First day: services and B2B

In a service business a client arrives along one of two paths: they either book a time (a studio, a tutor, a workshop, a service centre) or leave a request, after which come the conversation, the quote and the invoice (an agency, lawyers, accountants, consulting, contracting). Which path is your main one decides both the business type and the first-day checklist.

Honest about how the product is built. Neither "appointment services" nor "professional services" has a contour of its own: each is a profile of settings and wording on top of engines that already work. Booking is the same appointment book and the same slot calculation as in a beauty salon; the B2B path is the same client directory, documents, counterparties and website as in the other verticals. The upside is that all of it is already in production; the downside is that service-centre or agency specifics on top of it do not exist yet (see "What is missing").

"Appointment services" speaks in neutral words — "office" and "branch" instead of "chair" and "zone" — while "professional services" has the appointment book switched off: what they need is not a slot but a request.

What you need to get started#

• Any computer with a browser. Both the appointment book and a counterparty card with an invoice are ordinary admin-panel pages. Nothing to install.
• The client's phone — if you take online bookings or website requests: both booking and forms open in a browser.
• Your own website is not required. A location has a public page on a subdomain; if you already have a site, the widgets go on it with a single line of code — My website.
• A till and a printer — optional. If you take payment on site, the POS is a /pos page in the browser (POS) and printing goes through the Cenaly Hardware Bridge. For both service business types the till is off by default — switch it on in the App Store.
• Online card payments — only for specific jobs: a deposit at online booking and paying an invoice by link. A deposit requirement is shown to the client only when a live payment provider is connected for the country and currency of the location — Payments.

The common frame of the first day#

Sign-up, the location, the business type, languages and the subscription are the same for every format — they are described in the hub First day: choose your business type. Then pick your checklist.

Checklist: booking a service#

For a studio, a tutor, a workshop, a service centre — anyone whose client occupies a specialist's or a room's time. The working screen is Admin panel → Appointments (admin.cenaly.com/appointments).

1. Services in the catalog. Name, price and duration — the duration is filled into the appointment. The same card holds the buffer after the visit, how many clients the service takes at once (group classes), which specialists may perform it, its own deposit rule and "repeat after N days". Without at least one service item online booking is not shown.
2. Specialists and resources. A specialist is an employee from the staff directory with the specialist job role; a login is not required. A room, a machine or a device is created the same way — as a "resource employee", that is, a column in the schedule. There is no separate "resource" entity in the system.
3. Schedules. Weekly schedule, daily breaks, holiday and sick leave, one-off days for a specific date (a day off or special hours). A one-off day overrides the weekly schedule.
4. Booking hours. The gear icon in the book → "Appointment settings": the frame of hours for the whole location at once.
5. The first appointment by hand and a walk through the statuses: new → confirmed → "in the chair" → completed, plus cancelled and no-show. Visit marks become available no earlier than 15 minutes before the start.
6. Online booking. On your storefront, with a widget on your website and in the location's Telegram bot. The widget accepts a preselected service and specialist — that is how you get a landing link for a specific offering. All appointments flow into one book; those from a website carry a badge.
7. Reminders. Telegram: confirmation and reminders 24 and 2 hours ahead with "I'll come" and "Cancel" buttons; e-mail: a confirmation letter with a "Manage appointment" link (rescheduling and cancelling without a password or an app). Details — Appointment book.
8. All requests in one list. The "Requests" section (admin.cenaly.com/leads) collects online bookings, callbacks, website form submissions and pop-up answers into a single stream — with a period, search, an "unprocessed only" filter and a CSV export. The section is read-only: the status is changed in the source section, there is no second truth about it. The same panel also lives as the "Requests" tab of the contact centre — Chat with guests.
9. Clients. A client card with visit history and a "Repeat the previous appointment" link — Clients. For "appointment services" the directory is on from the start.
10. Memberships — service packages: N visits, a prepaid wallet or a subscription with recurring top-ups. The "🎟️ Memberships" button in the book.

What you need in terms of devices: a computer or a tablet. That is all. What can honestly wait: till and inventory, financial reports, deposits, campaigns, a custom domain.

Checklist: B2B — request, invoice, documents#

For an agency, a lawyer, an accountant, a contractor — anyone whose deal lives in correspondence and is closed with documents. The working screen is Admin panel → Venue → "Companies and invoices" (admin.cenaly.com/counterparties).

