TurboKast Studio › Booking systems
A custom booking system for your small business, at a fixed price.
Online booking with live availability, confirmations and an optional deposit, built around how you actually take bookings. We tell you honestly when a ready-made tool is the better buy.
or coffee on Liam in Tayside or Fife · talk to Kirsty · see prices
- Dundee companyTurboKast Ltd SC881077
- Fixed pricesWritten quote first
- Pay in stagesNo big upfront bill
- You own your dataCode and hosting in your accounts
- Professional indemnity and public liability insured
Do you need a custom booking system?
Many small businesses do not. If a ready-made booking tool covers your services, your opening hours and the way you take payment, use it. It is cheaper to start and someone else maintains it.
A ready-made tool is probably enough if
- You sell one kind of appointment of a fixed length.
- One person or one room is booked, and the tool’s calendar view is all you need.
- You are happy to pay the monthly fee for each user, and to fit your process around the tool.
- You do not need bookings to feed quotes, a rota or job sheets.
A custom system starts to earn its keep if
- A booking depends on more than one thing at once: a person, a room, a vehicle, a job type that sets the length of the slot.
- Customers currently fill in a “Book online” form that only emails someone, who then rings back to agree a time.
- The booking should create a job, a rota entry or a quote, so nothing is typed twice.
- Per-user monthly fees would add up, or you want the data and the code in your own accounts.
A pattern we noted when reading the public websites of Scottish trades and hospitality firms in October 2026: a “Book online” button that leads to a request form, not to live availability. It comes from their sites, not from talking to them. See trades and hospitality.
What a booking system built for your business does
The detail is agreed with you and written into the quote. Typically it covers:
- Live availability. The customer picks from slots that are actually free, on a phone or a computer. Two customers cannot take the same slot.
- Your rules. Different lengths for different services, buffers between jobs, how far ahead people can book, how many people or covers fit, and the days you are closed.
- Confirmation and reminders. The customer gets an email straight away and a reminder before the appointment. Text messages can be added; the message charges come from the text provider.
- An optional deposit. Taken online through a payment provider in your own name.
- Change and cancel. A link for the customer to move or cancel their own booking within the rules you set.
- A diary your team can use. Today’s bookings in one view, on a phone for people who are out on the job.
- The customer record. Name, contact details and booking history in a list you own, instead of scattered across inboxes.
Not every business needs every item. Fewer items is a smaller, cheaper job.
What it costs, and which price is yours
- A booking request form that logs and replies: Fix One Thing, £249, 7 to 10 days. Every request lands in a list you already use and the customer gets an automatic reply. You still agree the time yourself. See Fix One Thing: for jobs accepted before 30 November 2026 you pay nothing until it works (conditions apply).
- Online booking with a diary and real availability: single-job tool, from £749, 2 to 3 weeks. This is the usual answer for one business with one booking process.
- Booking joined to your rota, customer records and quotes: business hub, from £1,490, 4 to 6 weeks, paid in stages, subject to written terms.
Six small jobs on what you already have: Google profile, price list, contact form, a Book now button, broken links, mobile fixes. Agreed in one short email.
Pay after the job is done. See the six fixes and their prices
When you miss a call, the caller gets a text from you with your booking link, and you get their details.
Free for the first 14 days. How it works
One narrow job: an enquiry or order form that logs and replies, a reminder or report automation, a dashboard from numbers you already keep.
Pay nothing until it works (jobs booked before 30 November 2026). Not live in 10 working days? You owe nothing (conditions apply).
One job done properly: a quote calculator, a booking form with a diary, an order system, a job board with a phone view.
A success criterion not met in the 30 days after go-live? We fix it or refund you (conditions apply).
Several connected parts: jobs, rota, quotes, bookings or orders, customer records, a phone view for staff.
Paid in stages against milestones, with 90 days of free fixes after go-live.
A 15-minute call or a coffee, then a written fixed quote. No obligation.
Optional: monitoring, backups checked, security updates and fixes. Cancel with 30 days’ notice.
Care, plus up to 2 hours of changes a month and a quarterly review. Cancel with 30 days’ notice.
Conditions and small print
Conditions apply to every refund or fix promise on this page. The clock pauses while we are waiting for something from you, and you have to claim within set windows. The conditions are in our written order terms (Scots law, for business customers only), which come with every quote; ask for a copy at any time. If anything on this page differs from the terms, the terms win. Fix One Thing booked before 30 November 2026 is paid for only after it is live and working (invoice after go-live, payable within 7 days; if it does not work in the first 5 working days after go-live, we fix it or you owe nothing). After that date it is paid half to book and half when it is ready. Larger projects are paid in stages set out in the quote. Hosting and third-party charges (for example email sending) are paid by you or passed on at cost, and the quote lists them up front. We are not VAT registered, so the prices above are what you pay. Care+ includes priority in our queue (not a guaranteed response time).
If an accountant or bookkeeper introduced you, we may pay them 10% of the build price after you have paid in full. You do not pay it, your price is the same, and the quote names the introducer and the fee before you accept.
Running costs are separate and listed in the quote: a domain, email sending, text messages if you want them, and payment provider fees. Nothing is charged per user by us. An optional care plan is £29 a month. Last reviewed 2 November 2026.
What “done” means for a booking system
Before you pay or we start, we write the finished job down as a short list with a plain pass or fail each. For a booking system an example list might be:
- A customer can book a free slot for each service on a phone, in under a minute.
- A slot that has been taken cannot be booked again.
- A confirmation email arrives within a few minutes of booking.
- A reminder goes out the day before.
