Your availability rules are not standard. Hosted platforms assume they are.
A custom booking system manages availability, takes reservations and collects deposits over M-Pesa, without the per-booking fees of hosted platforms. Haryes builds these for hotels, clinics and service businesses around their real scheduling rules.
Every business thinks its scheduling is simple until it is written down.
A clinic has different slot lengths per practitioner. A hotel has minimum stays that change by season. A workshop has a buffer between jobs and one bay that cannot run two things at once. Hosted booking tools handle none of this well.
So the business does this instead:
- A booking form that collects a request, which someone then confirms by phone, which is not a booking system.
- Double bookings, because availability lives in two places and one is a WhatsApp group.
- No-shows, because nothing was paid and nothing was reminded.
- A per-booking fee to a platform that grows exactly as fast as the business does.
How it is built
The rules first, because everything else depends on them.
Write down the rules
Slot lengths, buffers, resources, staff, seasons, minimum stays and the exceptions everyone knows but nobody has recorded.
The real scheduling model.
Design the booking flow
The shortest path from wanting a slot to holding one, on a phone, without an account if possible.
Fewer abandoned bookings.
Build availability
The engine that decides what is bookable, which is where the difficulty actually sits.
No double bookings.
Payments and reminders
Deposits over M-Pesa, confirmations, and reminders timed to reduce no-shows.
Bookings that turn up.
Admin and launch
The view your staff use daily, built around how they actually work, then a managed rollout.
A system staff will use.
What the system has to get right
Four things, each of which breaks a booking system when it is wrong.
Availability logic
Resources, staff, buffers and overlapping constraints. This is the hard part and it is where off-the-shelf tools give up.
The core of the build.
Deposits
A deposit taken over M-Pesa changes no-show behaviour more than any reminder does.
Commitment, not just intent.
Changes and cancellations
Customers reschedule. If that requires a phone call, your staff are still the booking system.
Self-service both ways.
The staff view
If the team prefers their notebook, the system has failed regardless of how good the customer side is.
Built for the people using it daily.
What you get
Custom software, scoped to your rules. See application pricing.
Availability engine
Your rules, not a template's.
- Resources, staff and buffers
- Seasonal and conditional rules
- Conflicts impossible by design
Payments
Deposits or full payment.
- M-Pesa at the point of booking
- Refund and cancellation handling
- Reconciled to each booking
Customer experience
Short, and mobile first.
- Book in as few steps as possible
- Self-service reschedule and cancel
- Confirmations and reminders
Staff tools
The daily view.
- Calendar built for your operation
- Manual bookings and overrides
- Reporting on utilisation and no-shows
Questions clients ask before they commit
Why not use an off-the-shelf booking tool?
If your rules are simple, you should, and we will tell you so. Custom becomes worth it when the availability logic does not fit, or when per-booking fees have grown into a meaningful cost.
Can it take M-Pesa deposits?
Yes, through the Daraja API, with the payment tied to the booking so reconciliation is automatic rather than a monthly spreadsheet exercise.
Can it sync with Google Calendar?
Usually yes, and it is worth deciding early whether the calendar or the system is the source of truth. Two sources of truth is how double bookings happen.
What does it cost?
It is custom software, starting from KES 150,000 depending on the complexity of the rules. Discovery produces a fixed scope first and is credited against the build.
What are you replacing?
Bookings are taken manually and double bookings happen.
We write the rules down first, then build around them.
Scope my booking systemPer-booking fees or rigid rules are costing you.
Worth comparing the annual fee against a build that is yours.
See pricingThe booking form is the easy half. The availability rules are the build.
