La Marie Beauty Project Sync — 2025-11-11
Overview
Sync call between Asymmetric (Chris, Melissa) and La Marie Beauty (Kimberly, Roxana, Lisa) covering the finalized WooCommerce/Bookly/Square architecture, an unresolved scope dispute over redesigning 81 service pages for variants, open questions on payment tokenization, and Bookly-to-Square API sync speed. Ishak (Asymmetric developer) was not on the call but his work was discussed throughout.
Attendees:
- Kimberly Gehrmann — La Marie Beauty (project lead / client-side PM)
- Roxana Lopez — La Marie Beauty (services expert / creative)
- Lisa Frommelt — La Marie Beauty
- Katie Schueller — La Marie Beauty (on maternity leave as of ~2025-10-30)
- Melissa Cusumano — Asymmetric (PM)
- Chris Østergaard — Asymmetric (technical lead)
- Ishak — Asymmetric (developer, not present)
Key Decisions
- Zapier is fully removed from the architecture. The stack is confirmed as WooCommerce + Bookly + Square only.
- Square remains the source of truth for staff availability and calendar management. No migration to Bookly for scheduling.
- Bookly remains required for scheduling/UX. WooCommerce has no native scheduling capability.
- "Pay in person / cash on arrival" option removed from checkout. A credit card is required at booking.
- Service tile backgrounds set to solid black in Bookly UI, replacing the previous behavior of pulling random staff photos.
Open Issues
1. Payment Tokenization
Status: Under investigation (Ishak)
The unified WooCommerce checkout can display a service price while setting the subtotal to zero (allowing product payment while reserving the appointment slot), but it currently cannot save a credit card for future charges. This is needed so La Marie Beauty can charge the card later if a client no-shows or adds services at the appointment.
- Chris noted the distinction: WooCommerce can process a payment, but tokenizing the card for a future charge requires either a custom hook or a native plugin feature.
- Square handles this natively in its own flow, but the new architecture routes through WooCommerce.
- Ishak is investigating whether a custom hook or a WooCommerce plugin feature can enable tokenization.
"The actual saving of the credit card through WooCommerce, where we use some sort of tokenization, where we then are able to recharge that card — I'm not sure that we've found that solution yet." — Chris
2. Bookly-to-Square API Sync Speed
Status: Under investigation (Ishak)
When a booking is made through the WooCommerce/Bookly flow, that appointment data must sync to Square. There is a potential default 15-minute delay in the Bookly-to-Square sync, which creates a double-booking risk (a client could book the same slot via the Square app during that window).
- Kimberly flagged this as an edge case she wants to eliminate, not just accept.
- The ask is to investigate whether the sync can be configured closer to ~1 minute via webhook events or API configuration.
- Ishak to investigate and report findings at the next meeting.
"I would be curious if it is on a default timer of 15 minutes or if we do have the ability to customize the webhook events... even something like a minute is perhaps better." — Kimberly
3. Scope Conflict: Service Page Variant Redesign
Status: Unresolved — escalated to leadership on both sides
A significant scope dispute exists over whether redesigning 81 service pages to support product variants is in scope.
Asymmetric's position:
- The original estimate was based on a CSV file provided by La Marie Beauty, which listed services as flat rows with no variant structure.
- Adding variants now requires a full page redesign (new content, galleries, before/after images) — estimated at 40+ hours.
- Melissa is treating this as a scope increase and has escalated to Mark (Asymmetric leadership).
La Marie Beauty's position:
- Variants are not a new concept. Square's existing booking flow already uses a variant structure (e.g., "Vampire Facial" → "Face," "Face + Neck," "Face + Neck + Décolleté").
- The JSON objects Chris shared during Zapier debugging showed base services with variant arrays — this structure pre-existed the project.
- Kimberly's view: the programmatic concept was always present in the source of truth (Square); it was not introduced by this project.
Where there is agreement:
- Kimberly acknowledged that the full page redesigns (galleries, new content sections, slider bars) go beyond simply adding variant selectors, and that portion may legitimately be scope creep.
- Melissa acknowledged that adding variant selector buttons to the existing simple page layout was what she originally expected to absorb.
Next steps on this issue:
- Melissa → discuss with Mark (Asymmetric) to determine a cost/scope middle ground
- Kimberly → sync with Roxana to identify which of the 81 services truly have variants vs. simple enhancements, and to determine the actual scope of content changes needed
- Kimberly → discuss with Lisa (La Marie Beauty) before bringing a position back to Asymmetric
Action Items
| Owner | Action |
|---|---|
| Ishak | Investigate payment tokenization — custom hook vs. native WooCommerce plugin |
| Ishak | Research reducing Bookly-to-Square API sync delay (target: ~1 min) |
| Chris | Remove staff last names from Bookly UI settings |
| Melissa | Discuss service page scope conflict with Mark; determine Asymmetric's position |
| Melissa | Invite Ishak to next meeting so he can present technical findings directly |
| Kimberly | Sync 1:1 with Roxana to classify services: true variants vs. enhancements, and flag which pages need new content/photos |
| Kimberly | Discuss scope conflict with Lisa before next Asymmetric meeting |
Technical Architecture (Confirmed)
User Flow:
Service booking → Bookly (scheduling/UX)
↓
Unified cart → WooCommerce (checkout + payment)
↓
Appointment + purchase data → Square (source of truth / staff calendar)
Removed: Zapier (previously used for WooCommerce→Square sync)
Staff availability source of truth: Square (not migrated to Bookly)
Key constraint: Bookly's cart add-on is disabled when WooCommerce is active to avoid conflicts. Bookly handles scheduling only; WooCommerce handles all payment processing.
Bookly UI Progress
- Service tile backgrounds: fixed to solid black (previously pulled staff/service photos inconsistently, including Katie's headshot)
- Staff last names: Chris to remove from Bookly settings
- Font treatment: being reviewed for consistency with site-wide sans-serif
- Mobile layout: design team confirmed they used a mobile Bookly model when creating designs — should be applicable
Context Notes
- Katie Schueller (La Marie Beauty) went on maternity leave ~2025-10-30 (baby born ~2025-10-30). Kimberly noted this means she needs to be more on top of communications.
- Kimberly was in the middle of a personal move during this period, which caused some communication delays she acknowledged.
- Ishak (Asymmetric developer, India-based) was not present but had been working on the unified checkout and Square API integration. Melissa committed to inviting him to the next meeting.
Related
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- [3]