How Timely makes life Smooth & Simple

When he set up Smooth & Simple in Manchester in 2014, he was one of the first UK businesses to use Timely and, right from the start, loved how it worked.

“I could really see the value in a system that was intuitive, took the admin off our hands and meant we could just concentrate on doing our job.” says Nishant.

“Our aim is to make our clients feel like they’re the only person in the clinic, and with Timely running things we can concentrate on delivering that personal service.”

Nishant remembers, “The real magic happened when we moved our clinic calendar to Timely. Which not only hosted the diary, but allowed us to take booking online so that diary could almost manage itself. Clients could see availability themselves, so didn’t phone up to check, and this freed up the phone lines for first time enquiries. Suddenly, our calendar of bookings became something that our clients owned as well as us and that was empowering for them, while creating time for us.”

With Timely at the heart of his salon, Nishant and his team were keen to discover what else Timely could help them with.

“Well, where do I start? Timely is so much more than booking software. I can’t believe all the admin it takes off our hands. Timely automatically sends out appointment reminders which means we have dramatically cut down on the number of no-shows each week. You wouldn’t believe how many clients would forget their appointment without Timely’s gentle reminders!”

Smooth & Simple is an aesthetics business and so most of the salon’s treatments require pre-appointment client consults, which can take a lot of time and paperwork. Now Timely takes care of all that, and emails out consent and consult forms ahead of appointments, everything’s sorted and legally compliant before the client arrives and Nishant and his team can spend all their time concentrating on giving their clients the best possible treatment.

“TimelyPay is about so much more than just taking payments.”

Smooth & Simple have always used TimelyPay to make getting paid, and the checkout experience for clients, one more beautiful part of their salon. But now TimelyPay terminals are available Nishant says things have got even better.

Over the years Nishant and his team had used many different terminals in the salon and Nishant says “I’ve always thought they were much of a muchness, I mean, how different can a terminal be?” But since using a TimelyPay terminal, Nishant has changed his mind.

“It offers so much more than a standard terminal, I didn’t appreciate this until I started using it. I cannot stress that enough! It integrates so well with the Timely system. It’s not just about taking payments. You save so much time with not having to reconcile transactions, not to mention the embarrassment of keying in the wrong payment.”

Even though mistyped payments didn’t happen too often in the salon, Nishant says the worry was always there. He says was always double checking to make sure he’d typed in the correct amount and checking none of the staff did it either.

“You can’t mess up the transaction. That’s huge. No more mistakenly charging someone £2.50 instead of £250!”

“Until you don’t have that constant worry any more, you just don’t appreciate how good it is to simply trust the Timely system and know that it’s right every time!”

Nishant also likes how the new terminal makes accounting easier. “When you’re doing your accounts, you get your single payment that goes through, you’re not having to drill down into every single day’s payments to make sure those amounts are right. That’s huge and saves so much time.”

From a financial sense the switch to a TimelyPay terminal was a complete no brainer for Smooth & Simple. Nishant recalls “Timely’s terminal processing fee was low, compared to what we had been paying and next day payments are what every business wants.”

“Because TimelyPay and a TimelyPay terminal work together, the money the salon has made is available the very next business day. Nowadays you can’t afford to not have that money in your bank account as soon as possible.”

Being in the aesthetic business, the way the terminal looks is important for Nishant too. “It’s a nice light unit that we’ve mounted onto our reception desk. We don’t need to handle it ourselves and clients like that. In a post-Covid era, it seems everyone wants to touch as few things as possible!”

“Timely is a complete system and so much more than just taking bookings and dealing with payments.”

Nishant also loves Timely reports and analytics which give him clear insights into his salon and enables him to make smarter and more confident business decisions. 

“Because TimelyPay works in sync with Timely, all that information flows through to the salon’s reports, giving us great insights on our transactions and cash flow. Before Timely I had an idea of what my most and least profitable treatments were, but now I know for sure. No more guesswork!”

So what would Nishant say to a salon that’s thinking of switching to Timely and a TimelyPay terminal?

“You’ve got to try it, it’s a complete system and so much more than just taking bookings or payments. Timely gives you a really good one stop solution to a lot of salon management problems, where you have stock control, online booking, calendar management, text marketing, payment support, help with reconciliation and everything working together.”

“You’ve suddenly freed up so much of your time not having to do all that admin and that’s massive.”