Home › Features
FeaturesStop stitching together a booking app, a POS, a spreadsheet and a group chat. KaloDesk runs the calendar, the walk-in rotation, the kiosk, checkout, texting, your Google reviews and commission payroll from one system — built and hardened on a real salon floor, not in a product meeting.
Twelve areas, one login, unlimited technicians. Nothing below is an add-on and nothing below is priced per feature.
A per-technician calendar in 1 to 7 day views with a live red line on the current time. Drag an appointment to move it, click an empty slot to book it pre-filled, or open the quick view to call the client, change status, send a reminder, check out or rebook. Book several technicians for one client in one modal, stamp out up to twelve identical appointments for a phone-in party, split a service to another tech mid-ticket, and mute a tech from same-day online booking in one tap. Off hours cross-hatch, vacations shade, notes flagged with an exclamation point turn into a red badge on the block, and auto-refresh pauses while you are mid-drag so the screen never yanks out from under you.
A hosted booking page clients can install on their phone like an app. They pick a tech from an avatar grid with a specialty line, see both the cash and the card price up front, and only see techs approved for that service group, with each tech's custom hours and time off already applied. You set the buffer, the slot increment, the minimum notice, how many minutes before close booking stops, and how far ahead a named tech can be booked. Phone numbers are verified by texted code — and verification fails open, so a carrier outage never costs you a booking. Bookings dedupe against the existing client by phone, so visit history and loyalty stay on one record.
This is walk-in queue software, not a cancellation waitlist. The rotation tracks whose turn is next and keeps turns even across the floor, with credit assigned at checkout — a full turn or a half turn against a dollar threshold you set, so a ten-minute polish change does not count the same as a full set. The queue shows who is in service, who is next and how long each person has waited, beside your booked appointments on the same screen. A walk-in reserve refuses "Anyone" online bookings once they would take your last free tech. Non-techs can clock in for payroll without entering the rotation, and "Clock Out All & End Day" clears the queue.
Stand a tablet by the door in full-screen lockdown with an auto-return countdown between clients. Clients tap their number on a giant on-screen keypad — no keyboard — and matching tolerates whatever format the number was stored in, with a name fallback so a duplicate record never turns a booked client into a walk-in. The kiosk speaks a welcome by name and who they are seeing, sings happy birthday if theirs is within seven days, shows the live count and wait estimate, captures a birthday and the last four digits of whoever referred them, shows your current promo, offers a QR code to book on the app, and drops them into the queue — optionally auto-assigned to the next tech in rotation.
Ring up services and retail with cash and card prices set as a pair. Fold several checked-in clients into one sale so mom pays for the whole family, split a payment across as many tenders as it takes with live remaining and change due, and split the tip across techs by revenue, evenly or in custom dollars. A ticket physically cannot close underpaid. The customer-facing tablet lets the client choose cash or card with the savings shown, pick their own tip, review the itemized total and sign with a finger — the signature prints on the receipt with a timestamp. Card runs through a Helcim terminal with live polling and a manual fallback. Refunds can be partial and repeated until the original amount is used up, ticket edits and voids carry an "ADJUSTED" badge behind an admin unlock, the drawer pops on a cash sale, and supply cost comes off before commission is figured. KaloDesk Payments is available now — see the fee schedule.
Confirmations and reminders send automatically, with a second morning-of reminder at a time you choose. Texting works both ways: a client replies YES to confirm or NO to cancel and the calendar updates itself, then acknowledges with the date, time and tech. You get an owner alert text on every online booking, cancellation and late cancel. Six templates for SMS and email are editable with merge fields, and the composer shows a live segment count with cost coaching plus short links so a reminder fits in one segment. Win-back and birthday campaigns preview the exact audience before send, skip anyone contacted in the last N days, and auto-exclude opt-outs. Full STOP and START handling, email as a parallel channel with replies routed to the salon, and digital receipts and gift card codes by text or email.
Loyalty points accrue at checkout with a full ledger, and the client can see their balance in the self-service portal from the link in their reminder text. Gift cards sell with bonus tiers — spend $100, get $110 — and the code goes out by text or email, resendable with the current balance. A liability tracker keeps the issued, redeemed, reloaded, adjusted and voided history in one ledger, so you know exactly what you owe in outstanding balances. Voids and adjustments require an admin unlock, and the platform maximum on a card is a ceiling you can lower but not raise.
