Everything about: Calendar View & Navigation

Calendar synchronization

We recommend using the Belbo calendar as your company's main calendar.

You can also download the free Belbo app so you can use the calendar on your mobile phone:
to iOS App Store
to Google PlayStore

If you want to synchronize your appointments with Google Calendar, you can activate calendar synchronization.

You can access this area via Settings > Synchronization
If this function is not enabled, it can be activated via "Settings > Add function".

Step 1: Synchronization module

Go to the "Settings" page in your Belbo calendar and open the "Synchronization" module. If it is not activated, you can add it using the search field or the "Add function" button.

Switch to the "Synchronizations" tab to add or edit calendars.

Step 2: Add calendar

Select the "Sign in with Google" button.
You will be redirected to Google.
Then select the Google account to be linked and confirm access.
Your Google account is now linked, but no synchronization will take place yet.
After saving, please go back to the "Synchronizations" tab.

Step 3: Link calendar

Now click on the "+ Link" button.

Then select the Google Calendar that you want to link with Belbo. Google offers additional options by default (holidays, etc.), which you can ignore.
Select the employee in the selection box whose calendar column should be synchronized with the Google Calendar
Check the boxes for the desired synchronization option: "Belbo to Google", "Google to Belbo" or both.

All appointments entered in Belbo or Google from now on will be transferred according to the synchronization option you have selected.
Attention: If you use another calendar that is synchronized with Google, the transfer may take several minutes.

Calendar settings: Appointment display

In the appointment view, you will find numerous settings options to customize the display of your appointments to your needs.

General

Contrast: Stronger contrast for your appointments in the calendar
Customer name: You can give the customer name its own line below the time. This is clearer but takes up more space.
Colorable appointments: This creates a color bar in the appointment dialog, with which you can color your appointments with a single click.
Mobile number: Show or hide the mobile number in the appointment details.

Time in appointment

Specify which times you want to display directly in the appointment and how they should be displayed.

Multi-step appointments

If you create multi-step appointments, these steps can be displayed individually. If this function is disabled, multi-step appointments also appear as a single block.
Example of separated (l) and consecutive (r) appointment steps:

Involved staff members

If appointments are often shared between different staff members in your business, you can display which colleagues are still involved in the appointment at each step.

Helper point

The helper point appears in your column as soon as a customer is served with whom you will also work later. This way you can already greet the customer and arrange that a later service will be performed by you.
Helper point for multi-step appointment with different staff members:

Display of customer

Specify which parts of the name you want to display in the appointment and how they are arranged.

Icons on appointment

If you want to learn more about the customer at a glance using small icons, you can select these options.
Example of an appointment with gender and customer status icons:

Text

If you insert line breaks in the appointment free text field, you can set that these are also displayed in the appointment. This is clearer but takes up more space.

Break color

Breaks always have the color specified here.

Appointment color

Appointments always have the color specified here.

If you add services to which you have assigned your own colors, the appointment will be recolored accordingly.

You can find an overview of all calendar settings here.

Calendar Settings: Appointment Entry – Colors

If you make appointments colorable in the appointment display, you can select here the colors that are available to you when entering appointments.

You can access this area via Settings > Calendar > Appointment Entry > Colors

Simply drag the desired colors from the lower area to the upper bar, which corresponds to the color bar in the appointment dialog.

An overview of all calendar settings can be found here.

Calendar settings: Appointment entry – Required fields

In the mandatory fields, you can specify which fields must be filled in during appointment entry in order to save an appointment. If you do not activate these fields, you can also save appointments with "empty" data, which may result in inconsistent customer data.

You can access this area under
Settings > Calendar > Appointment Entry > Mandatory Fields

Gender Default

If the majority of your customers are either female or male, it makes sense to set a default here so that gender only needs to be explicitly selected if a customer belongs to a gender not specified here. This is suitable, for example, for nail studios or barbershops.
If you do not set a default here, employees must click on the gender each time to ensure clean data.

