direct bookings, and public enquiry questions are not mandatory fields in the staff drawer. Add the appointment from Appointments. Choose email updates explicitly on that booking; global reminder settings do not opt a phone-only client into email. See Direct staff bookings.
Each stage explains what to do and shows any missing details before saving. Select a listed item to jump to its field. An incomplete save shows a notification and returns you to the list. Save changes before moving to another stage; the in-app dialog lets you keep editing or leave without saving.
You can continue with unchanged saved settings. The standard enquiry questions also work without customisation or a plan upgrade. Set the terms and cancellation choices together, preview and publish, then review optional digital waivers and the staff checklist. Returning to settings from the checklist does not enable your public portal or record customer agreement.
Choose the questions
Ask for the information you'll use to understand the piece. Keep extra questions optional when you can discuss them later, so the first enquiry feels like the start of a conversation.
Name, email and tattoo description stay required. On every plan, extra questions can be hidden, optional or required. You can prepare these settings before subscribing.
The customer form follows Your details → Your tattoo → Preferences → Review & submit. Contact details come first. When Body area is enabled, an illustrated Show where your tattoo will go card appears before the Body area and Rough size fields. Try 3D placement opens the guide only when the client chooses it. The guide is optional and is not a separate required step. Clients can use the normal area and size fields, which appear with the tattoo idea before images and links.
Body area and rough size have independent visibility and requirement settings. Hiding Body area also hides the placement guide, but does not hide a visible Rough size question. A saved guide can supply the area and size; removing it returns the client to their earlier field choices.
The guide positions a shape or shows sleeve coverage. Reference images are supplied separately.
Reference images & links controls both image uploads and inspiration links. When required, the client can supply at least one image or one link. When hidden, neither appears in the enquiry form.
Clients can choose up to five JPG, PNG or WebP screenshots, photos or artwork, up to 10MB each. Local previews let them check and remove images before sending. Images are prepared on the client's device and uploaded only when they submit from Review. They stay private with the enquiry, rather than appearing in the public portfolio.
These are controls for the existing questions, not a custom question builder. Save your changes, then choose View enquiry form or Preview enquiry form to check the customer experience. Submission does not agree studio terms, reserve time or confirm a session.
Manage studio booking terms
Open Terms & cancellation to set your booking choices and cancellation rules together. Choose your usual deposit approach, switch on included design work and aftercare products, and set how many design revisions are included. Further revisions are agreed and priced separately. Actual deposit amounts and booking-specific exceptions stay in each quote.
For each cancellation band (no-show, under 24 hours, 24–48 hours, 48–72 hours, 3–7 days and at least one week), choose Full refund, Keep deposit, Percentage refund or Staff review. A percentage refund can apply to the Deposit paid or the Amount paid. For a deposit percentage, any other advance payment is refunded in full. These choices recommend a refund for staff review; they do not refund money or charge a card. Advanced policy lets you edit other notice bands and existing charge rules.
Check Legal seller details for the saved legal name, company number where applicable, public business postal address and customer support email and phone. These are shared with business verification and merchandise, and are read-only here. Use Change legal seller details to edit them in Settings → Business verification. Add the legal seller there before publishing terms; the studio profile name or address does not fill this record automatically.
Choose Preview & publish to read the complete wording and cancellation rules, then Publish this version to save them together. There is no separate cancellation save.
Published terms show their version and last-modified date; unsaved changes are marked as a draft. You can view the published version to compare. Already-issued or agreed terms keep their saved wording, cancellation rules and booking amounts.
After seller or public contact changes, review the new draft and republish before preparing new agreements. An open agreement with outdated seller details needs replacement before it can be agreed or paid.
To use approved wording you already have, expand Use your own terms or another system. Use your own terms supports pasted text and plain text or Markdown imports. Use another system keeps agreement in your approved external process. Review the resulting wording and supplier details for your studio's legal and insurance requirements before publishing.
After saving a quote, open Booking terms in that booking's Overview. Prepare and review the exact wording and amounts, then share it for customer agreement. The customer can agree on a private page and download a text copy. When terms email is available, it also provides the full agreed wording. Terms can be agreed without a deposit.
External mode records staff confirmation and an evidence reference on the booking. An optional document link does not preserve the linked contents or collect a signature. Keep the agreed version and original evidence in your approved system.
