Service based businesses that work with independent contractors (self-employed practitioners) have always faced the same problem: booking the client is only half the job. The other half is making sure everyone gets paid correctly, on time, without a spreadsheet or a WhatsApp group full of bank transfer requests.

That's what our new Appointments feature is built to solve, and we've got real numbers to back it up: additional revenue, on top of a business's normal bookings and walk-ins, brought in with no extra work.

The Feature

SplitSum Appointments lets businesses take bookings and automatically split the payment between the business and the practitioner who does the work, all in one transaction. No manual invoicing. No chasing people down after the job is done. The split happens the moment the customer pays.

For businesses built around individual talent, like tattoo studios, salons, barbershops, and personal training studios, this means the person cutting hair or holding the machine gets paid their share instantly, and the business keeps its cut without any extra admin.

The Case Study: Three Kings Tattoo

We didn't just build this in a vacuum. Three Kings Tattoo has been running Appointments since April 5th, under 4 months, and the results speak for themselves:

  • 63 bookings taken through the feature
  • Over £8,500 in total revenue processed
  • Every payment automatically split between the shop and the artist, with no manual work required

That's an average of roughly 4 bookings a week since launch, and none of them needed a staff member to pick up the phone.

Worth being clear on what this number represents: it's not the shop's total revenue over that period, Three Kings still takes plenty of walk-ins and bookings their usual way. These are 63 bookings that came in specifically through the Appointments feature, on top of everything else the shop was already doing. That's the point. It's additional revenue the shop wouldn't have had otherwise, generated by a booking page working in the background.

Revenue Without the Admin

The part of this that's easy to overlook is where those bookings actually come from. The booking page is public. A customer can find it, pick a time, pay their deposit, and confirm an appointment at 11pm on a Sunday without anyone at Three Kings answering a message or taking a call.

That means the shop is generating revenue outside of opening hours, outside of staff availability, and without a single human interaction on the business side. The booking happens, the payment goes through, and the split between the shop and the artist is sorted automatically. The first anyone at the shop hears about it is a confirmed appointment already on the calendar.

For a business that runs on individual artists' time, that's real revenue coming in with zero extra work.

How This Helps Service Businesses

If you run a business where contractors or freelancers do the customer facing work, whether that's tattooing, hairdressing, personal training, or something else entirely, Appointments is built for you. It handles:

  • Booking and payment in one flow — customers pay when they book, so there's no chasing invoices afterward
  • Automatic revenue splits — the business and the contractor get their agreed share the moment a payment goes through
  • Fewer manual steps — no separate systems for scheduling and payments

Three Kings Tattoo is proof that this works in a real, busy shop. 63 bookings and over £8,500 processed in under 4 months, all of it booked and paid for without anyone at the shop lifting a finger.

Try Appointments for Your Business

If you're running a service business with contractors and you're tired of sorting out who gets what after every job, Appointments is available now on SplitSum. Set your split once, and let every booking take care of the rest.

Get started with SplitSum Appointments →