Selling your services has become simpler following the formal launch of free online booking and reservation system by a former Royal Bank of Scotland employee.
BookingBug.com lets anyone from a fitness trainer, to a babysitter or music teacher manage their time, take bookings and payments.
The free version is suitable for small scale ventures, like dog walkers, founder Glenn Shoosmith said. Businesses with more sophisticated needs like B&Bs and sports clubs pay between £10 and £20 a month.
Mr Shoosmith, 33, wrote equity derivative trading systems for RBS until he left last year.
“My Dad always ran his own company and I always wanted to run by own company,” he said.
The idea behind BookingBug was to create a simple system that would tell potential customers whether the service they wanted was available online without the need to call up.
The software sits on the businesses’ existing website and will also be embedded in other related sites popular with potential customers, from local sports clubs, to community centres and tourist information sites.
“If you only have a booking system on your website then you have to get the customer to come to your website,” said Mr Shoosmith.
Instead, BookingBug has struck deals to install its booking software on other information websites, like free business directory BrownBook and review site Trusted Places. The site had 350 businesses trialing its service and took 3,500 bookings before it went live.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/yourbusiness/
