Appointments Overview

The appointment system is the heart of inkStar. Every booking, session, and event in your studio is managed through appointments.

Appointment anatomy

Each appointment contains:

• Name — The appointment title (e.g., “Full Sleeve Session #3”)
• Kind — The appointment kind which determines available features and color
• Employee — The assigned artist or staff member
• Date & time — Start and end date/time, with optional all-day mode
• Customers — One or more linked customers
• Price — Minimum and maximum price range, plus additional hourly rate
• Downpayment — Optional deposit amount with due date
• Services — Selected services from your service catalog
• Description — Free-text notes about the appointment

Appointment states

Every appointment has one of three states:

State	Description
Open	Active appointment — upcoming or in progress
Done	Completed — marked as finished
Cancelled	Cancelled — no longer happening

You can transition between states:

• Open → Done: Mark as done via the checkbox
• Open → Cancelled: Via the cancellation flow
• Cancelled → Open: Via the reactivation flow
• Done → Open: Uncheck the done checkbox (with confirmation)

Appointment types

Appointments have two structural types:

• Appointment — A regular booking or session
• Holiday — Employee time off or studio closure

Key features

Feature	Description
Creating Appointments	Multiple ways to create — button, drag, duplicate, from customer
Rescheduling	Move appointments to new dates with calendar view
Cancellation	Cancel with optional strike and reason
Reactivation	Re-open cancelled appointments with new dates/prices
Swapping	Swap time slots between two appointments
Recurring	Create appointment series with daily/weekly/monthly recurrence
Smart Scheduling	AI-powered availability suggestions
Downpayments	Require deposits before appointments
Contracts	Attach and send contracts from appointments
Attachments	Upload photos and files
Links	Link related appointments together
Payments	Record payments and send payment links
Comments & History	Full audit trail and internal comments
Offline Support	Full offline-first with sync queue

Offline support

Appointments are fully offline-capable. When you’re without internet:

• Creating an appointment generates a temporary ID and queues the operation for sync
• Updating and changing status are applied locally and queued
• Searching runs entirely on the local Hive cache with full filtering and pagination

When you come back online, all pending operations sync automatically to the server.

Series creation is the only operation that requires an internet connection (the server handles the series expansion).