Sauna studio opening checklist: rehearse the first booking

Most opening checklists end at the permits, the heater install and the insurance certificate. The last item is the one that fails in front of a customer: one bather books, pays, signs, arrives to a hot room and appears on a roster reception can use. Rehearse that route in the building, with the heaters on, before you take the first payment.

The startup guide covers what comes before this: prices, a month's costs and the questions for your health department. This page starts once the room is built and the software is set up.

Start with one complete day

Set up one real day of the timetable: one shared session, one private slot if you sell them, and the capacity of each. Capacity is the number of places on the benches and in the plunge rotation, not the number of people the room can technically hold. Keep the offer menu to what staff can explain at the desk: a drop-in and a visit pack, with a membership added once you have decided its terms.

Then follow one bather through the whole route, booking from your real website on a phone, and check each step as they reach it:

A screenshot of each screen does not prove the route works. One bather's booking, followed to the roster and the payment record, does.

Decide how the rehearsal pays

Elara has no self-serve test mode for payments or email. Every rehearsal email is a real email, and the testing guide says to use an inbox you can open, or to ask Elara support if you need to test without sending one.

For payments, the simplest route is a real purchase on your own card at the lowest price you sell, refunded afterwards. Stripe normally keeps its processing fee on a refunded payment, so budget a few dollars for the rehearsal.¹ If you want to run a card-reader sale without hardware, a Stripe test connection supports a simulated reader with approved and declined test cards; that connection is arranged with Elara rather than switched on in settings.²

Time the heat-up against the timetable

A cold room takes time to reach bathing temperature, and that time sets when staff arrive and when the first session can start. Time it on a rehearsal morning, with the doors and vents as they will be on an ordinary day, and set the first session's start from what you measured. The same figure feeds the electricity cost per session model, since heat-up runs the heaters at full power.

If you run a cold plunge, put its checks on the same opening list: the water temperature, the sanitation steps your health department requires, and who records them.

Rehearse the waiver with a friend

In Elara, a bather who books online signs every active waiver before the booking goes through. A friend they bring is not held up: the booking succeeds whether or not the friend has signed. A friend new to your studio gets one invitation email with a link to set up their account and review the booking and waivers. A friend already on your customer list, whether or not they have signed in, gets no invitation, only an email saying who booked them a seat, with a link to manage it. It does not mention the waiver. Elara emails your staff that the friend needs one before check-in, so send it from the roster or they will find out at the door.³

A booking staff add from the roster is not held up by a waiver either. The gate is check-in: the roster shows an alert on anyone who has not signed, or who signed an earlier version, and check-in is refused until they sign. Staff can hand over the device with Sign Waiver in Person, or use Send Waiver to email a link to the customer's account.⁴ Guests on a private booking are recorded by name and never asked to sign, so if your insurer needs every bather's signature, collect it another way.⁵

So rehearse with a friend who has not signed, and time how long signing in person takes at the door. On a busy first morning, that is the queue.

Read your waiver as a bather would. House rules on session length, hydration and the plunge belong where bathers see them before the first round, not only in the waiver text.

Rehearse the exceptions while the room is quiet

Once the ordinary booking works, run the cases that go wrong on opening week, and have the staff member who will face them do it:

• A late cancellation. Inside your cancellation window, a bather cannot cancel online, so they will phone or message. Decide what staff say and whether the credit comes back. The cancellation policy guide covers choosing the window.
• A changed waiver. Change the waiver's text while your test bather has an upcoming booking. On the roster, that booking shows Waiver Update Required until they sign the new version.
• An uncertain fee charge. If a late-cancellation or no-show fee comes back uncertain, staff use Check payment status rather than charging again, so a retry does not become a second charge.
• A refund. Refunding a payment, cancelling a booking and cancelling a membership are three different actions. Make sure the person on the desk knows which one the bather is asking for.

Check when access begins

A pass sold before opening should not run down while the doors are still shut. In Elara, a fixed-term pass counts from purchase unless you set Validity starts to On first visit, which starts it from the first booked session they attend or miss; a cancelled booking does not start it.⁶ A monthly or yearly membership starts billing when it is bought, so sell those once you can open, or say plainly in the offer that billing starts at purchase.

A founding rate needs the same care. The founding memberships guide compares the founder offers studios advertise and shows which ones Elara can sell as written.

Check where every link leads

Three destinations need setting up before the first email goes out:

• Replies. Set a reply-to address in business settings. Without one, a bather's reply goes to the sending address, and Elara's own sender is not an inbox you can read.⁷
• The account page. Set the customer account URL in website integration, on a domain the widgets are allowed to load on. Sign-in links staff send, Log in as Customer and Send Waiver all lead there. A friend's invitation returns to the page the booking was made on, so that page's domain must be allowed too.⁸
• Every page with a widget. Publish each one on an unlisted page of your own site first, and open it on a phone as well as a laptop. The widget page shows what each widget does.

Keep an opening record

Write down what the rehearsal found, with one name against anything still open:

Ask for a quote. When you set up, book, pay, sign and check in as a bather would, and keep a list of anything that does not fit how you plan to run.