Just tap in. No keyboard, ever.
A tablet by your door with keys big enough to hit. People find their own name in two taps, the screen says well done, and it carries on working when the wifi drops. Nobody types anything.
£19 a month or £190 a year · no VAT on top · one place, as many tablets as you like
Sign-up is closed for now. Leave your email and we’ll tell you when it opens. If you already have a place, nothing changes. Questions first? Email hello@tapinbook.co.uk.
The real screen, drawn. Every key is painted by the page, so the tablet has nothing to pop a keyboard over.
The door
Four ways to say who you are, and you switch on the ones that suit your place. Whichever you choose, no text box is ever focused, so no system keyboard has anything to open over.
Or no names on the screen at all
Some places cannot have a list of names on a screen in the room, and for them the whole idea is back to front: a support group, a food bank, a shelter, an advice service, a school gate. So there is a fourth way in. Somebody taps their own date of birth on the page’s own number keys and then the first letter of their surname, and nothing on that tablet names anybody until the two together match one person — then a first name, for two seconds, and back to the start.
Switching it on switches the name list off and keeps it off, because a switch anybody could flip on a busy morning would undo the point of it. Where two people share a date of birth and an initial the tablet guesses at neither and asks them to see the desk — which is one tap, on every screen, and tells the office that somebody needs help without saying a word about who they said they were.
This one needs the network: the date is checked against your records on our side and the tablet holds none of them, so a tablet that leaves the building is not a list of anybody’s dates of birth. With no connection it says so and points at a person.
A live board of who is here
A screen for the desk, not for the room: everybody who has arrived in the last couple of hours, newest first, with how long ago in words rather than a clock time, and one tap to mark that you have called them. It keeps itself up to date without anybody touching it, so it can sit open on a monitor behind the desk all day — and it reads just as well held at arm’s length on a phone.
It is behind your login like every other office screen, and a tablet on the door cannot open it.
It works with the wifi off
Sign-ins are kept on the tablet with the time they actually happened and sent when the network comes back. The office marks those ones as late-arriving, at the minute the person was really there.
It never refuses anybody
A lapsed membership, a frozen one, someone three sessions over their allowance — the tablet takes them all and says nothing. You get told in the office. Nobody is turned away at the door by a computer.
Any tablet you already own
A 10-inch Android tablet or an iPad, in an ordinary browser. Nothing to install and nothing to buy. For the door itself, a kiosk browser locked to the one page is what we would use.
The office
Four questions, from your phone, one tap from the front screen. They are the questions the person who runs the place asks that a paper sheet cannot answer and a spreadsheet takes an evening to.
Who came this week?
Everybody who signed in since Monday, how many times, and which class it was. Arrows step back through earlier weeks. The people who did not come are folded away underneath, which is usually the more interesting list.
Who came this month, and how often?
The same thing over a calendar month, per person, with a count against what their plan allows. Per class as well — including a class that ran with nobody at it, which a report built only from sign-ins could never show you.
Who is over what they pay for?
Anyone using more than their plan allows, and separately anyone whose block of classes is nearly gone. It also catches the quiet one: the membership that ended six weeks ago whose owner has been training twice a week since.
Who is drifting away?
Active people who have not been in for a fortnight, longest away first — and separately the people who joined and have never once come. Both are a phone call you would rather make before they cancel.
And two reminders, both of which you can switch off
A digest to you
One email in the morning listing who went over, whose block is nearly gone and who signed in on a membership that has ended. One email, not one per person — and on a morning with nothing to say, no email at all.
A nudge to a person
A short, plain message to somebody who has not been in for a while, in words you write yourself. Your place decides whether it is on. The person it is about can opt out. If they are a junior it goes to the parent and never to the child.
Reminders need an email address for your place and are off until you turn them on. See how the reminders work.
What it deliberately does not do
This is one thing done properly, not a management suite for running a business. It is why it costs what it costs.
- It does not take people’s money. No direct debits, no card details, no failed-payment chasing. Keep whatever you use now.
- It does not book classes. No booking screen, no waiting list, no cancellation window. People turn up and tap in.
- It does not open doors. No turnstiles, no fobs, no wiring, no electrician.
What it does instead
The two jobs either side of the same moment: getting somebody through the door without a fight, and knowing afterwards what that adds up to.
- A sign-in screen a 9-year-old and a 70-year-old can both use, first time, without being shown.
- People, their plans and what each plan allows, brought across from your spreadsheet if you have one.
- Your weekly timetable, so a sign-in lands against the class it belongs to.
- The four answers above, on a phone, in under a minute each.
The honest version: the all-in-one systems do billing, booking and door entry, and they charge four to nine times this for it. If you need those, buy one of them. If what is actually broken is the tablet by your door and the spreadsheet you keep meaning to update, this is a quarter of the job for a fraction of the money.
One price. That is the whole price list.
£19 a month
or £190 a year — two months free · no VAT on top
- Per place, not per person and not per tablet
- As many tablets on the door as you like
- Everyone in your office, at no extra cost
- 30-day free trial, and no card to start it
- Monthly rolls on; stop it whenever you like
Questions people actually ask
Does the keyboard really never come up?
That is the whole product. There is no focused text box anywhere on the tablet: every key you see is drawn by the page, the value you are building up is shown in a plain panel rather than an input, and the thing that gets sent is a hidden field no keyboard has ever opened over. If a keyboard appears on any screen, that is a fault and we want to hear about it.
What happens when our wifi drops mid-class?
The tablet keeps taking sign-ins and holds them with the time they happened. When the network returns they go up on their own, and the office view shows them at the real time with a note that they arrived late. The one exception is a PIN, which has to be checked against the server — a place that loses its wifi often should have the name picker switched on as well.
Can we bring our people across from a spreadsheet?
Yes. Upload a CSV, tell it which of your columns is the name, the email and so on, and it will flag anyone who looks like a duplicate before it writes anything.
Do the children in our juniors class appear on a screen?
Only if you want them to. The name picker can be switched off in favour of a PIN, the product holds no photographs of anybody at all, and any message about a junior goes to the parent on their record and never to the child. There is more on children’s data and privacy.
Will it stop somebody whose membership has lapsed?
No, deliberately. A computer refusing a person in front of a queue is an argument your instructor has to have. The tablet records the sign-in and flags it; you decide what to do, in the office, later.
Can I try it before talking to anybody?
Yes — there is a full demo account with the login printed on its own sign-in page, and the demo tablet is open to anyone. Nothing you do to it matters; it is rebuilt on demand.
Have a look at the tablet first
It takes about twenty seconds to know whether this solves your problem. Open the demo tablet on a phone, or on the tablet you already have by the door.
Sign-up is closed for now: leave your email and we’ll tell you when it opens. Questions first? Email hello@tapinbook.co.uk.