A photo studio in Israel that rents itself out by the hour. The site had to take bookings without ever double-selling a slot, and settle the paperwork the way Israeli businesses actually do it. These are the decisions that shaped it.
The studio's real calendar is the source of truth
Availability is not a second calendar kept in our database. The site reads the studio's own Google Calendar — through a service account where one is configured, or through the calendar's private iCal feed where it is not — and treats every busy block there as unavailable.
That choice matters more than it sounds. A team that already lives in Google Calendar will keep booking things there, and any parallel calendar would be wrong within a week. Confirmed bookings are written back to the same calendar, so the studio never has two versions of its day.
Paid and invoiced the local way
Payment runs through PayPlus and the receipt is issued through Green Invoice — the gateway and the invoicing service Israeli businesses are actually required to work with. A Stripe-shaped assumption would have left the owner issuing receipts by hand after every booking.
Each integration is guarded by its own configuration check, so a missing credential degrades one step instead of breaking the booking flow.
An enquiry becomes a lead, not an email
Form submissions create a lead in Kommo CRM alongside the confirmation email. An enquiry that only exists in an inbox is lost the first busy week; in the CRM it has an owner and a next step.
Three languages and a portfolio the team owns
The site runs in three languages through next-intl, with an admin area where the studio manages its portfolio galleries and equipment catalogue itself. Images go to Cloudinary, so a photographer uploading full-size frames does not need to think about file size — which is exactly the kind of detail that decides whether a site stays updated after launch.
The result
A studio site that sells its own time: live availability from the team's real calendar, local payment and invoicing, leads landing in the CRM, and a portfolio the studio updates without calling us.
