Made by a tattoo artist
Booking software for tattoo artists,
built for the way your brain actually works.
Your requests, your calendar, your deposits, your waivers and your numbers, in one quiet place that was made for tattooing and nothing else.
Free while we are in beta. No card, no contract, no cut of your money. Ever.
You know this feeling.
You are running a tattoo practice out of software that was built for hair salons, bending it into a shape it was never meant to hold.
Half your booking lives in your DMs at midnight, and the other half lives in your head, which is already full.
The month ends and you honestly could not tell somebody what you kept, what you owe, or what you set aside.
None of that is a discipline problem. It is a tools problem.
The three things nobody else does
Why this one is different.
It bends to your brain, not the other way round
Six ways to change how the whole app looks and behaves. Not a toggle buried in a settings menu. A whole design philosophy, built in from the first day, by somebody who needed it herself.
You are never competing with another artist here
There is no feed, no ranking, no marketplace where a client browses artists and picks the cheapest one. Your clients come to your page, and your page is yours. Your work is not somebody else’s inventory.
Built for tattooing and for nothing else
There is a field for your needle configuration. There is a field for stroke length. There is a healed photo sitting next to the fresh one with the healing time already worked out. Nobody bends a generic booking tool into that.
Do not take my word for it
Try it on this page, right now.
Every booking platform on earth says it is accessible. So instead of telling you, here is the actual switcher out of the actual app, sitting on this page. Pick a profile and watch this page change underneath you. It will still be set the way you left it when you come back.
ADHD. Everything except the thing you are touching dims away. Counts and badges disappear. Nothing moves.
Dyslexia. Type gets bigger, every italic goes, capitals and letter spacing come out, and lines stop before they get long enough to lose.
Autism. Muted colour, no motion, no shadows, no decoration, and a dark calm version if you want it.
Dyscalculia. Numbers become landmarks. Times say what part of the day they are. Sums show their working.
Speed reading. A soft reading band follows your pointer down the page.
These are design patterns that help with specific difficulties. They are not a label and they are not a diagnosis. Anyone can use any of them, on any day, for any reason, including no reason at all.
How it actually works
Four steps, and then it runs.
- 1
They ask
A client fills in your booking page. That one form makes their profile, their private portal and their account, and puts them on your board. You did not type anything.
- 2
You offer a time
Pick a slot with your week visible beside you. They get an email with the time and a button to accept it, and it goes on your calendar as held rather than confirmed.
- 3
Their deposit locks it
They pay from their own phone, sign their waiver, and build their vision board. The moment the deposit lands, the hold becomes a real booking.
- 4
The session writes itself down
You log the price, the payment and your settings once. The month adds itself up, sets your tax aside, and turns into a spreadsheet whenever you ask for one.
Between those steps, twenty two emails go out on your behalf in your own voice, including the reminders a week and a day before, the aftercare note afterwards, and the deposit nudge you were dreading having to send.
Everything in it
Eight chapters of your day.
Open any of them to see what is actually inside. Nothing here is a promise about a future version. It is all in there today.
Chapter one
Built for how your brain works
Six ways to change how this whole app looks and behaves, remembered on your device, changeable any day of the week.
What is actually in here?
- Six viewer profiles: Standard, ADHD, Dyslexia, Autism, Dyscalculia and Speed Reading. ADHD dims everything except the thing you are touching. Dyslexia raises the type size, kills every italic, and caps the line length. Autism strips motion, colour and decoration. Dyscalculia turns numbers into landmarks, so 2:00 PM also says in the afternoon and $200 each x 3 reads as $600 total.
- Four ways to see your day: the full pipeline, Live in the Moment for today only, Admin Day for when you have your paperwork hat on and do not want to see clients, and One Thing, which shows you exactly one item at a time.
- Three comfort switches that stack on top of any of the above: Calm turns off motion, Quiet hides every count and badge, Easy Read makes everything bigger and roomier.
- Three settings layouts, chosen by you and never moved on you, with search across all of them so you never have to remember which group a setting was filed under.
- An explanation behind a small arrow on every card, closed by default. There the week you need it, invisible the week you do not.
- Every dollar figure sits behind a fold that closes itself on every page load, so there is no money on your screen while you are working in a shop or a cafe.
Chapter two
Your bookings, without the DMs
A board your clients walk across on their own, and a list at the top of everything actually waiting on you.
What is actually in here?
- Four columns: Profile Complete, Reserved, Booked, Completed. A request moves along it as things happen, so you can see your whole practice in one glance.
- One request creates their profile, their portal and their account. You do not type anything in.
- A Needs Attention queue at the top holding proposed times, deposit claims and flagged messages, so nothing lives in your head.
- Sort by soonest requested date, with day of pinned to the top, for when you have an opening tomorrow and want to fill it.
- Propose a time, book somebody directly in person, edit a time either loudly or quietly, unbook, mark a no show, mark completed.
- No show history follows a person across every request they ever make, so it shows up as a warning on future bookings even years later.
- Two warm ways out: not hearing back, and unbook. Both send a kind note with no reason given and a button to come back.
- Removed requests sit restorable for thirty days before they go for good.
