In order to offer maximum flexibility Smoothbook uses the concepts of services and resources to manage your schedule.

The basic idea is that a resource (e.g. an instructor) offers a service (beginner yoga) at times determined by the schedule. Creating resources is optional – you can just schedule services if that is what you would like to do.

You can customise services and resources so that images and descriptions of them are shown to your users when they book. You can also set instructions for services – text which is shown to your users when they book and, optionally, in confirmation emails.

Services

Services are things that your customer will book. So examples of a service would be:

• Beginner’s yoga
• A technical consultation
• A haircut
• Room rental

There are not really any hard and fast rules concerning how you name your services but it can help to be descriptive so that your customers know what they are booking and where: ‘one hour beginner’s yoga at Peckham library’ for example.

Resources

You can optionally create resources to better organise your schedule, prevent double bookings and be clearer to your customers what it is that they are booking.

Resources are something that offer a service – they are something that a service is booked with. So if you run a fitness studio and offer a one hour HIIT class with multiple instructors then each of the instructors would be a resource with their own schedule, etc.

Examples of resources would be:

• Fitness instructor (resource) offering one hour HIIT class (service)
• Beauty therapist (resource) offering a hair colouring (service)

Remember that it is optional to assign a resource to a service – you can create a schedule for service without a resource. This would make more sense if the only person who could be booked is you for example.