Ask the Right Questions at Booking — and Show GST Honestly
Custom booking fields let you ask what you need before a customer arrives, and charges and taxes put GST or a service fee on the booking page and in every confirmation.
LovingBooking Team
Updated 6 min read
In this article
Add booking questions and a GST line to your booking page
Collect the information you actually need at booking, and show tax or a service fee on the page rather than surprising people at the counter.
Write down what you currently ask by message
Before touching a setting, list the questions you type out for every new customer: which branch, is this your first visit, do you have an allergy, what is the vehicle plate, which age group is the child. Those are your fields. Anything you ask once a year is not worth a question box on a booking page.
Add the questions in Settings
Open Settings, then Booking, and add each one. Give it a label the customer will understand, an optional line of help text underneath, and pick the kind: short text for a brief answer, long text for more detail, a choice list when the known answers are fixed, or a checkbox for a yes or no. Mark the ones you genuinely cannot proceed without as required, and leave the rest optional so the form stays short.
Choose where each question appears
A question can apply to service bookings, class bookings, or both. A class-waiver acknowledgement can stay off appointment bookings, while a service intake question can stay off the class form. Ten active questions is the ceiling, which is more than most businesses should use.
Set up your charge lines
In Settings, then Payments, add a charge. Give it a name the customer will recognise — GST, service charge, materials fee — and choose a percentage or a fixed amount. Then choose whether it is added on top of the price or already included in it. If your listed prices are GST-inclusive, choose inclusive and the page will say so rather than adding the tax twice.
Check the page and one confirmation email
Open your own booking page and walk a real booking through to the last step. You should see the subtotal, each charge on its own line, and one total. Then read the confirmation email that lands, because that is the version the customer keeps. If a number surprises you there, it will surprise them too.
For a long time the LovingBooking form asked four things: name, email, phone, and an optional notes box. That was a deliberate choice, and for a haircut it is the right one — every extra field is a person who abandons the page. But it was also, honestly, a limit we wrote about in our own guides: the form could not ask your own questions, so there was no way to ask which branch, which age group, or whether this is a first visit without falling back to a message.
That limit is gone. This release adds two things that go together more often than not: booking questions you write yourself, and charges and taxes that show GST or a service fee on the page instead of at the counter.
Booking questions
You can add up to ten active questions to your booking page. Each one has a label, optional help text, and one of four kinds:
| Kind | Good for | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Short text | An open answer you cannot predict | Vehicle plate, unit number, referral name |
| Long text | A fuller answer that needs a few lines | Access instructions, injury background |
| Choice list | Three or four known answers | Which branch, age group, hair length |
| Checkbox | A plain yes or no | First visit, consent acknowledged, bringing a guest |
Each question can be required or optional, and each one can apply to service bookings, class bookings, or both. That split keeps a class-waiver acknowledgement off the appointment form and a service intake question off the class form. Attaching every question to every booking is how a short form becomes a wall, and how a booking page starts losing people at the last step. Our booking page essentials piece makes the wider case for keeping that final screen short.
Answers travel with the booking. Open the appointment in the calendar and they sit in the customer details block next to the notes and the service address. They appear in the appointment drawer, on the class roster for a class seat, in the customer's history, in the notification email you receive, and as their own columns in the CSV export — so "how many of last month's bookings came from Instagram" becomes a sort rather than an afternoon.
One deliberate omission: answers are not written into your Google or Outlook calendar event descriptions. A shared calendar is a much less private place than your own console, and an intake answer does not belong in it by default.
There is still no file upload at booking. A mood board, a referral letter or a floor plan has to arrive another way, and we would rather say that than let you discover it after moving your diary across.
Charges and taxes
The second half is the money side of the same screen. You can now define charges — GST, a service charge, a materials fee, a late-evening surcharge — and have them appear on the booking page, in the confirmation email, on the manage page, and on the booking record in your console.
Each charge is a percentage or a fixed amount, and each one is either added or inclusive:
- Added sits on top of the listed price. A S$100 service with 9% added shows a S$100 subtotal, a S$9 GST line, and a S$109 total.
- Inclusive assumes the tax is already in your listed price. The same service shows a S$100 total with a line reading "includes GST S$8.26" — no double counting, and no customer wondering why the page and the price list disagree.
For a GST-registered Singapore business this is mostly a question of matching what you already do. If your menu board says S$100 and you mean S$100, you want inclusive. If you quote before tax, you want added. Either way, the number on the page, the number in the email and the number on the record are the same number, which is the entire point.
