Signing in
You sign in with your email and a password. On a device Usual does not recognise it also emails you a code, so signing in there takes both. You can ask for a code instead of a password at any time.
Everything you need
on the first day.
What a customer and a shop each need to get going, in the words the apps actually use. If the answer is not here, write to us and a person answers.
Day one · customers
Add it once, and it is yours.
Saving your first Usual
Tap Add to Usual and pick how to say it: type a few words, photograph the result or the receipt, say it out loud, add a PDF receipt or invoice, or fill it in by hand.
Usual reads it back and asks before anything is kept. Nothing saves until you say so.
What a Usual holds
A Usual is a service you come back to: your preferences, the place and the person, photos, the visits behind it, and how often you tend to return. When the rhythm comes round it appears under Usual thinks you’re due.
Letting a shop see it
Open the Usual, choose what to share, and share it with the shop. They will only ever see what is ticked here. Sharing never gives anyone the ability to change what you have saved.
Shared Usuals lists every shop that can see something of yours. Stop sharing and its access ends straight away.
Away from home
Your usual travels with you. Away from home, you don’t start over: show any barber, groomer or garage your Usual, book someone Usual matches you with, or send it ahead once you’ve booked.
Reminders
Usual learns how often you go and nudges you when something is about due, and tells you when a booking is confirmed, moved or cancelled. Never marketing, never daily.
On a phone with Usual installed they arrive as notifications; until then they wait for you in the app, under Notifications. Email updates carry the same confirmations and cancellations if you want them.
Day one · businesses
Seven screens, about five minutes.
Set up your business runs in order, and you can change any of it later.
The setup, step by step
- Set up your business · the business name, your name, a work email and a password.
- What kind of business is this? · Beauty, Pet, Auto or Home. It decides what Usual remembers about your customers: a groomer needs different notes than a garage.
- Where do you take bookings? · Usual, Square, Fresha, Vagaro, Squire, Booksy, or Something else. Nothing is connected on this screen. You record the answer and connect afterwards.
- Your services · add what you offer, or Add a service by hand. Nothing is imported for you.
- Who works here? · Invite someone for each person. No email goes out: the invite waits on that address, and they find it on Today after they sign up with it.
- What customers see · the shop name, the address, a sentence or two about what you are known for, your best work, and putting the shop on the map. Do the map step from the shop itself.
- You’re set up · the counter card you can print for the front desk, and the way through to Today.
The one thing setup never asks for
Opening hours. Until a day is open nobody can book a time, and the last setup screen says so if every day is still closed. Set them in Schedule > Availability.
The rules sit beside them, in Schedule > Booking rules: buffer between bookings, minimum notice, how far ahead people can book, and the cancellation window.
Where everything lives afterwards
Five tabs: Today, Customers, Bookings, Growth (owners only) and Business. Business holds Services, Team, Schedule, Booking system, Payments, Locations, Business profile, Feedback, Plan, Account, Notifications and Help & support.
Who can change what
Three roles: Owner, Professional and Front desk. Each person only sees what their role needs. Only an owner changes roles, the booking system, the business profile or the plan.
How a booking happens
Two modes, and Usual works out which one you are in.
The mode is not a setting you pick. Usual reads what is connected and answers accordingly.
Calendar of record
Customers pick from your real openings. You are in this mode when Usual can read the truth: a live Square link, a live Google Calendar link, or Usual keeping the calendar itself.
An opening is your opening hours minus your bookings, your time off, your buffer, anything a linked calendar has blocked, and any slot already held for someone.
Requests
When Usual cannot read your book · Booksy, Squire, a phone, a paper diary · customers ask instead. They pick the times of day that suit and you confirm a time or propose one. Morning is before noon, afternoon noon to 5, evening after 5.
Nothing is booked until you confirm, and nothing in your own system changes. A request expires if it is not answered.
Connecting Square
Business > Booking system > Set up. You sign in to the Square account that owns the shop and let Usual see appointments, staff, services and customers, and add its own bookings. Then you pick the location, let Usual read once, and match your team so bookings land on the right calendar.
