Curbside Cuts & Shave.

We started with the booking flow because it's the thing every other system already gets wrong for mobile services: a 60-minute haircut at a customer site is actually a 90-minute block once you account for setup, breakdown, and travel. Hit that one detail well and the rest of the system has a foundation to sit on.

From there: build the member-facing portal that lets subscribers see history, update payment, and manage their plan without emailing Rory. Then the admin dashboard that lets him run the business from the same place. Stripe billing in the middle, so the money story stays consistent no matter which screen touched it.

A complete production system shipped in six weeks. Three surfaces: marketing site, member portal, admin dashboard. One platform, one login, one source of truth.

• Smart 90-minute appointment blocking with configurable travel buffers per location type.
• Two-way Google Calendar sync so the owner's calendar stays the source of truth.
• Stripe subscriptions with three tiers and a self-serve customer portal for billing.
• Member portal: profile, payment, history, subscription status, plan changes.
• Admin dashboard: appointments, members, revenue, manual booking, plan overrides.
• Secure logins with role-based access and audit trails on sensitive actions.
• Automatic email and SMS confirmations.
• Production hosting and monitoring, with a dozen-plus improvements rolled in since launch.

The system has been running the business since launch. More than 100 recurring subscribers move through it, thousands of appointments have booked and closed through the calendar, and Rory runs the operational side from a single dashboard instead of five SaaS tools.

Delivered at roughly a third of competing developer quotes. The cost story holds because the system is right-sized: one database, one app, one front-end. No enterprise SaaS the business doesn't need.

• 100+ active recurring subscribers managed end-to-end.
• Thousands of appointments booked, confirmed, and closed through the calendar.
• Owner operates the full business from a single admin dashboard.
• Cost: roughly one-third of competing custom-development quotes.

Picking the right scope was the win. We could have over-built every surface. Instead the system shipped with exactly the features that mattered: smart booking, Stripe done right, an admin dashboard readable at a glance. The dozen-plus enhancements added since launch all slot in cleanly because the foundation was built senior from day one.

The other lesson: small-business custom software is a real category if you scope ruthlessly and build it like it matters. The market is full of agencies that won't take this work and freelancers who can't. There's a real wedge between those two that Albertson Designs is built to occupy.