Charges can apply to services, to classes, or to packs, so a studio can tax a six-week course differently from a drop-in if that is genuinely how it works.
Ask what you need before they arrive
Start freeWhat has not changed
This is not a payment rail, and it would be easy to read it as one. LovingBooking does not process booking payments, does not hold card details, and never touches the money your customers pay you. A charge is a line on a page and a number on a record.
The payment itself still happens the way it always has. On a paid plan you display your own PayNow QR on the booking page; the customer transfers straight into your bank account, uploads a screenshot as proof, and you mark the booking paid once you have checked. Our PayNow guide walks through that end to end. If you take cash or card at the counter, nothing changes at all — the charge line is simply there so the customer knew the total before they arrived.
The honest trade-off is a manual confirmation step. In exchange there is no commission on any booking, no card processing fee, and no waiting for a payout.
A short setup that is worth the twenty minutes
Start by writing down the questions you currently type out by hand for every new customer. Those are your fields, and there are usually two or three of them rather than eight. Add them, mark only the ones you genuinely cannot work without as required, and point each at the services it actually belongs to.
Then set your charge, if you have one, and walk your own booking page end to end as a customer would. Read the confirmation email that lands, because that is the version they keep and forward. If a number surprises you there, it will surprise them.
Both booking questions and charges are available on every plan. Free covers your first 200 bookings, for up to 3 people and 1 location; Pro is US$12 a month or US$120 a year for up to 3 people, then US$12 a month or US$120 a year for each extra person, with one bill for all your businesses and free logins for anyone without a calendar. The app-managed, cardless Pro trial lasts 14 days, creates no Stripe subscription and never charges automatically. Current numbers live on the pricing page.
If your booking page is still asking for a name and a phone number and then continuing the conversation in messages, this is the change that closes that loop. Set up your booking page, or open Settings and add the first question — the one you are tired of typing.
Ask what you need before they arrive
Add your own questions to the booking page, show GST or a service fee as a line the customer can see, and read both on the booking in your console.
Start for freeFree to start · No credit card
Frequently asked questions
What kinds of booking question can I add?
What kinds of booking question can I add?
Four kinds, deliberately. Short text handles a vehicle plate or room number; long text allows a fuller response; a choice list keeps known answers consistent; and a checkbox handles a plain yes or no. Each question can carry help text, can be required or optional, and can apply to service bookings, class bookings, or both. There is no file upload, so a mood board or a scan still has to reach you another way.
Where do the answers show up?
Where do the answers show up?
On the booking itself. Open the appointment in the calendar and the answers sit in the customer details block alongside the notes and the address. They appear in the appointment drawer, on the class roster row for a class seat, in the customer history, in the owner notification email, and as their own columns in the bookings CSV export, so you can sort a month of bookings by an answer rather than reading them one at a time. They are deliberately kept out of the Google and Outlook calendar descriptions, because a calendar event is a far less private place than your console.
How does the GST setting work?
How does the GST setting work?
You add a charge, name it, and choose a percentage or a fixed amount. Then you choose the behaviour. An added charge sits on top of the listed price: a S$100 service with 9% added shows a subtotal of S$100, a GST line of S$9, and a total of S$109. An inclusive charge assumes the tax is already inside the listed price: the same S$100 service shows a total of S$100 with a line reading "includes GST S$8.26". Which one is right depends on how you already quote your prices, and the point of the setting is that the page stops guessing.
Does this mean LovingBooking now takes payment?
Does this mean LovingBooking now takes payment?
No, and it is worth being blunt about it. LovingBooking does not process booking payments, hold cards, or move money at any point. A charge is a line on a page and a number on a record. The customer still pays you the way they always did — a PayNow transfer against the QR on your booking page, cash or card at your counter, or an invoice you send yourself — and you mark the booking as paid in the console once you have seen the money in your own account. The upside is that there is no commission and no payout delay; the trade-off is that confirming payment is a manual step.
Do charges apply to classes and packs too?
Do charges apply to classes and packs too?
Yes. A charge can apply to services, to classes, or to packs, so a studio can put GST on a six-week course without putting it on a one-off drop-in if that is genuinely how it works. The total shown on the class page, in the seat confirmation email and on the manage page all come from the same calculation, so they cannot disagree with each other.
Does an old booking change when I add a charge?
Does an old booking change when I add a charge?
No. The charge lines are recorded on the booking at the moment it is made, so a booking taken last month keeps the total it was quoted. Adding GST today changes what new bookings show, not your history — which is what you want when someone opens an old confirmation email and compares it to your records.
