Consultation forms are the paperwork you'd otherwise do on a clipboard: consent, medical history, patch tests, skin tests, aftercare sign-off. You build the form once, assign it to the services that need it, and Styler sends it out with the booking. Your customer fills it in on their phone before they arrive, and the completed form is kept on their customer record.
This article is the map — what happens at each stage, where everything lives in the Hub, and who on your team can see what. The other form articles go into each stage properly.
👀 Consultation forms are included on Pro. On Basic you'll see the Forms page, but it will offer you an upgrade rather than let you build anything.
👀 On one of our earlier plans? Consultation forms are included on App & Booking. They aren't on Booking or App — speak to your Consultant if you'd like them.
How it fits together
Five stages, and you only do the first two:
1. Build. In Settings → Forms, you create a form and add your questions — text, choices, dates, a scale, a photo, a signature. When you're happy with it, you publish it.
2. Assign. You tell Styler which services need the form, and how often to ask — every booking, the first booking only, or when the last one is more than a few months old.
3. Issue. Someone books one of those services. The form is created there and then, and the link goes out in their booking confirmation email — and again with their reminder.
4. Complete. Your customer opens the link, confirms it's them, answers the questions and signs. If they haven't done it by the time they arrive, you can open it on your own device and do it together.
5. Keep. The completed form sits on the customer's record and on the booking in your diary. You can read it, countersign it, open it as a PDF, or void it. Old ones are deleted automatically on a schedule you set.
💡 You don't have to use assignments at all. If you'd rather decide case by case, skip stage 2 and send forms by hand from the customer's profile.
Where everything lives
Settings → Forms — your forms. The Forms tab lists them all; the Assignments tab is where you map them to services.
Settings → Forms → Preferences — how long completed forms are kept.
A customer's profile → Forms tab — every form issued to that customer, completed or not, and the Send form button.
Your diary — a booking with forms attached gets a Forms button, which tells you at a glance whether they're done.
One form's own page — click any form in the list to see how it's performing: how many have been issued, completed and are still outstanding, plus every customer it's gone to.
The four statuses
Not completed — it's been issued, and nobody has finished it yet. This is what you're chasing.
Completed — answered and signed. Nothing more to do.
Void — you've cancelled it, with a reason. It's kept for the record rather than deleted, and it's marked as void if you export it.
Expired — the link ran out before it was completed, or the booking it belonged to was cancelled.
👀 A link doesn't last forever. A form sent for a booking stops working at the end of the day after that booking. That's deliberate — an old link shouldn't still open a medical history months later — but it does mean a form nobody completed will quietly go Expired rather than sit there waiting.
Who on your team can do what
Forms have their own three permissions, set per staff account under Settings → Staff → Accounts:
View forms — open a form and read the answers, including completed ones.
Send forms — issue a form to a customer and open it with them in person.
Manage templates & assignments — build and publish forms, assign them to services, void forms, and change how long they're kept.
💡 Be deliberate with View forms. For most businesses these answers are health information, so only give it to the people who actually need to read it. Every time someone opens a completed form, Styler records who it was.
For how permissions work generally, see adding staff accounts.
Where to go next
Building a consultation form — questions, sections, signatures and publishing.
Getting a consultation form to your customer — assigning to services, sending by hand, and filling one in together.
Completed consultation forms — reading answers, countersigning, PDFs, voiding and how long they're kept.
What your customer sees — the whole thing from their side, for when they ring up stuck.
FAQs
❓ Does my customer need the app, or an account?
Neither. They get a link, confirm one detail you already hold about them, and fill it in. It works on any phone, tablet or computer.
❓ What if they turn up without having done it?
Open the booking, click Forms, and choose Open in person. The form opens on your device for them to fill in with you.
❓ Can I use this for a class or a course?
Forms are assigned to services, so what a booking issues depends on the services on it. For a class or course, send the form by hand from the customer's profile.
❓ We already have our consent form on paper. Can I just copy it in?
Yes, and that's the usual starting point. Work through your paper form question by question — most of it will be yes/no questions with a details box, a few choices, and a signature at the end.
❓ Who can see a customer's answers?
Only people on your team whose account has View forms, and us if you ask us to look into a problem. Customers see their own form while they're filling it in.