CollectIt News & Updates

Share Table — squeeze more bookings into your busiest sessions

If you run popular events — Friday night adults' sessions, weekend family slots, holiday workshops — you'll know the maths: sometimes you have more people wanting to book than tables to put them on. Two parties of two, one table of four that neither party quite fills. Until now, the system would block one booking from using the table once the other was on it.

The new Share Table option lets you do exactly that. Just open a booking, go to Modify → Table Picker, and select the table you want — even if it already has someone on it. The system lets you force the booking through, so you're in control. On the Gantt chart, you'll see all bookings assigned to that table, and if the combined covers go past the table's normal capacity, the count turns red — a helpful nudge that you're pushing beyond the comfort zone.

This one came directly from a shop who told us they were manually working around the single-booking-per-table limit during their busiest sessions. We built it the same week. If you've got something in your workflow that feels harder than it should be, tell us — the best features in CollectIt started as a sentence in someone's reply.

Custom background image for your booking page

Your booking page is often the first thing a customer sees when they decide to visit. Until now it's been clean and functional — but it looked like our page, not your studio.

You can now upload a background image that sits behind your booking form — a photo of your studio, your kiln room, a shelf of finished pieces, or whatever captures the feel of your space. The image is fixed in place behind the form — it doesn't scroll — so it works as a proper backdrop without distracting from the booking flow. And it looks great on mobile too.

Mailing list widget — grow your list from your own website

Social media is great until the algorithm changes. Email is yours forever. The new mailing list widget lets you collect sign-ups directly from your own website, building a list of customers who actually want to hear from you — no algorithm, no platform risk, no middleman.

You get two options: a direct sign-up link to share anywhere, and an embeddable widget — one line of HTML pasted on your website, and the sign-up form appears automatically, styled to match your brand colours. Customers can optionally add their birthday.

This is more than just a mailing list. It's the foundation of the loyalty and CRM features we're building next — birthday offers, visit tracking, and proper customer relationships that help you reward your regulars.

Scheduled gift voucher delivery — send it at the right moment

Gift vouchers have been available in ChargeIt for a while, and they've been quietly popular. But there was always one friction point: if you bought a voucher on Tuesday for a birthday on Saturday, it arrived immediately.

You — and your customers buying online — can now pick a date and time for the digital voucher to land in the recipient's inbox. Buy it today, schedule it for the birthday morning, and forget about it. The purchaser gets a confirmation email straight away so they know it's taken care of.

If you're not selling gift vouchers yet — here's why you should. Industry-wide, between 10% and 20% of gift vouchers are never redeemed. That's revenue in your account today for a service you may never have to provide. And even the ones that are redeemed bring customers through the door who typically spend more than the voucher value.

Glazing queue — track every piece from throwing to firing

For studios that make pottery as well as painting it, you can now add a glazing field to your intake form — and choose which session types it appears on. When a customer submits their piece, they pick their chosen glaze. That selection shows up as a coloured badge on their customer card and on every photo in the gallery.

In the gallery, there's now a dedicated Glazing tab — a live queue of every piece that still needs to be glazed. Tap to select the ones you've done, hit Mark as glazed, and they move straight into the regular gallery flow ready to be fired.

Accountant Summary — one click, print-ready PDF

End of quarter, your accountant sends an email. You spend 45 minutes pulling numbers together. Not any more. The new Accountant Summary generates a clean, print-ready page covering gross revenue, VAT, net sales, payment method breakdown, liabilities, discounts, and refunds. Pick your date range and print or save as PDF.

AI customer profiles — know your regulars better than ever

Open any returning customer's booking and tap Customer Insight. CollectIt generates an AI-written summary of everything it knows: visit history, spend patterns, pieces per visit, photo style, no-show history, and staff notes. Perfect for giving regulars a warm, personal welcome — or spotting patterns worth knowing about.

