Industries Professional services
Professional services

The first meeting is free,
and that is the whole business

A lawyer, a consultant and an estate agent do not sell a service but trust. That is why the introductory meeting is free, and what happens after it is the entire revenue. Here the calendar is a sales tool, not a record.

A third of the services in this group are free

At a hairdresser one service out of 45 is free. Here it is six out of nineteen, and at an estate agency all three.

Introductory meeting
free, 30 minuteseveryone who gets in touch
Consultation
4,000 to 5,000some of them
Meeting, tax advice
6,000 to 8,000those who stay
A free slot is not wasted time but an entrance. But only if you know how many of them turned into paid work. The analytics show the whole path: how many booked the introductory meeting, how many showed up and how many came back for a paid service. Without that, a free meeting is guesswork.

What is sold here is not a service but time

And that time is not linear, which shows in the price list itself.

Consultation 30 min
3.000
two half-hours = 6,000
Per minute100 din
Consultation 1h
5.000
same hour, 1,000 less
Per minute83 din

A longer slot is cheaper per minute, because the preparation happens once. That is not a discount but a second service with its own price, exactly as the preset has it. The client chooses, and you see in the analytics which one actually sells.

The client does not always come to you

An estate agent goes to the address of the flat. That changes the whole arithmetic of time.

The client comes to you

A lawyer, a notary, an accountant. Slots run back to back, because nobody is traveling anywhere.

  • The duration is the real duration. A 60 minute meeting takes 60 minutes.
  • The office is a workplace, if several of you share one room.
versus
You go to the client

Viewing a flat takes 30 minutes, but costs you an hour and a half with the travel. That is why the preset uses the word “visit”.

  • Buffer time handles the travel. You add 30 minutes before and after, and the system counts it when offering slots.
  • The address goes into a custom field, so you have it in the calendar and the confirmation.
  • Two viewings in the same hour are no longer possible, because the system knows you are not in two places at once.

Without buffer time, the calendar offers you a viewing at 10 and another at 10:30, on the other side of town. A system that does not know about travel builds a schedule that does not exist.

Two things an office needs

A client in Vienna, a meeting at half past four

Consulting and legal advice have run over video for years, and the diaspora is serious business for lawyers and accountants.

  • The client sees their own time. Time zones handle themselves, with a clear note that the time shown is theirs, not yours.
  • The link goes into the confirmation and the reminder, so nobody hunts for it at the moment the meeting starts.
  • The same service exists in person and online, at different prices if that is how you work.
  • The form in English, if your clients are not from here. A language is added without a developer.
An hour's difference is the most expensive mistake in this business: a missed meeting with a client abroad is rarely rebooked.

A product shoot takes two hours, but the studio needs more

The photography studio has the longest services in the whole group, and the most expensive.

  • Product shoot: 120 minutes, 12,000 dinars. Setting up the lights and packing away are not in those 120, but they exist.
  • Buffer time before and after handles that, so two shoots do not end up glued together.
  • The wedding consultation is free, because there you are not selling an hour but the whole job. Same as the consultant's introductory meeting.
  • Payment upfront makes sense for a 12,000 dinar shoot, and makes none for a consultation. It is set per service.

Six ready-made industries, 19 services

Three different words, because they do not speak alike here either: meeting, appointment, visit.

Consulting
  • Intro meeting30 min · free
  • Consultation 30 min30 min · 3.000
  • Consultation 1h60 min · 5.000
Law firm
  • Legal consultation45 min · 5.000
  • Meeting60 min · 8.000
  • Document prep30 min · 3.000
Accounting firm
  • Intro meeting30 min · free
  • Consultation45 min · 4.000
  • Tax advice60 min · 6.000
Notary & interpreter
  • Document notarization30 min · 2.000
  • Document translation30 min · 2.500
  • Consultation30 min · 3.000
Real estate agency
  • Apartment viewing30 min · free
  • House viewing45 min · free
  • Consultation45 min · free
Photo studio
  • Portrait60 min · 6.000
  • Family shoot90 min · 9.000
  • Product shoot120 min · 12.000

The estate agency is the only industry on the whole list where every service is free. That is not a mistake in the preset: the agent does not charge for a viewing, but takes a commission when the flat sells.

Questions from the office

No, and it is better you hear that before rather than after. This handles appointments, payments and a history of meetings with a client. It does not handle cases, deadlines, files or documents. If you need law practice software, that is a different product. This one solves a single part: letting clients book themselves instead of calling.

You book the slot for the expected duration and record the payment for the actual one. The amount is edited when recording the payment, so if the meeting ran 90 instead of 60 minutes, you charge what you should. The record shows what was charged and what is owed, per client.

That is the most common cost of a free slot. A reminder 24 hours ahead and one-click confirmation solve most of it. Whoever does not confirm probably will not come, and you know that a day early, while the slot can still be offered to someone else. Mandatory payment would solve it entirely, but then the introductory meeting is no longer free and you lose people who would have become clients.

The analytics show the funnel: how many people opened the form, how many booked, how many came. The record shows what that same person paid afterwards. If five out of twenty introductory meetings move on to a 6,000 dinar tax consultation, that is 30,000 dinars out of what you gave away. If it is zero, you know the problem is in the meeting itself, not in the calendar.

Not if you set the buffer time. Add 30 minutes before and after a viewing and the system will not offer two slots that sit too close. Without it, it would offer you a viewing at 10 and another at 10:30 on the other side of town, which is a schedule that exists only in the calendar.

What next

A free meeting only costs you if you do not know what it brings

The analytics show how many booked, how many came and how many returned for a paid service. Only then is free a decision, rather than a hope.