Focus: bookings, payments and management for a boutique studio in Concepción

A studio managed from the web

A boutique studio works with small groups: each class has limited spots, a fixed schedule and people who book, cancel or wait for a place. For Focus, a Hot Boxing, Yoga and GAP studio in Concepción, Chile, we developed a platform that brings those operations together in a single system: focusclub.cl.

The website presents the brand, its disciplines, class schedule and plans. Behind it are bookings, payments, customer accounts and a dashboard for the studio's day-to-day administration.

Classes that are never overbooked

The calendar shows the current and following week, with real-time availability and filters by discipline. Each class has its own capacity: eight people in most classes and six in Yoga.

The critical moment comes when two people try to take the last spot at the same time. Each booking is processed in a PostgreSQL transaction that locks the class while it is confirmed, so two confirmed bookings can never share the same spot. When a class is full, people can join a waitlist and are confirmed automatically when someone cancels.

Booking rules are centralized: bookings close 30 minutes before each class, can be cancelled online up to 4 hours in advance, and each plan defines how many classes per week it includes. Plan prices, limits and validity periods can be edited from the dashboard without affecting previous purchases.

Payments verified on the server

Monthly plans and the trial class are purchased through Mercado Pago. Returning from checkout does not confirm a purchase: the server retrieves the order status with the merchant's credentials, checks the reference, amount and currency, and only then activates the plan. Mercado Pago notifications are validated with their HMAC signature, and a daily task reconciles pending payments in case a notification was missed.

When someone pays for a trial class, their spot is held for fifteen minutes. If a payment is approved late and the class is already full, it is recorded as awaiting assignment by the studio, so the platform never overbooks the class.

Passwordless accounts and a dashboard for the studio

Customers sign in to their account with a single-use link sent to their email, which expires after fifteen minutes. There they can review their plans, payments and bookings. Sign-in links and sessions are stored as hashes, never as plain text.

The Focus team manages operations from a protected dashboard: class lists with attendance, capacity adjustments, class cancellations, a summary of monthly payments, plan renewals and records of bank transfer or cash payments. For public holidays or breaks, the dashboard can cancel every class on a date or across a date range, suggests Chilean public holidays and notifies everyone who booked.

Announcements are sent by email, and the dashboard prepares each WhatsApp message so the studio can send it from its own phone. A scheduled job sends reminders on the day of each class and a notice three days before a plan expires.

The engineering behind the experience

The platform is built with Next.js, React and TypeScript, using PostgreSQL as its database and functions deployed on Vercel in the São Paulo region, close to the database. Automated tests cover payment signatures, the Mercado Pago integration and concurrency scenarios against a real PostgreSQL database, such as simultaneous purchases, duplicate activations and the single use of each sign-in link.

For SYNAPTA, Focus reflects how we work: understanding how an organization operates and turning its rules into a reliable system, with a simple experience for the people who use it every day.

Explore the scope of the project in the Focus Club case study.