A booking made in Usual appears in Square within a minute, and one made in Square appears here within a minute. Usual reads your whole calendar on any Square plan, so no upgrade is needed and nothing is charged.
Connecting Google Calendar
Fresha and Vagaro can write to a Google Calendar, and you can keep one for the shop yourself. Link the calendar in your own system first, then connect that same Google account to Usual, one person at a time, and pick the calendar it writes to.
Usual reads only whether that calendar is busy or free · never event titles, guests or notes · and adds its own bookings to it.
Disconnecting, and a link that breaks
Disconnect any time. Usual forgets the link at once and asks the provider to forget Usual.
If a link stops being authorised, Usual tells you and the shop falls back to requests until you reconnect. Requests are the safe state: Usual will not sell a chair it can no longer see.
When nothing suits
A place per shop, and the day-parts that suit you.
It is free, on every plan, and it is not a booking.
What a customer keeps
One place per shop, per service · wanting a colour and a cut is two places. You name up to six windows, and each one is either a date or a weekday: Thursday the fourteenth, afternoon, or every Tuesday morning. Leave the part off and you mean the whole working day; name nothing and you mean any time they have.
You can ask for a particular person, or anyone. Nothing is held and nothing is booked. You choose when the offer arrives.
How long a place lasts
Thirty days. A weekly pick keeps your place for thirty days, not just this week; a dated pick lasts until that day is past. Leave any time and the shop stops offering you openings.
What happens when a time frees up
The shop holds the slot and offers it to everyone on the list it fits, all at once, in the order they joined. The first to accept gets it, and the rest are told the moment it goes.
An offer is held until you answer or it lapses: forty-eight hours by default, and always ending before the shop’s notice period. Turning one down keeps your place in the queue.
Turning it on, as a shop
Schedule > Booking rules > Fill cancellations from the waitlist. It is off until you turn it on, and it only fills by itself at a shop whose calendar Usual can read: where the real book lives in another system, Usual does not know the chair is free and must not sell it.
Anyone on the team can still offer a gap to the list by hand, on any plan.
How often it can reach you
A shop’s list hears about at most six freed slots an hour, and one person hears about the same hour at most twice a day. The first is the offer, the second is the second chance.
Phones and browsers
On Android, the web app is the app.
There is no Android app to install from a store. The two web addresses are the product, and they work in any browser, on a phone, a tablet or a computer.
The two addresses
Customers use login.usualapp.ca and shops use business.usualapp.ca · same account, same records, whichever screen you open them on.
Putting it on your home screen, in Chrome
- Open the address in Chrome and sign in.
- Tap the three dots at the top right of Chrome.
- Choose Add to Home screen, then Add.
- The icon opens Usual where you left it. It is still a browser page, so it behaves like one.
The web sends nothing to your lock screen
There are no push notifications on the web. Everything still happens: a booking confirmed, moved or cancelled, a time offered, something coming due, a Usual shared with a shop.
It waits for you in the app · Notifications in the customer app, Alerts in the shop app · and the same notices go out by email. Nothing is lost. It arrives quietly.
Money
A shop pays for Pro. A customer pays nothing.
The plans
Free is free and keeps your customers’ preferences. Solo is $19 a month, for you alone. Shop is $69 a month, for up to six people who take customers · front desk never takes a seat. Multi starts at $59 a location for three locations or more, and is set up in a conversation rather than a button.
Square takes the payment and keeps the card; Usual never sees it. Cancel any time. A founding business keeps its price for as long as it stays on that plan.
What Pro adds
Customer briefs before each appointment, smart rebooking when customers are due, retention signals and at-risk alerts, filling openings from the customers who are due, business analytics, and deeper booking sync.
The waitlist is not one of them. It is free, on every plan.
Usual does not take money from your customers
No deposit, no card payment and no tip goes through Usual, because no card processor is connected. The shop app says as much on every screen that would need one, and the database refuses to switch deposits on.
We are not putting a date on it. When there is a processor, this page will say so.
Still stuck
Write to us and a person answers.
Tell us which app you were in, what you were doing, and what you saw instead. A screenshot helps more than anything.
Support mail never includes anything about your customers.
info@usualapp.ca