Booking software
for mobile and home-based therapists.

What is the best booking software for a mobile beauty therapist?

It depends on whether clients come to you or you go to them. Working from home, or from home and a rented room? Look for deposits, a set gap after each appointment and a way to keep your home address off your booking page. Covered Beauty, which we make, does all of that for £9 a month with no commission. Driving to clients most days? You’ll want software that takes the client’s address and charges for travel, such as Booksy, which says it does travel areas and fees. Covered Beauty doesn’t ask for the client’s address when they book or work out travel time.

Every fact about another provider comes from its own pages, with the day we read them. There are no affiliate links on this page.

What does a mobile or home-based therapist need from booking software?

• Time between clients. A 45 minute manicure takes longer than that once you’ve packed up, driven and set up again.
• Your address kept back until they’ve booked. Your door number shouldn’t be on a page anyone can find.
• Deposits. A no-show on a home visit costs you the slot and the drive.
• Forms signed before you arrive. Patch test answers in before you set off, not on a clipboard in their hallway.
• The client’s address, and how to get in. The parking, the buzzer and whether the dog will be shut away.
• A card on the doorstep. Not every client has cash in the house.

How does Covered Beauty work if clients come to you?

Your home address, kept off your booking page

Your booking page and Find a salon, our directory, show the address under Your address in Settings. Every part is optional, so put in just your town. Then add your home on the Venues page, with the full address and how to find you in its Finding it box. Clients only see that once they’ve booked, on their confirmation email and the booking page it links to. Leave the venue’s own address and postcode boxes empty for your home. Those are public, and show when a client picks between your places.

Home and a rented room, in one diary

Add each place as a venue with its own days and hours, and choose the treatments each one offers. Clients only see the times you’re at each place, and a booking at one blocks that time at the others, so you can’t be booked in two places at once.

Room to breathe between clients

On the Treatments page, set a gap after each treatment, in steps of 5 minutes up to two hours. Nobody booking online can start an appointment inside it. There’s no gap before a treatment. On Opening hours, set a minimum booking notice of up to a week and how far ahead clients can book.

Can Covered Beauty work if you travel to clients?

Yes, with honest limits. It was built for home or a few fixed places, but home visits on set days work like this.

1. Make home visits their own treatments, with a price that covers your travel and a longer gap after.
2. Give your visiting days a venue of their own. Add a venue called Home visits with only those days ticked, and offer home visit treatments only there. If clients also come to you, give your home venue only your other days and treatments, so nobody there is booked just before you drive.
3. Get the address on the form. There’s no address box when a client books. Every ready-made consultation form asks for the client’s home address, so it’s signed before you set off.
4. Say where you cover in each home visit treatment’s description. There’s no postcode check.

What it won’t do is work out how long the drive is, plan your route, add a travel fee by distance or turn away a booking from outside your area.

Deposits, forms and getting paid on the doorstep

Set a deposit for each treatment: a fixed amount, a percentage or none. Clients pay by card when they book, straight into your own Stripe account, and Covered Beauty takes no commission on any booking. Clients who pay a deposit online save their card, so if nobody’s in when you knock, you can charge your no-show fee in line with your terms, which our free cancellation policy writer helps you write. Reminder emails go three days, one day and two hours before, and texts come from 50 free a month.

The consultation form goes out with the confirmation, with a reminder 48 hours before if it isn’t done, and patch test questions are asked again every time. For a new client’s patch test, send a private link with no booking. It works for 14 days. Pick from 23 ready-made forms, or print a free blank one from our templates.

With Stripe set up, Take card payment now on an appointment opens a Stripe payment page for what’s left to pay. Hand them your phone. Prefer a card reader? SumUp’s pay as you go plan lists 1.69% for in-person payments other than its own SumUp cards, with no monthly fee.

Source: SumUp UK pricing, checked 24 October 2026.

What else do you need to sort out?

Working from home

GOV.UK says you may need your mortgage provider’s or landlord’s permission, may pay business rates on the part of your home you use, and that home insurance may not cover your business, including customers visiting.

Source: GOV.UK: Running a business from home, checked 24 October 2026.

Insurance, records and data

Ask your insurer if you’re covered for treatments in clients’ homes as well as yours, and tell your car insurer you drive to clients. BABTAC’s Good Practice Guide tells members to keep record cards for seven years, and Covered Beauty keeps signed forms for 7 years from the appointment while your account is open.

Source: BABTAC Good Practice Guide 2016 (PDF), checked 21 October 2026.

GOV.UK says self-employed records must be kept for at least 5 years after the 31 January submission deadline. The ICO says sole traders who use personal information pay a data protection fee unless they’re exempt. See our guide to consent forms and UK GDPR.

Sources: GOV.UK: How long to keep your records and ICO: Data protection fee, checked 24 October 2026.

Mileage

Using HMRC’s simplified expenses for your car? GOV.UK lists 55p a mile for the first 10,000 business miles in the 2026 to 2027 tax year, 45p before 6 April 2026, and 25p after that, instead of the real costs of running it. Limited companies can’t use them.

Sources: GOV.UK: Simplified expenses for vehicles and GOV.UK: Simplified expenses, checked 24 October 2026.

Semi-permanent make-up and electrolysis

In England, where section 15 of the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1982 is in force, you and your premises must be registered with the council for semi-permanent skin colouring or electrolysis, though a registered person doesn’t break that rule just by sometimes visiting people at their request. Ask your council first, and see our SPMU and electrolysis form guides.

Source: Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1982, section 15 (legislation.gov.uk), checked 24 October 2026.

When isn’t Covered Beauty the right choice?

• You’re on the road most days and want the client’s address, travel fees, drive times and your area handled when they book.
• You want a marketplace to bring you clients.
• Your team is bigger than five, or you’re outside the UK.