Publishing a studio version is not customer agreement. Opening an enquiry, email or payment request does not supply agreement either. Existing agreements keep their saved wording and cancellation rules.
When recording a cancellation or no-show, the outcome drawer uses the policy saved with the booking's accepted terms or accepted payment request, including a recorded grace period. Missing historical agreement leads to manual review. Policy suggestions do not move money or charge a penalty; an owner/admin reviews retention or refunds and records the decision. See Refunds and payment checks.
Set up digital waivers
Digital waivers are optional and included in every paid plan. Open Digital waivers to add your studio's reviewed tattoo-consent wording, review the health questions and provide a health-data privacy notice. Confirm the review and publish before using it with a client. InkWell does not supply a legal consent template for your studio.
The form requires at least 80 characters each for the consent wording and health information privacy notice, plus at least one health question. If saving is blocked, the highlighted field explains what to complete and receives focus. Your draft stays in place. After editing, confirm the process review again before choosing Save waivers.
In a booking's Session section, prepare the waiver, review its wording and share the private link with the client yourself. The client does not need an account. They answer yes/no health questions, add any details, type their name as a signature and separately confirm tattoo consent, answer accuracy and explicit consent to processing health information.
Health answers are encrypted at rest. Owners, admins and the assigned artist can review them. Review the answers with the client and record the staff review before tattooing. When digital waivers are enabled, a current submitted waiver and completed review are required before starting or completing the tattoo session. This does not replace your age, identity or procedure checks, or provide medical clearance.
Issued waivers preserve their consent wording and question snapshot. If a change makes an open waiver outdated, replace it and ask the client to complete the current version. Updating the studio template does not rewrite issued forms. Clients can download a text copy including their submitted answers; staff consent downloads exclude health answers, which stay in the restricted review view.
Clients can withdraw consent to use their health information through their private link; withdrawal erases the health answers while preserving the tattoo-consent snapshot. Owners and admins can also erase health answers in Studio. If digital waivers are switched off, continue using your approved external consent and health-review process. Switching them off stops new forms but does not bypass the requirements for forms already issued.
Prepare for the session
Use this stage to help the team know which checks and documents belong to your studio's preparation process. Name them in words a teammate will recognise on the day.
Open Session checklist for the staff process. Linked booking agreement shows the source configured in Terms & cancellation. It is read-only here: use View terms to change the source, or Set up terms if none has been published.
Where a current booking agreement is required, the session checklist reads that booking's managed or externally recorded agreement instead of asking staff to tick it again. A missing or stale agreement needs review in the booking. Older checklist evidence and agreements remain attached to their original versions.
The remaining document-name fields are references for staff. The checklist itself does not upload documents, generate customer forms or collect medical answers, signatures or tattoo consent; optional Digital waivers handles the client form separately. Name your approved preparation/health-review process, tattoo-consent document and aftercare guidance, then add up to five further checks if needed.
Publish the reviewed checklist to enable it for tattoo sessions. Consultations are excluded. Staff complete it in the booking's Session section; preparation, age, procedure consent and aftercare checks are completed on the session day. Digital waiver records stay with the session. If you use external consent instead, keep its original evidence in your approved system. Identity evidence remains part of your studio's own process.
You can keep the suggested staff checklist if it matches your documents and process: confirm the review and publish. Empty or repeated additional checks are listed for correction. An unchanged published checklist lets you return to settings without reviewing or publishing it again. If settings cannot load, use the retry action before publishing; refreshing the saved source preserves your current edits.
Set quote-review timing
Set quote-review timing in Settings → Automations. The default is seven days. Business managers can choose a studio-wide interval from 1 to 90 days on all plans.
The queue uses the latest recorded quote or queued client update. If the history is missing, open the enquiry and check what happened before following up. A queued message is not proof of delivery. Quote-review reminders flag work for your team. They do not automatically message the client, expire the enquiry or change payment status.
Handle passed preferred dates
If all preferred dates have passed, offer alternatives or ask for new dates. Past dates stay as history; an enquiry is not a missed appointment or an automatic waitlist entry.
Try the client journey
Preview the enquiry form on a phone and check the questions clients will see. Try an image and an inspiration link, move between steps and check the final review. Once the page accepts requests, send a clearly labelled practice enquiry and open its Images section in Studio. Check the customer acknowledgement and studio notification separately from the saved request. Check any published terms and checklist before using them with a client. An older agreement keeps its original wording; review the agreement again if the quote changes.