- You can block a day, change opening hours and cancel a booking without asking us.
- The customer can cancel or move their own booking within your rules.
This is an illustration of the kind of list, not a quote. Yours is written with you in the free first conversation, and the finished job is tested against it before you are asked to pay.
Who this suits
- Pubs, hotels, caterers and venues: tables, afternoon teas, function rooms and deposits.
- Trades firms: site visits and annual services, with the job landing in the engineer’s phone view.
- Dental, vet and therapy practices: new-patient enquiries and recalls. We build around your existing practice system and keep clinical records in it.
- Any small business with appointments, tours, lessons, classes or site visits that is taking bookings by phone, message or a form that does not check the diary.
A system we have built
Green Palm Dundee Landscaping, a firm of about seven staff, had jobs, the rota and quotes in three spreadsheets. We built one web app for the office and for crews on their phones, with invoices through QuickBooks. It is live. We are not publishing time-saved figures.
To be clear about what this is: our one live client system is a jobs, rota and quotes hub, not a customer-facing booking system, and we have not yet built a customer-facing booking system for a client that we can show you. You can see the rota and phone view in the EasyUse Landscaping CRM demo (formerly GroundHand), our own landscaping software product, with made-up data.
How a job runs
Talk for 15 minutes, free
A call, or a coffee if you are in Tayside or Fife. You tell us what is slow. If a ready-made tool would do, we say so.
Get a written fixed quote
What we build, what it costs, and what “done” means. Free, and yours to keep whether or not you go ahead.
We build it, you pay in stages
You see working software every week. The code, hosting and domain are in your own accounts from day one. Care plans are optional.
Where we work
Based in Dundee. Free coffee meetings anywhere in Tayside or Fife (book a coffee), and a free 15-minute call for everyone else, anywhere in the UK. The build is remote. See Dundee, Fife, Perth and Angus and how we work across Scotland.
Questions people ask first
How much does a custom booking system cost for a small business?
A booking or enquiry form that logs every request and replies to the customer is a Fix One Thing, £249, in 7 to 10 days. Online booking with a diary and real availability is a single-job tool, from £749, in 2 to 3 weeks. Booking joined up with a rota, customer records and quotes is a business hub, from £1,490, in 4 to 6 weeks, subject to written terms. Each price is fixed for the scope in the written quote. There are no per-user fees from us, and we are not VAT registered. Third-party charges such as email or text sending, payments and a domain are paid by you or passed on at cost, and the quote lists them.
Should I just use a ready-made booking tool?
If one already does what you need, yes: it will usually cost less and you can start today. Fresha, Square, ServiceM8 and similar tools are worth trying first. A custom system earns its place when your rules do not fit them (for example a booking that depends on two people and a room, or on a job type that changes the length of the slot), when you want booking joined to your rota and quotes, or when you would rather pay once than per user per month for ever. We will say so on the first call if a ready-made tool is the better answer.
Can customers pay a deposit when they book?
Yes, if you want that. The money goes through a payment provider you hold in your own name (for example Stripe) straight to your account. We never hold your takings, and you pay the provider's fees directly.
Will it work with the diary my team already uses?
Often, but it depends on the diary. We check on the first call and write the answer into the quote. If your current diary cannot be connected, we say so before you pay anything, and the booking system can hold its own diary instead.
Who owns the booking system and the customer list?
You do. The code, hosting and domain are set up in your own accounts from day one, and the customer and booking records live there too. When you have paid in full, and any refund window has ended, we assign you the rights we own in the custom code we wrote for you. The written terms, which come with every quote, set out the details.
What do I do if a booking system we build has a fault?
A Fix One Thing or single-job tool has 30 days of free fixes after go-live for anything that does not do what the written Scope and Success Criteria Schedule says. A business hub has 90 days. After that an optional care plan (£29 a month, or £79 with up to 2 hours of changes) keeps monitoring, backups and fixes running, and you can cancel it with 30 days' notice. Conditions apply to every guarantee; the written order terms win over this page.
Do you work with businesses outside Scotland?
Yes. We are based in Dundee, and the build is done remotely with working software shown every week, so we work with small businesses across the UK. Face-to-face first meetings are free anywhere in Tayside or Fife; elsewhere the first conversation is a free 15-minute call. The terms are under Scots law and for business customers only.
You deal with Liam
TurboKast Studio is run by Liam Humphreys, in Dundee. We build with AI coding assistants, directed by Liam and checked by automated tests on every change, which is how we can quote fixed prices below typical agency rates. You deal with one person, not an account manager, and the terms say what happens if Liam cannot continue (we do not yet have a named backup developer).
- Company
- TurboKast Ltd, registered in Scotland, company number SC881077
- Registered office
- 29 Commercial Street, Dundee, DD1 3DG
- [email protected]
- Phone
- 01382 787280
Answered by Kirsty, our AI assistant, who can book you a call with Liam. Calls are recorded. It is a landline, so texts do not arrive: to message us, use WhatsApp on the same number. You can also talk to her in your browser. - VAT
- Not registered
- Terms
- Written order terms (Scots law, business customers only) come with every quote, and guarantees are subject to them (conditions apply). Ask for a copy.
- Insurance
- Professional indemnity and public liability insurance with Chiswell, through Simply Business (the limit and terms are given with every quote). We do not hold a separate cyber policy.
Tell us what is slow. 15 minutes, free.
We will say honestly if we can help. No pitch deck, no obligation. If a ready-made tool does the job, we will tell you.
Or email [email protected] and we will reply with times. 01382 787280 is a landline: texts do not arrive, so message us on WhatsApp on the same number.