- Duplicate detection and merge, so one human is never two records.
Chapter three
A calendar that understands a tattoo day
Long sessions, buffer time, holds that are not clients, and two things at once without either of them hiding.
What is actually in here?
- A week grid from 8am to 9pm, with overlap lanes, so two appointments at the same time each get their own column instead of stacking invisibly.
- Drag an appointment to move it. It snaps to fifteen minutes, keeps its length, and re-sends the confirmation email by itself.
- Buffer time held before and after every single appointment, set once in your settings.
- Personal events for breaks, holds and days off, which are not clients and do not pretend to be.
- Reserved but unpaid looks different from confirmed, so you can see at a glance what is actually locked in.
- A mini calendar peek sits right inside a client card, so you can see your week while you are choosing their time.
- A clock face time picker, for anyone who would rather not type a time.
Chapter four
The client does the work now
Every client gets a private page with a to do list. The deposit, the time, the waiver, the inspiration. You stop chasing.
What is actually in here?
- A checklist that tells them what is theirs to do next, in plain language, in order.
- Their appointment status written out honestly, including the forty eight hour hold and exactly when it expires.
- Deposits: a one tap Venmo button already filled in with the amount and the note, a QR code so somebody on a laptop can pay from their phone, a place to upload the screenshot as proof, and a tick box that tells you to go check.
- The waiver: read it, initial every section, sign with a finger. The button stays locked until they have actually scrolled to the end. It comes out the other side as a stored, timestamped PDF.
- The vision board: drag, resize and rotate photos on a canvas, with your flash art, ten motifs, vibe words in script fonts, mood tags, colour palettes, seven clip shapes, a lasso cutout tool, and a freehand drawing layer with six brushes, so they can circle what they love or cross out what they do not.
- An inspiration page with written notes, a recorded voice memo so they can describe it out loud, bulk photo upload, and a box on every photo asking what they love about that one.
- Messaging with photos, voice memos and read receipts, in a real place instead of your DMs.
- After the session: their fresh photos to keep, an Instagram share that tags you, and a review request when you are ready to ask.
- A seven slide welcome that explains the deposit, the hold and the reschedule rule, so you never explain it again.
Chapter five
Money you can actually see
Every session, every payment split, the tax worked out for you, and a real spreadsheet at the end of the month.
What is actually in here?
- A month by month session log of everything booked and completed, colour coded by section so your eye knows where it is.
- Per session: price, a plus or minus adjustment, the deposit, the tip, and how it actually came in across cash, card and Venmo.
- Federal and state tax percentages you set once, then a set aside figure per session and per month, and what you genuinely kept.
- A price calculator built in: your session minimum, your hourly rate, whether the minimum covers the first hour, and rounding to fifteen, thirty or sixty minutes.
- Download the month as a proper formatted spreadsheet, with frozen headers, ready to hand to an accountant.
- Save and lock a session record when it is final, and unlock it again if you need to.
Chapter six
The recipe for a tattoo that heals right
Voltage, needle, stroke and ink mix, saved against the session. This is the part that is only possible because it was built for tattooing.
What is actually in here?
- Log your voltage, needle configuration, stroke length and ink mix against every session you do.
- Come back to it at the touch up and run the same recipe, instead of trying to remember what you did four months ago.
- Fresh and healed photos on the same client, with the healing time worked out for you, so a photo says three months healed without you counting.
- A fresh against healed comparison view, so you can study what your own settings actually do over time.
Chapter seven
Parties, done properly
One person invites their friends. Everybody gets their own hours, their own portal, and one shared board.
What is actually in here?
- A client invites their guests by name and email. Each guest gets their own profile and portal, all tied together as one party.
- Everybody gets their own block and the day runs back to back, so three people at two hours each reads as six hours held, not one shared slot.
- Change one person's hours and everybody after them shifts. Nobody else's length changes.
- A shared group chat you can see and reply in, a shared inspiration gallery, and a collaborative board for the whole party.
- Sign from one phone: pass it around, tap a name, that person signs, hand it on.
- The deposit maths spelled out, like $50 each x 4 people = $200 total, sendable in one Venmo transaction.
- One deposit books the party, and the money record stays honest about who has actually paid.
Chapter eight
Your page, your work, your prices
A booking page at your own address, with a request form built for tattooing rather than for haircuts.
What is actually in here?
- A request form that asks the right things: the design, preferred days with time frames, local or visiting, and how they would rather be contacted.
- Four ways to run your headline, depending on whether the studio name or your name is the one people know.
- Six colour skins, plus Confetti mode if you want the headings to sing.
- A featured work carousel of the photos you star, with healed pieces labelled by how long they healed.
- A pro profile with your portrait, your location, whether your books are open, your response time, style badges, a signature session, and hand picked reviews.
- A shareable pricing menu, and QR codes clients can scan to pass you on to a friend.
- Section switches, so anything you do not want on your page simply is not on your page.
Helpers
You are allowed to have help.
Not an employee. Not a full time hire. Not a commitment either of you has to be sure about. Just somebody who takes the inbox off you for a few hours a week, and gets paid properly for it.
