Cabinet
Run the whole floor from one screen
Inkdesk's day board — Today in the cabinet — shows who's booked, who's paid a deposit, who's checked in, and who's in the chair, across every artist in your shop at once. Managers and artists log in with Google and work the same appointment states online booking already created, so the website and the floor never drift into two different stories about what's happening today.
What a day board is actually for
Tattoo shops don't run on a blank calendar. You need to see who's deposit-pending versus confirmed, who's running late, who still needs consent signed, and which walk-in can take a gap between sessions. The day board is that live list for today, tied directly to the appointment's real status — not a guess based on who mentioned what in the group chat.
From one appointment, you can move its status, open the client record, send a quote, reschedule, or handle a deposit refund or forfeit — without switching to three other tools to finish the same task.
Shops running on memory alone tend to double-book and forget deposits, especially on a chaotic Saturday. The board is deliberately boring — statuses, names, times, money state — and that boredom is exactly what keeps a four-chair floor calm when a post goes viral and the DMs triple overnight.
It also changes how a shop handles a bad morning. If an artist calls in sick or a plumbing issue shuts down a station, the day board is where you actually see the damage — which confirmed clients need a call, which deposits might need a reschedule offer instead of a cancellation, and which walk-in slots just opened up as a result. Trying to work that out from a paper schedule means flipping pages and cross-referencing a separate contact list; on the board, it's the same screen you were already looking at, just filtered by the artist whose day fell apart.
How the board maps to the appointment lifecycle
Appointments move through request, review or quoted when needed, deposit pending, confirmed, checked in, in progress, and completed — plus cancel, reschedule, and no-show branches. The board surfaces what matters today, so an artist isn't hunting the full calendar to find their next action.
Same states for online bookings and walk-ins.
Online bookings that already paid through Stripe Connect sit right next to phone bookings and walk-ins. Same tenant, same rules, same Google-authenticated staff looking at one list instead of comparing three.
Where check-in fits into the picture
Clients can check in from a station display, and the board updates instantly — front desk sees arrivals without anyone yelling across a loud shop floor. Pair that with consent forms so paperwork's done before the needle starts, not scrambled together at the chair.
The moment someone no-shows, marking it on the board is what frees that block for a waitlist offer instead of leaving a ghost appointment sitting there labeled 'confirmed' for the rest of the day.
Consent status deserves the same visibility as deposit status, because both are things that block a session from actually starting on time. A board that only shows 'checked in' without flagging that consent is still unsigned invites an artist to start prepping before the paperwork is actually done — small on a slow day, a real bottleneck when three chairs are running back to back and nobody wants to be the one holding things up at the counter.
Who actually lives on this screen all day
Front desk and shop managers treat it as their home screen. Artists check their own load between clients; owners glance at completed sessions for payout-relevant context. Because login is Google-based, adding a new hire or a guest artist doesn't mean inventing yet another password.
Calendar sync can push confirmed times to Google Calendar for personal glance-awareness, but the day board stays the shop's actual operational truth — especially for deposits, consent, and check-in status that Google Calendar was never built to track.
New hires benefit the most from a clear board, because it teaches the shop's actual workflow faster than any onboarding document could. Instead of explaining the appointment lifecycle in the abstract, you can point at a real booking moving from deposit pending to confirmed to checked in and say 'that's the whole system, right there.' A front-desk hire who's comfortable on the board by their second shift is a front-desk hire who stops needing to interrupt an artist mid-session to ask what to do next.
What belongs on the board versus somewhere else
Use the day board for seating order, check-in, starting and finishing sessions, quick reschedules, and any deposit refund or forfeit call that affects today's chair time. Use Requests for inbound online work still stuck in review or quote. Use Settings for hours, widget domains, and Stripe Connect — during a quiet morning, not mid-rush on a Saturday.
- TToday · day boardSeating, check-in, start/finish, quick reschedule, deposit forfeit/refund for today
- RRequestsInbound online work still in review or quote — not mid-session floor noise
- SSettingsHours, widget domains, Stripe Connect — quiet morning, not Saturday rush
Artist payout reconciliation isn't a minute-by-minute board task, but completed sessions on Today are exactly the raw material that reconciliation needs later. When a cancel frees a block, jump straight to a waitlist offer — empty time doesn't wait around for you to notice it.
One screen instead of five apps, for $50 a month
Before a day board like this, most shops are running a paper schedule, a group chat for status updates, a separate payment app for deposits, and someone's memory for who no-showed last month. The day board collapses that into one live view that updates itself as bookings, deposits, and check-ins actually happen.
It ships as part of the $50-per-shop-per-month Inkdesk subscription — the same plan that includes booking, deposits, and reminders. Set your artists and hours, connect Stripe for deposits, and Today is useful from the first real booking, not after a month of onboarding.
Shops coming from a paper-and-group-chat setup sometimes worry the board will feel like extra work layered on top of what they already do. In practice it's closer to the opposite: most of what the board tracks — who's here, who paid, who's next — was already happening in someone's head or a text thread. The board just makes that information visible to everyone on shift at once, instead of living entirely with whichever staff member happened to take the booking or answer the phone that day.
FAQ
Is the day board just Google Calendar with extra steps?
No. Calendar sync is optional outbound context for artists' personal calendars. The day board is Inkdesk's own operational Today view, with deposit and status actions Google Calendar doesn't have.
Can walk-ins show up on the board alongside online bookings?
Yes. Walk-ins move through the exact same appointment statuses as bookings made online, so the whole floor stays on one system.
Do artists see everyone's schedule or just their own?
Staff work inside the shop tenant with role permissions — artists and managers see what they need for the day without cross-artist or cross-shop leakage.
Does the board show whether a deposit was actually paid?
Yes. Deposit labels and actions sit right on the appointment, so you can tell confirmed-and-paid apart from still-pending at a glance.
Can we just run this on a regular front-desk computer?
Yes — the cabinet is browser-based. Most shops keep Today open all day on a desk monitor next to the station iPad used for check-in.
Inkdesk is $50 per shop per month — one shop subscription, not a pile of add-ons. Start a free trial or open the live demo with sample data. No credit card required to look around.