Commission is calculated from the tickets already rung up, with supply cost deducted before the split so the tech's cut is figured on price minus supplies. Clock-in hours flow from the time clock into payroll with no re-entry, which also gives you revenue per hour per tech. Print pay slips on a thermal printer — daily, weekly or bi-weekly, one tech or all techs with cut lines — after an on-screen preview. Change a tech's rate across a past date range and see the exact dollar difference before committing; originals are preserved and audit-logged. Pay period presets cover this and last week, this and last month, bi-weekly, YTD and last year. SSNs are stored encrypted with an admin-only reveal for W-2 and 1099 paperwork, and a tech who forgets to clock out is asked what time they left at their next PIN login.
Every review on your Google Business Profile syncs into KaloDesk every six hours, or on demand. The dashboard shows your average rating, total tracked, how many are awaiting a reply, what is new in the last thirty days and how many Google has removed, with the unreplied count badged on the nav. The reply queue is sorted worst-and-newest first, so a fresh one-star outranks an old five-star, and you post, edit or delete owner replies with a saved signature. Replies are queued, so a Google outage or an expired token never loses what you typed. Suggested drafts give you a starting point, a six-month trend chart tracks count and average by month, and an export from your old system backfills full history on day one.
Graduated instead of blanket. Clients book free until they cross a no-show threshold you set; past it, booking online requires a card on file — nothing is charged at booking — and past that, online booking is blocked with a "please call us" message you write. If they do miss, the fee (default $25) is charged by hand in one tap. Card on file for no-show fees is available on the Local self-hosted edition today; the Cloud version is not built yet. The rest applies to both editions: a late-cancel cutoff you configure that flags the appointment, optionally counts toward the threshold and texts you a LATE CANCEL alert; automatic no-show flagging after a grace period; amber "LATE" then red "NO-SHOW?" badges on past-due un-arrived appointments; and a per-client no-show counter on the client record.
Your techs get their own screen on their own phone. They open it in a browser, pick their name and enter their PIN — no admin account, nothing to install, signed in for thirty days, locked out for fifteen minutes after five wrong PINs. They see their own schedule for any date with services, duration, source and notes, and their own take-home for this or last week and this or last month — commission plus tips, broken down day by day. On the floor they add or change services on their own ticket and hit "Ready for checkout," hand a ticket to another tech, check whether anyone is waiting on them, adjust their own appointment length, and block their own time — which reserves the schedule and hides them from online booking for that window.
Reminders go out through two carriers, not one: Telnyx and Twilio run side by side and a failed send is automatically retried on the second one. Every attempt is logged with provider, segment count, result, error text and whether it was a failover, and a 30-day view shows sent, failed, segments and failover sends per provider so you can see what texting really costs. A health monitor runs eight checks — database, is the scheduler alive, pending migrations, an inbound-text canary that alerts if no client reply has landed in two to three days, outbound failure rate, sync freshness, backup freshness and disk space — because "is it up" and "is it well" are different questions. Backups are AES-256 encrypted and you can download or email them, with the password never in the email. Schema changes never run unattended on a live salon, and the Local edition keeps ringing up sales through an internet outage.
Nail salons live and die by the walk-in. KaloDesk keeps a live turn queue that tracks who's next and keeps rotations even across your technicians, so nobody argues about whose turn it is.
Set a tablet by the door and let clients check themselves in. They pick who they're here to see, join the queue, and add their birthday for a little delight later — all without tying up the front desk.
You're checked in — take a seat, you're next with Maria.
A client leaves a five-star review. Weeks later it is gone, and Google will not tell you why or show you what it said. KaloDesk already saved it. Every review that disappears lands in an append-only log with the reviewer name, the star rating, the original date and the full text Google no longer serves — which is the evidence you need to file a complaint instead of an argument. You get a text the moment one vanishes, you keep case notes per removal and tick "Reported to Google" once you have filed, and if the review comes back KaloDesk detects the restore on its own. If Google ever answers a sync with zero reviews, the sync aborts rather than marking your entire history as removed.