Mandatory Fields

Specify here whether name, phone number, and email address must be entered during appointment entry in the calendar, or can be left blank if needed.
For example, if you set the email address as a mandatory field, an appointment cannot be saved without an email address.

Attention: Please discuss with your employees how they should proceed if a customer does not have an email address or absolutely does not want to provide one. The following problems can occur if your employees cannot save appointments without an email address:

Employees always enter the same address (info@mycompany.de or similar) in order to save the appointment. In the customer file and in the duplicate finder, these customers appear as duplicates, even though they are not – and are sometimes incorrectly merged. This is critical because the merge cannot be undone.
Others enter fictitious addresses (asdf@asdf.de), which may actually exist. Then a third party receives the reminder emails and can complain to you for data protection reasons.

You can find an overview of all calendar settings here.

Calendar settings: Appointment entry – Appointment evaluation

In the appointment assistant, you can quickly and easily find the next available appointment, even if you have a very full calendar.

In "Number of days" you can specify how many days the assistant should display in one view.

In some companies, appointments and service packages consist of several steps, which are sometimes performed by different employees.

Example of a multi-step service package: Colorist dyes, apprentice washes, stylist styles.

If you want to see at a glance in the appointment assistant how many employees would be involved in the appointment at the suggested time, mark the number in different colors:

Example of the appointment assistant with 3 columns and different rating colors:

An overview of all calendar settings can be found here.

Calendar settings: Appointment entry – Time settings

To quickly and easily change the duration of an appointment you enter in the calendar, time settings are available to you.

You can access this area under
Settings > Calendar > Appointment Entry > Time Settings

You can customize these yourself and set the desired time templates that match your business and the time periods you need.

To delete an existing time, simply click on that time template.

To add a time template, you can simply insert it into the text field.
After saving, these time spans will be available to you.

You can find an overview of all calendar settings here.

Calendar Settings: Appointment Entry – General

Here you can define how your calendar should behave when entering appointments.

You can access this area via Settings > Calendar > Appointment Entry

Strict Mode

The Strict Product Mode warns you as soon as a booking is not possible within working hours.
If the mode is disabled, you can book appointments that may fall outside the working hours or competencies of an employee.
If it is enabled, the calendar alerts you that the appointment exceeds the employee's working hours or that this employee does not have the competency for the booked service.
If you create an appointment with an employee who has no competency or available time, other employees who can perform the service will be suggested.

Example of warning message with Strict Product Mode enabled:

The same applies to the Strict Rhythm Mode, except that here the appointment rhythm is taken into account.

Offer booking of other employees when booking services

If booking other employees is enabled, I have the option to select a specific employee directly when choosing a service. This is especially useful for appointments with multiple services.

Employees are selectable for each service:

Save Space

If you have many service categories, it may make sense to consolidate them into one button by enabling "save space by combining all bookable services instead of listing each product group individually".

Example of individual and consolidated calendar groups in appointment entry:

Enable Service Search

When entering appointments, your services are selectable in dropdown menus. If you additionally want a search field to quickly find services, you can enable it here.

Automatically Mark Appointments as Attended

Here you can specify whether you want to document for each appointment whether it took place or was cancelled, or whether you only need to manually mark cancellations.
For more information on how to document a customer's reliability, click here.

Default Service

If you define a default service here, it will be automatically entered whenever you create an appointment in the calendar. This is suitable for businesses that primarily offer one service. This could apply to EMS studios, for example.

Enter First and Last Name Separately

If you disable this option, only the last name will be requested when entering appointments.

Input Aid

The guide line at the cursor is a help line that always moves with the mouse and makes it easier to enter appointments in the calendar. This can also be disabled.

Guide line with time display in the calendar:

Additional Services

If you add additional services to your services that are automatically offered during online booking, you can also display them in the calendar. This regularly reminds your employees to sell additional services.