1. Your seller details first. The "Seller details" tab: the legal entity (there can be several), bank accounts, signatories, the letterhead, e-mails and phones. Without this the invoice comes out without your side of the deal.
2. The first counterparty card. An individual or an organisation — one card type. The set of registration details and their validation (format, checksums) is filled in by country: dedicated profiles exist for Georgia, Russia, Kazakhstan, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, the UAE, Cyprus, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Croatia, Poland, Romania and Turkey — fifteen in total, plus a fallback for every other country. Bank fields are country-specific too (IBAN, sort code, BSB, settlement account with a bank code). The country is picked from the full directory.
3. Contacts and an owner. Contact persons with roles and channels (phone, e-mail, Telegram, WhatsApp) and the "primary" and "document recipient" flags; an account manager from the staff directory with a server-side "Mine" filter.
4. A catalog of services with prices. Document lines are taken from the catalog — the price, tax and discount are filled in by the document, not typed by hand.
5. The first sale. The "Sale" button walks you through: quote → invoice → closing documents. Document types and names, the numbering mask, the VAT mode and the amount in words come from the country profile. A finished document: PDF, sending by e-mail, voiding with a reason.
6. A contract. A four-step wizard: template → parties and signatories → terms (payment delay, credit limit, prepayment and discount percentages, minimum order, validity) → preview. Then a draft, issuing, a "signed" mark with a scan upload, termination. Active terms are shown as a banner in the card header.
7. Settlements. Balance, overdue amount and the oldest due date, the ledger of operations, adding a payment, allocating payments to documents — by queue or precisely to a specific invoice, with a rollback. Location reports: receivables ageing, the payments register, the shipments register — all with a CSV export.
8. Business documents. The "Documents" section (admin.cenaly.com/documents) is the second, non-accounting contour: free-form text documents with page layout, headers, footers and page numbers, spreadsheets "like Excel", uploaded files, a full-text search, templates with substitution, validity dates with reminders and employee acknowledgements. Details — Documents.
9. Website and requests. The public page of the location or your own site with widgets: a contact form, a callback, chat, pop-ups with a form and a quiz — Website builder, My website, Callback, Engagement campaigns. All of it flows into "Requests", and each request shows where it came from: the surface, the page, campaign tags, the referral class and the device.
10. AI parsing of a request. A pasted e-mail, a call transcript or a PDF turns into a draft sale: counterparty, lines from the catalog, terms — with a confidence score per line. The model works only from your own data: anything not found in the catalog and the cards goes to "unrecognised" plus a task for the manager. Issuing a document along this path is impossible — only a draft.
11. Access. ⚠️ "Companies and invoices" is an owner-only section: an employee with their own login will be refused. Plan for that if sales are not handled by the owner.

What you need in terms of devices: a computer. A printer only if you print invoices on paper. What can honestly wait: bank statements, recurring invoices, dunning, e-invoicing, the till.

What a service business does not have yet#

A straight list so that you do not look for a button that is not there.

What can wait#

• Bank statements — uploading a statement for your settlement account with operation parsing and matching to counterparties; needed once payments become numerous.
• Recurring invoices — an issuing schedule, a log, a pause; for retainer contracts.
• Reminders and dunning — a digest, overdue letters, expiring quotes and contracts.
• E-invoicing. For Russian locations there is document exchange through Saby (SBIS): incoming documents become CRM documents, your own invoice is pushed to Saby, and signing stays there. It is connected with a card in the App Store.
• KSeF (Polish e-invoices) — Poland only and on the AWS contour only: on cenaly.ru the panel is not mounted.
• AI filling of document templates — works on the AWS contour; on the Russian brand the AI buttons in the document editor are hidden.
• Financial reports — Finance. ⚠️ The section runs on the AWS contour; on cenaly.ru it is unavailable.
• Your own PBX and call recordings — Telephony: a call from a matched number lands in the counterparty card's activity feed by itself.
• A custom domain — Custom domain.

Troubleshooting#

There is no "Appointments" section in the panel. The appointment book is available only to the "beauty salon" and "appointment services" business types — a hard rule that no toggle bypasses. "Professional services" do not have the section by design: if you need booking, change the business type in the location settings.

An employee cannot open "Companies and invoices". That is intended: the section is available to the account owner only. What remains for an employee is "Requests", "Clients" and "Documents" within their role — Staff and shifts.

The invoice comes out without seller details. Fill in the "Seller details" tab: the legal entity, a bank account, a signatory. The details are captured into the document snapshot at the moment of issuing.

Counterparty details are not validated. That means the chosen country has no profile of its own, and the card falls back to the generic rule: free-form fields, no checksums.

A yellow banner in "Requests" says rows may be missing. One of the channels did not answer the read (for example, an extension is not connected). That is an honest warning rather than an empty list: requests from the other channels are still there.

AI parsing produced the wrong draft. The model does not invent: it matches the text against your catalog and your cards. Check that the service exists in the catalog and the counterparty in the directory; anything unrecognised arrives as a task for the manager.

FAQ#

Are services and B2B a separate product?#

No. It is a profile of settings and wording on top of shared engines: booking runs on the same slot calculation as a salon, and the invoice on the same CRM as a shop. A service business has no domain contour of its own, and we do not present it as a separate system.

Can I run both appointments and invoices at once?#

Yes. The business type only sets defaults: choose "appointment services" and switch on "Documents" and "Companies and invoices" — the latter is on by default for every type anyway.

Who can issue an invoice?#

Only the account owner: the "Companies and invoices" section is available to them alone.

In which countries will the document forms work?#

Dedicated sets of registration details, document names, numbering masks and VAT modes exist for fifteen countries; for the rest a fallback profile applies — the document will be issued, but without country-specific validation.

Can an invoice be paid online?#

Payment by link is supported, and the payment receipt feeds the location's automation. You need a payment provider connected for your country and currency — Payments.

Does all of this work on the Russian brand?#

Appointments, requests, counterparties, documents and settlements — yes. What is unavailable on cenaly.ru is financial reports, AI filling of documents, the KSeF panel and the daily nudge autopilot.

Related articles#

• First day: choose your business type — the common frame and the other formats
• Appointment book — slots, statuses, reminders, memberships
• Clients (CRM) — cards, invoices, contracts, settlements
• Documents — templates, files and spreadsheets, validity and acknowledgements
• Clients — the client directory and the history of enquiries
• My website — forms, chat and callback on your own site
• First day: salon, barbershop, studio — when booking is the main client path