New in OpenChair: offers you can track, bookings that capture the extras, and clearer billing

We have been shipping quickly, but we have not been doing a good enough job of telling operators what has changed.

So here is a more useful roundup: not a technical changelog, and not a list of internal tickets. Just the recent OpenChair updates that should make daily life easier for salon, barber, beauty, tattoo, and wellness operators.

This release is mainly about three things:

• making promotions easier to run without losing track of margin
• making online bookings capture the add-ons that actually affect time and price
• making billing and reliability issues show up earlier, before they become admin work

Run an offer and know whether it worked#

Discount codes are now a first-class part of OpenChair.

You can create codes for online booking and checkout, set the discount as a percentage or fixed amount, choose where the code can be used, limit it to certain services, and set usage rules so an offer does not run away from you.

For example:

• a quiet Tuesday offer for selected colour services
• a new-client welcome code for first visits
• a VIP-only reward
• a checkout-only goodwill code after a service recovery
• a limited campaign code for lapsed clients

The useful part is what happens after the code is used. OpenChair records each redemption, shows the discount on receipts, and reports the revenue before and after the discount. That means you can see whether an offer brought in useful bookings or simply gave away margin you would have kept anyway.

Put the offer straight into a campaign#

Campaigns can now carry a real discount code.

When you are writing a campaign, you can attach an existing code or create one as part of the campaign setup. OpenChair can include the code in the message and send clients to a booking link that carries the offer through.

That turns a simple SMS or email into something measurable.

Instead of sending "Book this week and save 10%" and hoping the front desk remembers what happened, the campaign can point to a specific code and show attributed redemptions later.

This is especially useful for:

• filling quiet days
• bringing back lapsed clients
• promoting a new service
• rewarding regulars
• testing whether a small offer is enough before discounting more heavily

Save client groups once and reuse them#

Client audiences are becoming more useful across OpenChair.

If you have a group of clients you keep coming back to, you should not have to rebuild that list every time you want to message them or give them an offer. You can now save useful client groups and reuse them across Clients, campaigns, and discount eligibility.

Some audiences update automatically, such as New, Regular, and VIP. Others can be saved from a filtered client view or a selected set of clients.

That means an operator can do things like:

• save "high-spend colour clients"
• message "clients who have not booked in 90 days"
• send a campaign to a filtered group
• limit a discount to a specific audience
• inspect a saved group from the Clients area before using it

The goal is to make audience work feel like part of client management, not a separate marketing chore.

Make booking capture the extras before the appointment lands#

Add-ons are not always optional.

In a lot of venues, the "extra" is the thing that decides whether the booking is profitable, correctly timed, or even safe to perform. Think nail art, removal, toner, patch-test-dependent services, prep steps, aftercare, or service upgrades that need more time in the diary.

OpenChair now supports optional and required add-on groups, including minimum and maximum selection rules.

So if a client chooses a service that needs a required choice, the booking flow can ask for it before availability and price are finalised. The system also checks the rule again when the booking is created, so a required add-on cannot be skipped by accident.

The practical benefit is fewer underpriced bookings and fewer awkward fixes after the client has already booked.

For Pro venues, OpenChair can also suggest likely add-ons from booking history, helping operators spot the extras that are commonly booked together.

See billing issues before they become support work#

Billing prompts are now clearer in the app.

Owners can see trial-ending, past-due, and payment-failed states in the places they already work: the app shell, sidebar, plan page, and billing settings. The point is not to add more noise. It is to make sure the person who can fix the issue sees it before access, messaging, or payments become a surprise.

For venues billed by bookable team members, OpenChair can also show more context around the next invoice estimate and any mid-cycle changes. If adding a bookable team member changes the upcoming bill, the operator should be able to see why.

A few quieter improvements#

Not every useful release looks like a new button.

We also tightened a few things behind the scenes:

• better recovery when the browser fails to load a fresh app bundle
• an assisted fallback when AI service import cannot complete cleanly
• earlier blocking for scanner-style probe requests
• better internal alerts for trial, activation, billing, and failure events

These are the kinds of fixes that should make the product feel more dependable without asking operators to think about them.

What we are shaping next#

Some nearby work is still in planning, not yet shipped.

The biggest areas are service family options, broader promo-code workflows, client audience unification, solo booking locations, and multi-site billing choice.

The service family work is especially important for operators with menus like "Ladies Cut" or "Gel Manicure" where the customer still needs to choose the exact option underneath. We are being careful there because the option the client chooses still needs to behave like a real bookable service for availability, deposits, staff eligibility, reporting, and receipts.

The short version#

This release makes OpenChair a bit more useful around the moments where money and time are easiest to lose.

Offers are easier to target and measure. Campaigns can carry a real code. Client groups are easier to reuse. Required add-ons are captured before the booking hits the diary. Billing prompts are clearer before they turn into support.

We will keep doing these roundups more regularly, in the same style: what changed, why it matters, and what is still only being planned.