"What do I have today" and "what did I make this week" are the two interruptions that never stop. So every tech gets their own screen on their own phone. They open it in a browser, pick their name and enter their PIN — no admin account, nothing to install, and they stay signed in for thirty days. They see their schedule for any date and their take-home pay broken down day by day. On the floor they add the extra service the client asked for, then hit "Ready for checkout," so the ticket is right before the client reaches the register. They can hand a ticket to another tech, see who is waiting on them, and block their own time, which hides them from online booking for that window at the same time.
This week: $1,240 commission + $386 tips. Tap any day for the breakdown.
Yes. A full per-technician appointment calendar and a live walk-in turn queue run side by side on the same screen, so the front desk seats a walk-in without losing track of the 2:30 fill. Every appointment carries a "booked via" badge — Online, Walk-in, Quick Book, Front desk or Kiosk — so you always know where the client came from.
Yes. Every salon gets a hosted booking page that installs on a client's phone like an app. Clients pick a technician from an avatar grid, see cash and card pricing before they commit, and verify their phone with a texted code. The link in their reminder text opens a self-service portal where they can confirm, reschedule, change the services on the booking or cancel — with no password and no call to your desk.
Yes. The built-in POS rings up services and retail, captures tips, splits a payment across several tenders, and prints receipts. It also does the things front desks actually get stuck on: combined checkout so one person pays for the whole family, tip splits across technicians, partial and repeat refunds with an audit trail, and a ticket that cannot close underpaid.
Yes. Commission is calculated from the services already rung up, with supply cost deducted before the split, and clock-in hours flow straight from the time clock into payroll with no re-entry. You can print daily, weekly or bi-weekly pay slips on a thermal printer — per technician or all technicians with cut lines — and see revenue per hour per technician.
The Local (self-hosted) edition runs on a machine in your salon, so the calendar, the queue and checkout keep working through an internet outage; texting and online booking resume when the connection comes back. The Cloud edition needs a connection. Both editions run a health monitor with eight checks, so a quiet failure gets reported instead of discovered on a Saturday.
Yes. KaloDesk keeps an append-only log of every review that disappears, with the reviewer name, the star rating, the original date and the full text Google no longer serves. You get a text the moment a review vanishes, you can add case notes and tick "Reported to Google," and if the review comes back it is detected automatically. That saved text is the evidence you file with.
Yes. Reviews sync from your Google Business Profile every six hours, or on demand. The reply queue is sorted worst-and-newest first, so a fresh one-star sits above an old five-star, and you can post, edit or delete owner replies with a saved signature. Replies are queued, so a Google outage or an expired token never loses what you typed.
With a graduated policy instead of a blanket deposit. Clients book free until they cross a no-show threshold you set. After that, booking online requires a card on file — nothing is charged at the time of booking — and past that, online booking is blocked with a "please call us" message. If someone does miss, the fee (default $25) is charged by hand in one tap. Card on file is available on the Local (self-hosted) edition today; the Cloud version is not built yet. Late cancels have their own cutoff window, flag the appointment and text you an alert.
Yes. The tech portal opens on their own phone in a browser — they pick their name and enter their PIN, no admin account and nothing to install. They see their schedule for any date, their take-home pay for the week or month with a day-by-day breakdown, and they can add or change services on their own ticket and hit "Ready for checkout." They can hand a ticket to another technician, check whether anyone is waiting on them, and block their own time, which also hides them from online booking for that window.
Yes, when both carriers are configured. KaloDesk runs Telnyx and Twilio at the same time and automatically retries a failed send on the second carrier. Every attempt is logged with the provider, the segment count, the result and whether it was a failover, and a 30-day view in Settings shows sent, failed, segments and failover sends per provider so you can see what texting actually costs.
Yes. Stand any tablet by the door in full-screen kiosk mode. Clients tap their number on a giant on-screen keypad — no keyboard — and phone matching tolerates whatever format the number was stored in, with a name fallback so a duplicate record does not turn a booked client into a walk-in. The kiosk speaks a welcome by name, shows the current wait estimate, captures a birthday and a "referred by" number, and drops the client into the turn queue.
Yes. Cash and card prices are set as a pair and shown everywhere — on the booking page, on the register and on the customer-facing tablet, where the client picks cash or card and sees the savings before choosing their own tip and signing on glass. Card payments run through a Helcim terminal today, with a manual fallback to record a result read off the terminal. KaloDesk Payments is available now — see the fee schedule.