Yoga & Pilates Studio Class Booking Guide

Why a class studio needs a different kind of booking

Most booking tools were built for the one-on-one: one client, one professional, one slot. A yoga or Pilates studio does not work that way. A single 7am Vinyasa class is twelve people on twelve mats in one hour, a reformer class is eight bodies on eight machines, and the thing that decides whether the morning runs smoothly is not a durations list — it is a number. How many spots. Once that number is full, the class is full, and a good booking page has to know that and stop.

A studio that runs its classes out of a WhatsApp group or a paper sign-up sheet spends real energy counting heads: is the 9am full, did that person actually pay for their pass, is there room for a walk-in. Class booking exists to make that number automatic. Set a capacity on each class and the page fills the seats, shows what is left, and closes the door on its own. This guide walks through setting it up for a Singapore studio, and it is honest about what the tool does and does not do.

Give every class its own capacity

This is the step that makes the whole thing work. In LovingBooking a class is a service, and every service carries a capacity — one for a private, more for a group. Set the reformer class to eight and the mat class to twelve, and the page will take exactly that many bookings and no more.

• Vinyasa or Hatha flow — a mat class; capacity is however many mats the floor holds, often ten to fifteen.
• Reformer Pilates — capacity is your machine count, full stop. If you own eight reformers, the class caps at eight, and the page will never sell a ninth.
• Yin, restorative, barre — each its own class, its own length, its own capacity.
• Private one-on-one — a service with a capacity of one, sitting on the same timetable as everything else.

The moment a class hits its number, it stops offering itself. No double-booked mats, no awkward "sorry, we're actually full" at the door, no counting a group chat. You set the number once and the booking page enforces it every single time — the same capacity discipline behind preventing double-bookings across a team.

Let students see the spots left

A class booking page should never make someone guess whether there is room. On any class with a capacity above one, each time slot shows how many spots remain, and it shifts to amber when a class is down to its last couple of seats.

This does two jobs. It is honest — a student books into a class knowing it is nearly full, not walking in to find no mat free. And it is quietly persuasive: "2 left" on the Saturday 9am is the single most reliable nudge to book now rather than deciding later. Scarcity you did not have to invent, because it is simply true. A full class reads as full, a wide-open Tuesday afternoon reads as wide open, and the student decides with real information.

Split mat classes from reformer classes

The most common mistake a studio makes online is treating all its classes as one pool. Mat and reformer have different ceilings. Your reformer count is a hard, physical limit — eight machines means eight people, and there is no flexing it. Your mat floor might take fifteen. If both classes share one capacity, you either cap the mat class too low or oversell the reformer class, and oversold reformer is a real problem at 7am.

Set each class to its own number and the problem disappears. A reformer class caps at your machine count; a mat class fills the floor; a heated room with limited airflow caps wherever you decide is comfortable. Because each class is its own service, none of these numbers touch each other, and you can change any one of them without disturbing the rest.

Give each instructor their own timetable

A studio with more than one teacher is rarely a studio where everyone teaches everything. One leads reformer, another takes the morning mat flows, a third runs the weekend barre. The timetable should reflect exactly that.

In LovingBooking, working hours are set per instructor, not per studio, and any single day can be overridden — a leave day, a workshop, a public holiday. Each teacher is assigned only the classes they actually lead, so the page never offers a reformer class from someone who only teaches mat. Students who follow a particular teacher can book them directly, and a studio that would rather people take "the next 6pm, whoever's on" can offer that instead. Either way the person shown teaching a class is genuinely the person teaching it.

Sell class passes and take payment

Very few studios sell classes one at a time; the business runs on passes. You can set up a multi-class pass — a ten-class pack, a monthly unlimited — as a package on your booking page, and students buy it there.

Be straight about how payment works, because it is not a card charge. There is no card rail in the booking flow. On the paid plan you show a PayNow QR code; the student transfers the amount and uploads a screenshot, and you mark the pass paid by hand. Until you confirm it, the pass sits as pending. It is a manual reconciliation rather than an automatic capture — more steps than a card would be — but it keeps class-pass money and class bookings in one place, and it means the platform never touches or holds the payment. The same flow covers deposits and one-off class payments; there is more detail in our guide to accepting PayNow for bookings.

The empty mat is the tax you want to avoid

A booked spot nobody turns up for is worse in a class than in a private, because the seat was capped — someone else wanted that 7am and could not have it. Reminders help. LovingBooking emails every student before their class; you choose how far ahead. Be honest about one limit: reminders go out by email only. LovingBooking does not send SMS or WhatsApp, so if your students live in WhatsApp, an email is a weaker net than you might want — know that before you lean on it. The real value is the cancel link inside the email, which lets a student release their spot the evening before instead of leaving a paid mat empty, freeing the seat back for someone else. The general psychology of it is covered in our guide to reducing no-shows.

What it costs for a studio your size

The free plan covers one instructor, 30 bookings a month and one location, with the booking page, class capacity and email reminders all included — genuinely enough for a solo teacher to test whether students take to booking online. Watch the count, though: 30 bookings means 30 booked spots, so a couple of full classes reaches it fast. A studio running a real weekly timetable, a second instructor, or PayNow QR for passes will want the Plus plan at SGD $12/month, which lifts every limit.

The setup is small and front-loaded: an afternoon spent listing each class with its honest length and capacity, splitting mat from reformer, setting each instructor's hours, and building your passes. After that the page runs the door for you. Set up your booking page, put the link in your studio's Instagram bio, and let students claim the last spot in the 7am themselves.