Starting a service without a booking

When a customer is in front of you and you're ready to start the service now, skip the booking step and record the encounter directly. Use this for drop-ins you're seeing immediately, where creating a booking would just be ceremony. Once the service exists, you can still send a form to a kiosk for the customer to fill in.

For walk-ins where the customer should self-serve at a kiosk or QR code, use Creating a walk-in booking instead — that flow creates a booking and records intake in one step, driven by the customer.

Steps

1. Open the Add Service sheet

   There are three entry points:

   • From the Dashboard, open the run-sheet menu on today's group and tap Add service. The action only appears on day groups that include today — you can't start a same-time service against a future day.
   • From a customer's profile, tap Add service on the services list — this pre-fills the customer for you.
   • From anywhere, run Add service via the command palette (⌘+K).
2. Pick the customer

   Search for the customer by name. If they aren't in your records yet, tap Add customer in the sheet — the Create Customer sheet opens inline, and you return to the service sheet with the new customer selected.

3. Pick the service

   Choose the service offering you want to record.

4. Confirm

   Tap Add Service. Light creates the encounter and opens it so you can start recording straight away — no booking is created.

The service appears in the customer's profile and on the Dashboard feed alongside scheduled bookings, so you don't lose track of work in progress.

What this isn't

• Not a replacement for bookings. Scheduled work still goes through Creating a booking. This flow is for the cases where a booking would be busywork.
• Not a way to skip prescreeners. If the service has intake forms, you'll still see them on the encounter page — fill them with the customer, or send them to a kiosk so the customer fills them while you finish another job.