Materials sold in the booking
Attach a product to a class and it appears during booking — a kit, a canvas pack, a firing. It stays purchasable from the family’s own profile afterwards if you allow it.
The class is the easy part. The clay is not.
Art is the one vertical where the booking is only half the transaction: there is a kit, a canvas pack, a firing, a smock in three sizes and a stock count behind each of them. Zooza sells those in the same checkout as the class, with variants and stock, and keeps them on the order afterwards. Terms, workshops, drop-ins and holiday intensives all run from the same place.
What an art studio needs that a generic booking tool skips
Most class software treats a booking as one line item. A studio booking is a seat plus a basket, and the basket has sizes, stock and a cost you need back.
Sizes and stock, properly
A smock in S, M and L is one product with three items. Each carries its own price, its own stock count and a maximum quantity per order, so you do not oversell what you physically have.
Required, or optional
Mark the choice mandatory and the family has to pick a size before they can finish booking. Leave it optional and they can skip the kit entirely. Both are deliberate decisions, not defaults.
Terms, workshops, drop-ins
A weekly term, a one-off weekend workshop and an open-studio session are different programme shapes rather than workarounds. Entry passes cover the pay-per-visit case.
Seats held back for trials
A room that fits seven does not have to be a class of seven. Capacity 5 plus 2 extra places sells five seats and keeps two reachable only by trials and make-ups.
Teachers and rooms
Schedule by venue and by teacher, with substitutes and bulk changes across a term. Individual easels and wheels are not separately bookable — see the FAQ, we would rather say so.
Make-ups on a ratio
Missed sessions become credits with an expiry, limited as a ratio such as one per four sessions. Not a monthly allowance — that is a real constraint and it is in the FAQ.
A full class keeps queueing
When a class fills, families can still submit and join the waiting list. You approve each one yourself, and the queue tells you whether a second group is worth opening.
Selling a kit with the class
This is the part that is genuinely specific to studios, and it is a two-stage build: the variants first, then the thing you actually sell.
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1. Create a service per variant
Services → Create new service, one per variant: smock size S, size M, size L. Each gets its own unit price, a maximum quantity per order, and a stock quantity if what you hold is limited. Services are the items that live inside a product.
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2. Create the product
Products → Create product, named the way a parent would read it — "Smock" or "Beginner clay kit". Switch on available for online checkout if you also want to sell it on its own rather than only alongside a class. Physical and digital products are built the same way.
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3. Put the variants in it
Open the product, then Items → Add item, and add the services you just made. If the choice is a size rather than an extra, mark the item selection <strong>mandatory</strong> so nobody can half-select it and arrive without a smock.
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4. Attach it to the class
Open the class settings, find product settings, and choose which products sell during booking for that class. Enabling available in client profile lets a family come back and buy the kit later, which is what happens when a child moves up a level mid-term.
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5. Know where the money shows up
Product orders live in Orders, separately from class bookings. Set the programme up so the class side is clean first, then check the orders list — the FAQ below explains the one trap here, which is that unpaid product orders do not show in the booking debt notifications.
What you can configure
- Programme shapes: weekly terms, one-off workshops, multi-day intensives, open studio via entry passes, private lessons.
- Products sold during booking, per class, with physical or digital items.
- Per-variant price, stock quantity and maximum quantity per order.
- Whether choosing an item is mandatory or the family may skip it.
- Whether a product stays purchasable from the client profile after booking.
- Whether a product is also available for online checkout on its own.
- Class capacity, plus extra places reachable only by trials and make-ups.
- Whether trials draw on currently available capacity or only the extra places.
- Make-up credits: cancellation deadline, expiry, carry-over cap, and a ratio limit.
- An age restriction on the programme, which also decides whose booking gets queued.
- Whether a full class stays visible in the booking form and keeps collecting a queue.
- Entry passes for pay-per-visit and open studio, with an expiry set on the product.
- Discount codes and automatic sibling pricing for families with more than one child.
Sell the class and the clay in one checkout.
Sizes, stock, firings and the seat, on one order you can reconcile. Start a free trial, or let us look at how your materials are costed now.
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Book a live demo We’ll show you what’s possible.
FAQ — including what it will not do
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Can I charge for materials during the booking?
Yes, and it is a two-step build rather than a single field. You create a service for each variant — size S, size M, size L — each with its own price, stock quantity and maximum per order. Then you create a product, add those services to it as items, and attach the product to the class. From then on it appears during booking for that class, and optionally stays purchasable from the family’s profile afterwards. -
Can I force a size choice so nobody turns up without a smock?
Yes. Mark the item selection mandatory on the product and the family has to choose a variant before the booking completes — which also stops the product rendering half-selected on your site. Leave it optional and the kit becomes something they can skip. -
Does it track stock?
Per variant, yes: each service carries a stock quantity and a maximum quantity per order. That is the level the counting happens at, so if you hold eight medium smocks the medium service is where the eight goes, not the product as a whole. -
Where do I see which product orders are unpaid?
In Orders, via the advanced search — set payment status to unpaid and status to not deleted. There is no dedicated report for unpaid product orders, and more importantly they do not appear in the booking-level debt notifications. So a family can be fully paid up on the class and still owe you for the kit without anything flagging it. Check the orders list separately; this is the single most common way studios lose materials money. -
Can I book individual kilns, wheels or easels?
No. Zooza schedules venues and teachers, not individual pieces of equipment, and there is no per-piece firing fee calculated by size or weight. If your business is pure ceramics and the wheel reservation is the product, a ceramics-specific tool will fit you better and we would rather say so now. Where Zooza works well is a multi-medium kids or after-school studio, where the firing is a fixed-price product rather than a measured one. -
How do make-ups work for a termly art class?
A cancelled session becomes a credit, with a deadline for cancelling, an expiry you choose, and a cap on how many carry between terms. The limit is expressed as a ratio — one make-up per four sessions, for example. There is no monthly allowance: if your current policy is "one a month", it does not map directly and the ratio is the mechanism to translate it into. -
Do you support open studio and drop-ins?
Yes, through entry passes — a visits-based pass or a class pack the client buys and draws down. Each pass shows its code, the remaining entries and an expiry date set on the product configuration. One caveat worth knowing before you sell any: an expiry date on a purchased pass or voucher cannot be extended afterwards, not even by an administrator. The field is read-only once bought. -
How do I hold seats back for trial students?
Set the class capacity below the room’s real limit and put the difference into extra capacity. A room for seven becomes capacity 5 plus 2 extra: you sell five places and the last two are reachable only by trials and make-ups, because the booking form never sees extra capacity. The pool is shared between trials and make-ups rather than split, so size it for both. -
What happens when a class is full?
Families can still submit the form and the booking joins a waiting list. You are notified and approve each one yourself — nothing enrols automatically, and the queue is not first-come-first-served. It is also a demand signal: a full class that stays visible tells you how many more families wanted in, which is the number you use to decide on a second group. -
Can parents pay by bank transfer without typing the details?
Yes, where pay-by-square applies. The order confirmation carries the same QR code the booking emails do, with the order number as the variable symbol. It only renders if the order has an outstanding balance and your invoice profile holds a valid IBAN and a SWIFT code — the QR stays hidden until the SWIFT is filled in, which is the usual reason it appears to be missing. -
Do families need an app?
No. Booking, payment, the kit purchase and the pass balance all run in the browser on your own domain. Staff work the same way, which for a studio with weekend workshop cover is usually the point.
