Recommended Next Steps After Setting Up TailDesk

Once TailDesk is installed, your first service is active and the Booking Form is on your website, there are a few practical steps worth completing before you consider the setup finished. These checks help you confirm that bookings work as expected, match TailDesk to your preferred formatting and reduce unwanted submissions.

If you use TailDesk Pro, this is also a good moment to decide which advanced service settings you actually need. You do not have to configure every Pro feature at once.

1. Make a complete test booking

Before sending real customers to your booking page, submit at least one booking yourself from the public website.

• Select the service a normal customer would use.
• Choose a valid start and end date.
• Complete the customer details.
• Submit the booking request.
• Confirm that the success message appears.
• Check that the new request appears under TailDesk > Bookings.
• Check that the expected customer and administrator emails arrive.
• Confirm that the booking affects availability for the selected dates.

New public requests are created as Pending, and Pending bookings already consume capacity. That makes a test booking useful for checking both the customer experience and the availability calculation.

If you still need to add or adjust the public form, see Add the TailDesk Booking Form to a Page. To review the request in WordPress, see View and Filter Booking Requests.

2. Set your preferred date and price format

TailDesk is much easier to use when dates and prices match the conventions your customers and staff expect.

Open TailDesk > Settings > General and review:

• Date format – for example d-m-Y, d/m/Y, m/d/Y or j M Y.
• Price format – for example € %s or %s €.

The %s placeholder is important because TailDesk replaces it with the formatted amount.

For all supported options and examples, see Configure Date and Price Formatting.

3. Review the anti-spam settings

TailDesk already includes built-in anti-spam protection, so you do not need to add a CAPTCHA immediately.

The default protection combines a honeypot, a minimum fill time and rate limiting. For many websites, keeping these defaults is a good starting point.

If you receive unwanted booking requests, you can tighten the rate limits or add Cloudflare Turnstile or Google reCAPTCHA.

See Reduce Spam in Booking Requests for the available protections, recommended starting values and troubleshooting tips.

4. Check your booking notification emails

A successful booking is more useful when both you and the customer receive the expected confirmation.

Under TailDesk > Settings > General, check the administrator notification recipients. TailDesk sends a customer confirmation and an administrator notification after a successful public request.

For setup and troubleshooting, see Configure Email Notifications for New Booking Requests.

5. Decide how customers should see availability

If you use the public Availability Calendar, check that the correct service is selected and that the calendar behaves the way you expect.

You can keep the calendar and Booking Form on the same page, or send customers from an available date to a separate booking page.

For the redirect workflow, see Redirect Available Calendar Dates to a Booking Page.

6. TailDesk Pro: configure only the service features you need

TailDesk Pro adds several service-specific tabs. You can leave optional settings empty and keep the normal TailDesk behavior, then enable advanced options as your booking workflow grows.

Adjust capacity for busy or unusual dates

Use Pro capacity settings when one fixed Max per day is not enough. You can change the Limited threshold, allow requests when a day is full and create repeating Day Rules for weekends, holidays or seasonal periods.

See Configure Flexible Capacity Rules.

Ask different questions for different services

If one service needs information that another service does not, add service-specific booking fields instead of making every customer complete the same form.

See Add Custom Booking Fields to a Service.

Add extras, surcharges or discounts

Use Service extras and Day Rules when the final price should depend on optional add-ons, quantity, booking length or specific dates.

See Configure Extra Options, Surcharges and Pricing Rules.

Customize customer emails per service

If different services need different preparation instructions or follow-up information, TailDesk Pro can use a different customer email body per service.

See Customize Customer Emails per Service.

Connect your schedule to Google Calendar

If Google Calendar is already part of your daily planning, TailDesk Pro can synchronize booking events and use external Google events as capacity blockers.

Start with Connect TailDesk to Google Calendar.

A simple launch checklist

• Your service is active.
• Your public Booking Form contains the correct service or services.
• You completed a test booking.
• The test request appears in TailDesk > Bookings.
• Customer and administrator emails arrive.
• Dates and prices use the formatting you want.
• You reviewed the Anti-spam settings.
• Your availability changes correctly after a Pending booking.
• If you use Pro, you configured only the advanced service options relevant to your workflow.

Once these basics are working, you can confidently start using TailDesk for real booking requests and add more advanced features only when they solve a practical need.