What a helper actually does
They answer your clients, propose times, keep the board tidy, and hand you back the decisions that need you. You choose exactly what they can see, one permission at a time: clients, calendar, messages, flash. Nothing else is visible to them.
Their shift starts itself when they open the workspace and ends itself after a few quiet minutes, so a tab left open on a desk never bills you overnight. Every move they make is logged, and you see the week as hours, actions and what you owe.
Why it is built this way
Because the people who are best at this work often cannot take a full time job. Students. Single parents. People building a life around something else that matters. If the only way to help a studio is forty hours a week, all of those people are locked out, and every one of them would have been good at it.
So it is built for a few hours at a time, paid by the hour, honestly tracked, with no commitment demanded from either side. Small enough to say yes to.
Plans
Three sizes, and you move between them freely.
The Novice
Starter
Just the basics, beautifully simple. For the artist still learning, so nothing gets in your way or overwhelms you.
- Your booking page and your request form
- The full pipeline and calendar
- Client portals, vision boards and messaging
- Waivers, signed and stored as PDFs
- Deposits and your session log
- Every accessibility profile and view mode
The Student
Self Sufficient
Start keeping your clients’ session details, so you can study what worked, correct on touch ups, and follow the same recipe to nail those healed results.
- Everything in Starter
- The session recipe: volts, needle, stroke, ink
- Fresh and healed photos, with healing times
- Your customisable public artist page
- Saved quick replies
- Deposit alerts you can push
- Confetti mode and your own button colour
The Artist Entrepreneur
Artist Entrepreneur
Your whole practice in one calm space. No guessing recipes, effortless delegation with your helpers, and time back to truly live in your ikigai.
- Everything in Self Sufficient
- Helpers, timesheets and permissions
- Helpers can pre book for you to approve
- Cash, card and Venmo split on every session
- Federal and state tax worked out
- Google review requests
- Your numbers, charted, with a coach’s notes
Everything is free while we are in beta. When pricing arrives you will hear it from me first, and nothing you are already using will be taken away from you.
Go down a level whenever you need to. When the going gets rough and the bookings are not coming in, you have got to save where you can. That is not a failure and it should not cost you anything to do. Come back up when you are ready.
And upgrade when you feel you are growing out of the one you are on. You cannot pick up a tool and know what to do with it until you have outgrown the one you had. That is the whole thing. You will know.
When you feel your life being consumed by this work, and you are losing that original passion and that spark, that is your sign. Not a sales email. That.
Questions
The things people actually ask.
Do you take a cut of what I earn?
No. Not a percentage, not a booking fee, not a deposit fee. Your client pays you directly through your own Venmo. Ikigai never touches your money and never sees it. What you charge is between you and your client, and it stays that way.
Am I competing with other artists on here?
No, and this is on purpose. There is no feed, no ranking, no marketplace where a client browses artists and picks the cheapest. Your clients come to your page, and your page belongs to you. Ikigai is not trying to own the relationship between you and the people you tattoo.
What if I only tattoo part time?
Then start on the smallest plan and stay there as long as you like. There is no minimum number of bookings, no penalty for a quiet month, and no pressure to grow into something you did not ask for.
What happens to my information if I leave?
You can download every month of your session records as a spreadsheet whenever you want, including after you decide to go. Your clients' signed waivers are PDFs you can keep. Nothing is held hostage.
Is my clients' information safe?
Your workspace is yours alone. No other artist can see your clients, your calendar or your messages. Your helpers see only what you switch on for them, one permission at a time. And a client can ask you to erase their personal information, which there is a real button for.
Do I need to be good with technology?
No. Every card in the app has a small arrow that opens into plain language explaining what the buttons actually do. Anything that cannot be undone asks you first and tells you exactly what will happen. If you can use Instagram, you can use this.
A note from me
Ikigai was not built by a company.
There is no board here, no investors, no office and no team. It is one person’s work, and that person is me. I am a tattoo artist. I own this outright, I designed it, and I am the one who built it.
I am a woman, and I am Uchinaanchu. My family is part of the Okinawan diaspora, which is a careful way of saying I grew up a long way from a homeland I was still somehow made of. I did not choose tattooing so much as answer it. It called, and when I got close enough to hear it properly, it turned out my ancestors were the ones doing the calling.
I built this because I could not find anything made for people like us. People carrying an ancestry they were raised at a distance from. People with neurospicy brains who have spent their whole lives being handed tools that were shaped for somebody else’s head, and then being told they were the problem when the tools did not fit. I wanted us to be seen properly first, and then actually helped, so that more of our hours could be spent inside our ikigai instead of fighting the software that was supposed to be making things easier.
And I want to say the quiet part out loud, because it is the whole reason any of this exists. We are not what we do for a living. We are what we do with the hours that belong to us, who we choose to spend them with, and the joy we manage to grow in the middle of everything else. Tattooing is simply where my life led me, and I am lucky it did. This is here so the work asks less of you, and leaves you more.
Nicole
Come and see if it fits.
Free while we are in beta. Nothing to cancel, nothing to lose, and you can take your records with you whenever you want.