Run the Walk-In Waitlist

A walk-in in Perceny starts life as a waitlist entry — "this is the list of people waiting for you right now" — and ends as an appointment, one way or another.

Getting into the queue

Three routes in:

• The kiosk. The client taps Walk-In, chooses a stylist and a service, and joins the queue.
• Your website. With Allow Walk-In Check-In on Website turned on, people can add themselves before they leave the house.
• Staff. Anyone with the permission can add a walk-in from the app or the dashboard.

Two shapes of queue

Per-stylist. Each stylist has their own line. The client chooses who they want and waits for them.

One shared line. Turn on Single shared waitlist (join the business) in Kiosk Settings and everyone joins one queue for the whole shop: the stylist step is skipped, the wait estimate comes from the soonest availability anywhere in the business, and a stylist is assigned later, before checkout. This is the barbershop shape.

How the order is decided

Three settings, and they interact:

Prioritize Availability for Walk-Ins — order by who is free soonest rather than by arrival time. Fills chairs fastest; can feel unfair to the person who has been sitting longest.

Respect Walk-In Waitlist Order — when people are already waiting, a new walk-in goes to the back of the line rather than into the first available gap. This is the "no queue jumping" switch, and it is what most clients assume is happening.

Maximum walk-in wait time (minutes) — if the estimate exceeds this, the kiosk suggests booking an appointment instead. Better than letting someone join a queue they will abandon.

Show Estimated Wait Time decides whether the client sees the estimate at all.

Who is even in the queue

The shift list decides which stylists can receive walk-ins. Two Ticket Settings pairs prune it automatically:

• Hide from shift before appointment (+ minutes) — someone with an appointment coming up soon stops receiving walk-ins.
• Hide from shift after unchecked-out appointment (+ minutes) — someone with an overdue, unclosed appointment stops receiving them too.

Both exist for the same reason: assigning a walk-in to someone who is about to be busy for an hour is how a queue quietly breaks.

Serving someone

Open the waitlist entry and resolve it. Serving creates the appointment and its ticket, already carrying the requested services, and you go on to create and complete the ticket as normal.

If the shop uses a shared queue, this is the point at which a stylist is assigned. Disable Checkout From Business (Ticket Settings) stops a business-owned ticket being checked out before that happens, which is worth turning on if you have ever found revenue with nobody's name on it.

Removing someone

Resolving a walk-in as removed turns it into a cancelled or no-show appointment rather than deleting it. That is deliberate — the history stays, and so does the ability to charge a fee.

The fees live in Kiosk Settings: Walk-in no-show fee and Walk-in cancellation fee, each with a fixed and a percentage form, plus the two "charge the default card on file" fallbacks for when the walk-in had no card of its own.

Require Card After Walk-In No-Show and Require Card After Walk-In Cancellation stop repeat offenders joining again without a card. Walk-In Cancellation Window (Minutes) decides how late is late enough to count.

Cards and deposits at the door

Whether a walk-in leaves a card at all is Walk-in card capture: save a card on file, or charge a deposit. Require card for kiosk walk-ins makes it mandatory; it is off by default so walk-ins can pay later.

If you intend to enforce fees, also turn on Show No-Show Policy For Pay-In-Person Walk-Ins so the policy is disclosed even when no card step is shown.

Closing walk-in tickets

Auto-Finish Walk-In Tickets closes the ticket after the walk-in's end time, with a delay and a start/end time reference you choose. Auto-Finish Deposit Walk-Ins is separate and covers walk-ins where a deposit was taken, charging the remaining balance to the saved card.

Where walk-ins show up in reports

Every resolved walk-in becomes an appointment with a walk-in source. So:

• "How many walk-ins did we do?" is answered from Appointment History filtered to walk-in sources, or from the Walk-In Waitlist History report.
• The live queue is for queue questions only — who is waiting, how long.