Make Appointment Steps Movable

You will see appointment steps in multi-step appointments. This allows you to distinguish the individual steps and move them around.

Example of appointment with movable appointment steps:

Short video about movable appointment steps:

First Time, Then Customer Data

If this function is enabled, the Appointment Assistant will first ask for time and service. Only then will you enter the customer data. If it is disabled, the order is reversed.

If Email Address is Missing, Ask for Email Address

If a confirmation or reminder email did not reach the recipient on the last delivery attempt, the system will ask you to verify the data at the next appointment for the same customer.

An overview of all calendar settings can be found here.

Calendar Settings: Calendar Display

Customize your calendar according to your preferences.

To access the calendar settings, click on Settings and then select "Calendar > Calendar Display"

Column Width

Sets the column width for your employees in the calendar. Depending on your team size and monitor size, different widths from "Narrow" to "Extra Wide" may be suitable for your calendar.

Font Size

You can also adjust the font size of the most important elements according to your preferences.

Minimum Calendar Height

If you offer services with short durations, it makes sense to set the calendar height accordingly.
The columns will be correspondingly taller and you can scroll to see the entire day. Short appointments are now easy to read.

Background Color Opening Hours

The opening hours serve for visual orientation. At a glance, you can see whether at least one employee is on duty during your opening hours. The opening hours in the Belbo calendar are by default gray striped. If you want a background color to display the opening hours more prominently in the calendar, you can set it.
Example of classic and freely defined background color of opening hours:

Compact Display

For smaller monitors, the compact display is recommended. This makes everything a bit more compact.

Reduce Calendar Columns

Employees who are absent are displayed narrower on the corresponding day. If you deactivate this option, the employee will receive the full column width, even if absent.

Column Properties

Employee Role: If you wish, you can also hide the employee role in the calendar.

Working Hours: If employees without working hours should be completely hidden on a day, you can check this option.

Absences: If colleagues should be notified of absences, activate this option.

Hide Days: If you use the week view, you can save space by completely hiding days without opening hours.

Column Width Presets: You can also use the column width presets in the day view if you have set up calendar groups with fixed column widths.

Employee Color: You can color the scheduled appointments in a specific employee color. This is particularly useful if you use rooms or equipment that should be blocked simultaneously. This way, all employees can see at a glance which colleague is currently using the equipment. After activating this option, each employee file will receive an additional color field with which you can set the appointment color for the employee.

Past

Appointments in the past can be colored transparently so that current and future appointments appear more prominent in the calendar.

An overview of all calendar settings can be found here.

Calendar Settings: Overview

In the calendar settings, you can customize the appearance and behavior of your Belbo calendar to meet your exact needs.

You can access this area under Settings > Calendar

Start view

The default view determines whether you see a single day, consecutive days, or the entire week when you start the calendar. Depending on your team size and monitor size, you can choose your perfect preferred view.

Calendar time period

Here you set the time period that is displayed in the calendar. We recommend setting this one hour before the first opening time until one or two hours after the last closing time.
With opening hours of 09:00 – 19:00, a suitable calendar time period would be 08:00 – 21:00.

Example of a calendar time period from 08:00 to 21:00:

Opening hours

Set whether you want to display the opening hours for each day in the calendar.

Example of displayed opening hours next to the date:

Staff order

Normally all staff members have a fixed order in the calendar. If you want your staff to be sorted by work start time instead, you can set this here.

Birthday display

You can display which of your customers have birthdays on the respective day in the calendar. In the birthday list filter you can specify which customers are displayed here, allowing you to contact only regular or recent customers.

Notifications

When you reschedule or delete an appointment, the calendar can send a corresponding message to the customer if you activate these options. You can confirm or reject the sending of this message with a click.

Your calendar does not automatically send a message with every change. This allows you to avoid sending numerous messages while processing appointments.

Customer search

You can display a search field in the header area of the calendar to find customer information directly in the calendar.

Further articles on the topic Calendar can be found here.