How to get a phone alert every time someone books

What you get

A lock-screen alert when a client books, cancels or moves an appointment, with the name, the time and the service; tapping it opens your calendar on that day. And there are seven more: a booking waiting for your confirmation, a walk-in added without a booking, an alert shortly before each appointment starts, the morning summary with the day's appointments, a client who doesn't show up, a new review, and the one telling you WhatsApp credits are running low. It works with the browser closed and costs nothing: these alerts spend no WhatsApp credits and no SMS. The usual email still arrives, so if an alert fails the booking is not lost.

On Android: two taps

Open «My Profile» in the sidebar, under «Account». Scroll down to «Alerts on this device», press «Turn alerts on here» and accept when the browser asks. That is it: nothing to install.

On iPhone and iPad with Safari: add trimly to the Home Screen first

On iPhone, Safari does not let a web page ask permission to alert you. You have to add trimly to the Home Screen and open it from there. The card on «My Profile» itself shows the three steps: tap Share in the Safari bar, choose «Add to Home Screen», then open trimly from the new icon. When you come back, the button to turn them on is there.

The most common mistake is turning alerts on and then carrying on from Safari. From now on always open trimly through the Home Screen icon. You need iOS 16.4 or newer. And if you opened trimly from a WhatsApp or Instagram link, open it in Safari first: there is no Share button inside those.

On iPhone with Chrome: same trick, one step further in

You do not have to switch browsers: Chrome on the iPhone uses the iOS Share sheet, so it can put trimly on the Home Screen too. Tap the share icon to the right of the address bar, tap "View More" (the down arrow, bottom right) and choose "Add to Home Screen". Then open trimly from the new icon and the button to turn alerts on is waiting for you.

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The step everyone misses is the second one: in Chrome, "Add to Home Screen" is not on the first screen of the Share sheet — you have to tap "View More" first. The labels stay in English even if your phone is not.

Check it actually arrives

Once alerts are on, a «Send a test» button appears. Press it, lock the phone and watch the screen: the alert should show up within a couple of seconds. It is the only reliable way to know it works on that particular handset, so do it the first time and every time you change phone.

Choose who gets each alert

If you are an owner or a manager, «Settings» → «Team alerts» has a grid: the ten alerts down the side and four columns, «Owners», «Managers», «Booked barber» and «All barbers». Each cell is a switch of its own and comes set to something sensible, so you can leave it exactly as it is. Where there is a dash instead of a switch, that alert does not apply to that group: «Day's agenda» has no booked-barber column, because the summary covers the whole day. And «All barbers» already includes the one the appointment was booked with, so switching both columns on adds nobody: in a six-chair shop, telling everyone about every booking turns into noise and ends with people switching it off.

Leave «Low on WhatsApp credits» on for someone. When the credits run out, the automatic WhatsApp reminders to your clients stop going out and nothing reports an error: if that alert reaches nobody, the shop goes silent and you find out through the no-shows.

The two alerts that go out at a set time

Just below the grid you set the two that do not depend on anything a client does. Under «Appointment about to start» there is «Minutes before · 0 turns it off», which comes set to 15: the alert goes out shortly before the appointment, roughly that far ahead, not to the exact minute. Under «Day's agenda», «Send time · 0 is midnight» is the hour you want the summary at, in your shop's own time; it comes set to 8, and 0 does not switch it off, it means twelve at night.

Mute whatever you don't want, just for you

In «My Profile», just above the alerts for this device, each person has their own list, «My alerts», with one switch per alert: «Turn off any alerts you don't want on your devices». It only ever subtracts. The shop decides which alerts you are in, and there you switch off the ones you don't care about, but you cannot put yourself into one the shop has left you out of: those show up greyed out and untouchable, with the line «The shop doesn't include you in this alert». The picture shows what a barber sees, with «New review» and «Low on WhatsApp credits» greyed out, because those two never go to barbers.

If you are a barber: it is all in «My Profile»

You have «My Profile» in the sidebar, under «Account». Everything of yours is there: you turn alerts on for your phone, and your own «My alerts» is there too. «Settings» belongs to the owner and the manager, so you will not see it, and you do not need it for this. The owner including you in an alert is not enough on its own: you still have to turn them on for your own phone.

Each phone is set up separately

The permission belongs to that browser on that handset. If you use your phone and also the tablet on the counter, turn it on for both. And if your shop moves to its own domain, that is a different address as far as the browser is concerned: turn them on once more there.

If they stop arriving

Go back to «My Profile» and press «Send a test». If the test arrives but one particular alert doesn't, check it in «My alerts»: either you have switched it off yourself, or the shop doesn't include you in that one. If nothing comes at all, turn them off and on again on that phone: that fixes almost every case. Check too that Do Not Disturb is not on, because it silences these alerts exactly like any other app.

If you ever pressed «Block» when the browser asked, the page can no longer ask you again. You have to unblock it by hand: on iPhone, Settings → Notifications → trimly; on Android, Chrome site settings → Notifications.