You use one app for bookings, another for orders, another for loyalty cards, and a group chat for your staff. None of them were made for your business. Each one charges you every month, and some take a cut of every sale. They all make money from you, and you spend more time juggling them. Able2 puts all of it into one app made just for your business, with your name and logo on it.
Keep your regulars coming back to you
“The big delivery apps put my regulars in front of 100 other options, and take a huge chunk of my profit”
You list on the big delivery apps because that’s where customers look, and you don’t have your own way to take orders online. But every time a regular opens one to order from you, they scroll past 100 other places first. You don’t get their name or email, and the app takes a big cut of every order, even from people who would have come straight to you.
Give customers your own booking and order page, with your name and logo on it, so they buy from you with nobody else beside you. You can keep the delivery apps for delivery, and send your regulars to your own page for everything else. Their name and email go into your customer list, not the delivery app’s. Running a workshop or an event? Sell tickets from a link the same way. If customers pay you at the till, that money is all yours. Able2 only charges a 2% platform fee when someone pays through your page, and the money is deposited directly into your account.
Stop missing bookings while you’re with a client
“If I answer the phone mid-appointment, my client loses out. If I don’t, I lose the booking”
When you’re with a client, the phone keeps ringing. Stop to answer it and the person in front of you gets a worse service. Leave it and the caller books somewhere else. Bookings also come in by message and over the counter, so your diary ends up in three places and none of them is right.
Put your services online as bookings with their own link. Customers pick a time and pay when they book, from a poster, your Instagram bio or a text, with no app to download, while you keep your attention on the client in front of you. Every booking lands in the app’s calendar, so you and your staff work from one diary. The money is deposited directly into your account, with the same 2% platform fee.
One set of rules for every shift
“I’ve explained the new prices five times, and Saturday’s casual still got them wrong”
When prices or rules change, you tell whoever is working that day. The checklist is stuck to the wall, the allergy sheet is in an old email, and new staff learn from whoever is free.
Explain it once, and everyone sees it on their phone. Post what’s changed in the news feed, and keep the new prices, the checklist and the allergy sheet in the app’s library, with one up-to-date copy of each. Each site or team can have its own private chat group to ask questions and talk things through. New starters can do a short training course and get a certificate. Checklists, incident reports and sign-offs become simple forms, and you can export the answers to a spreadsheet. Your customers never need the app. It’s just for your team.
Nobody’s being careless. There’s just no one place with the latest version.
Quote it, send it, get paid
“I write quotes at night, then spend the week chasing who has paid”
You write quotes in Word or on paper, send them by email, then wait. Some people say yes by text, some forget, and some pay into the wrong account. You end up checking your bank and sending reminders instead of doing the work.
Send a quote as a link, with your name and logo on it. Your customer opens it on their phone, ticks any extras and accepts it, and the quote becomes their invoice, ready to pay in full or as a deposit there and then. You and your staff can see in the app who has accepted and who has paid, so you only chase the people who have not.
One app, one bill
“Booking app, quote app, payment app, staff chat — I’ve stopped adding up the bills”
A booking app, a quotes and invoices app, a payment app, a group chat for the staff, and something you signed up for once and forgot to cancel. They don’t talk to each other, and together they cost more than you’d like to add up.
Able2 is one app and one bill, with no charge per customer. Growth is $39 a month and Pro $99, and the free plan is free for good, not a trial. It won’t do your accounts, but your bookings, quotes and invoices, payments, team forum and customer list all live in one place.
When we are not the right answer
Worth saying plainly, because signing up for the wrong reason helps nobody and we would rather you knew now.
- You need a till system. We’re not one. We keep track of stock for things sold through your pages, but not for sales rung up at the counter.
- Your customers are almost all one-off walk-ins. If you rarely see the same person twice and never take bookings or send quotes, there isn’t much here for you.
- You mostly sell digital things. Digital downloads and services cost 30% through the app, not 2%, because the app stores take a cut. Sell them on your website instead.
- You need it to run your books. Accounting, payroll and stock across every shop aren’t things we do, and we don’t plug into those systems out of the box.
If any of those describe you, we would rather point you somewhere better. If none of them do, the free plan will tell you the rest without costing you anything.