Multi-session courses and one-day workshops — fully managed

Create multi-session courses with a fixed schedule, set a per-person price, and let customers enrol online. The system handles capacity, waitlists when full, payment collection, and automated reminders before each session. You can enrol multiple attendees in one go from the staff dashboard.

AI invoice import — photograph a delivery note, watch it build your inventory

Photograph a supplier invoice or delivery note and ChargeIt reads it using AI — imports every item, suggests a selling price, creates till buttons, and starts tracking stock straight away. No more manual data entry from delivery notes.

Gift vouchers — sell online and in-store, track every penny

Customers can buy gift vouchers online from your booking page, or you can sell them in-studio through ChargeIt. Vouchers are redeemed at the till with balance tracked automatically. Unused balances stay on the voucher for future visits.

Waitlist — turn 'fully booked' into 'we'll call you'

When a session is fully booked, customers can add themselves to the waiting list instead of leaving disappointed. When a place opens up, the system can auto-notify everyone on the list — first to claim gets the spot — or you can manually trigger offers after reviewing the list.

TextIt — SMS that actually gets read

TextIt adds SMS to your toolkit. Day-before booking reminders dramatically cut no-shows. Overdue collection nudges get pieces off your shelf faster. Waitlist alerts mean no one misses out because they weren't checking email. £2/month line rental, just 4p per message — you only pay for what you send.

Takeaway Boxes — paint at home, managed properly

Online booking with deposits via Stripe. Track what's out, what's returned, what's overdue. Payments handled seamlessly. Flows straight into CollectIt once items come back — no double-entry.

CollectIt in the US — fully localised

Everything now adapts automatically for US studios: USD currency, local sales tax, 12-hour clock, local time zones, Stripe Connect for US payment processing. Just set your country in Shop Settings.

BookIt — online bookings built for pottery studios

Not adapted from a restaurant platform. Session types with custom durations, capacities, and deposit rules. A live Gantt schedule showing every table and booking. Automated confirmation and reminder emails. Customers book online 24/7 without a phone call.

ChargeIt — your till, no hardware, no fees

A full EPOS system in your browser. Photo-button product catalogue. Stripe payment links sent to customers' phones — no card machine needed. Inventory tracking with live stock levels. Sales reports, cash-up summaries, and deal management. ChargeIt and BookIt work together: deposit paid at booking is automatically deducted at checkout.

Partial firing — no customer waits on one straggler item

Previously, when a customer dropped off multiple pieces, the whole order was held back until every piece was fired. Now you can mark individual items as fired and ready, and the system sends a single email listing exactly which pieces are ready for collection — with the remaining items clearly noted as still in progress.

This means faster collections, happier customers, and less shelf clutter from orders waiting on that one piece that needs an extra glaze firing.

Collection bookings — let customers book their pickup slot

Instead of an open-ended 'come and collect whenever,' customers receive a link to book a specific collection time slot. This spreads collections across the day instead of everyone arriving at once, and dramatically reduces uncollected items sitting on your shelf for weeks.

Customer tags — organise your customer list your way

Add custom tags to any customer — 'VIP', 'school group', 'birthday party', 'wholesale' — and filter your customer list by tag. Build saved segments for targeted marketing or quick reference.

Mailchimp sync — your customer list, automatically in Mailchimp

Connect your Mailchimp account and customer emails flow automatically into your mailing list. Marketing opt-ins collected at drop-off go straight to Mailchimp — no exporting, no CSV wrangling, no double-handling.

Storage locations — know exactly where every piece is

Assign pieces to named storage locations (Shelf A, Kiln Room, Glaze Bay) as they move through your studio. Filter the dashboard by location to see exactly what's where — no more hunting for that one mug someone put in the wrong place.

Social sharing — let customers show off their creations

When customers receive their fired photo email, they can share it directly to Instagram, Facebook, or WhatsApp. Every share carries your studio's name and a link back to your booking page — free marketing from happy customers.