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Everything about: Appointment Entry & Management

Internal Appointments

If you want to block a time slot in the calendar during which an employee should not be bookable, create an internal appointment. Unlike a break, these count as working time in work time statistics and are suitable for, for example, internal tasks and meetings.

Create internal appointment

To block an employee, click on the start time on the desired day and drag an appointment to the desired length. Then enter the purpose of the blocking in the Internal Appointment tab of the appointment dialog.

To enter an internal appointment for multiple employees, drag the appointment across multiple columns.

Short video on entering internal appointments:

Create and edit rooms and devices

Rooms and equipment can be linked to your services. This blocks them and prevents double bookings.

You can access this area via Settings > Rooms and Equipment (Resources)
If this function is not activated, it can be activated via "Settings > Add Function".

First, create at least one category. To create rooms or equipment, click on the + Room or Equipment button.

  1. Name (Example: "Cabin 1")
  2. Category (Example: "Cosmetic Cabins")

Rooms and equipment are blocked in the background in parallel with the appointment if you have set this in the respective service. Your customer won't notice anything during the booking.

Set availability for your rooms and equipment

Similar to your employees' working hours, availability must also be set in the schedule for rooms and equipment.
➔ Instructions for activating automatic working hours for your rooms and equipment

Group rooms and equipment in calendar groups

It often makes sense to group the "non-human employees" in calendar groups to save space in the calendar. Learn how to use the calendar groups here.

Control the order of employees and rooms/equipment in the calendar

If you are not using calendar groups and want to control the order in the calendar, you can simply move them by clicking on the arrows.

Customer File: Appointments

In each customer file you can view the past and future appointments of a customer in the Appointments menu item.

The prerequisite for this is that you select existing customers from the suggestion list in the Appointment entry. Only this way will new appointments be added to the existing customer file.

Open Appointments
In the Open Appointments submenu item you can view all appointments of the customer in the future.

Appointment Archive
In the Appointment Archive submenu item you can view all appointments of the customer in the past.

Deleted Appointments
If you are missing an appointment for the customer in the calendar, you can click on Show deleted appointments in both the list of open appointments and in the appointment archive to view the deleted appointments as well.

For more information on Appointment search click here.

If you want to track exactly which employee created, modified, or deleted an appointment at what time, activate the Employee PIN function

Waitlist notification

Here you can determine which team members will be notified via the Internal Messaging System when a waiting list entry is created.

Please note that only team members who have been assigned their own login can be selected. You can do this in the Employee Record.

To add a team member, click the "+ Employee Login" button and select the person.

You can also receive an email at the location address for a waiting list entry. You can find an overview of this and all other waiting list functions here.

Appointment Follow-up

With the settings in appointment follow-up, you have the option to automatically add blocking times at the end of an appointment. These are blocked in terms of time and prevent a direct follow-up appointment. The goal could be:

  • Recovery time for employees
  • Recovery time for customers
  • Cleaning of rooms

You can access this area via Settings > Preparation and follow-up times
If this function is not activated, it can be activated via "Settings > Add function".
In addition to the follow-up time described here, you can also add a preparation time before appointments. Learn more here.

Depending on the goal, you can select various options, some of which are only relevant if multiple employees, rooms or equipment are involved in the appointment.

Below we consider the following service:

Bildschirmfoto 2016-03-11 um 14.57.21

Effect of the "Block all employees, rooms and equipment" option

[table]

[tr][th]Active[/th] [th]Inactive[/th][/tr]

[tr][td]Bildschirmfoto 2016-03-11 um 14.58.00[/td] [td]Bildschirmfoto 2016-03-11 um 14.58.54[/td][/tr]

[tr][td]

  • Both employees have recovery time and can potentially clean the room or care for the customer.

[/td] [td]

  • Only the booked employee has a scheduled break.
  • Involved employees are therefore immediately available again.

[/td][/tr]

[/table]

Effect of the "Only block most recently used resource and employee" option

[table]

[tr][th]Active[/th] [th]Inactive[/th][/tr]

[tr][td]Bildschirmfoto 2016-03-11 um 16.25.16[/td] [td]Bildschirmfoto 2016-03-11 um 16.25.41[/td][/tr]

[tr][td]

  • Only the most recently used room is blocked.
  • This option is usually used when the customer is to receive recovery time.

[/td] [td]

  • All rooms are blocked at the end.
  • This option is usually used when the employee has time at the end to prepare the rooms and equipment.

[/td][/tr]

[/table]

Tip: Individual services can be excluded from the automatic breaks via the properties tab of the service.

Manually plan availability for your rooms and devices

To use rooms and equipment in the calendar and block them in parallel to specific services, you must enter availability for them. These behave just like the work schedules for your employees.

You can access this area via the main menu item Work Schedule

This article describes the manual creation of availability for your rooms and equipment. We recommend using automatic working hours for resources, so they are always available within your opening hours.

➔ Go to the instructions for activating automatic working hours

If you do not want your rooms and equipment to be automatically available during opening hours, you can of course also manually set the availability. This is useful if:

Manually create availability ("work schedules") for rooms and equipment

After you have created your rooms and equipment, you can find them in the work schedule and assign availability to them.

Short video on maintaining availability for rooms and equipment:

Initially, only human employees are displayed in the work schedule. To display your rooms and equipment, first go to all employees and select the desired rooms and equipment.

You can then enter the availability in the same way as described in detail under Create work schedule.

How to link your services with the required rooms and equipment to avoid double bookings, you can find out here.

Intelligent appointment scheduling

According to the default settings, all permitted appointments are available to your customers online as well. With the appointment offer settings, this can be adapted to your philosophy.

You can access this area via Settings > Intelligent Appointment Scheduling
If this function is not activated, it can be activated via "Settings > Add Function".

Certainly, a comprehensive appointment offer around the clock is a first-class service for your customers. However, under certain circumstances, you may have a need to purposefully control online bookings by restricting the offered appointments:

  • Prevention of same-day bookings - appointment bundling
  • Homogeneous workload and minimal idle time for staff
  • Restriction of visibility of your own workload
  • Promotion of longer treatments

To address these issues, you can choose between different modes and thereby meaningfully restrict the offered appointment times. The default setting is called "Customers can book at any time", which means that, taking the appointment rhythm into account, every available appointment can be booked online.


Thisexamplemode is often chosen to increase internal workload. In this case, all appointments that do not directly border work start, work end, or directly border another appointment or break are not offered.

In the adjacent illustration, for example, we have shown working hours from 10 to 19 o'clock. This is currently only interrupted by a lunch break from 14 to 15 o'clock, and for this day there is only a telephone consultation for a customer at 11:30 AM.

In "Flush Booking" mode, end customers are offered exclusively the following 30-minute appointments:

  • 10:00 - 10:30 AM - Bordering work start
  • 11:00 - 11:30 AM - Bordering an appointment
  • 12:00 - 12:30 PM - Bordering an appointment
  • 1:30 PM - 2:00 PM - Bordering a break
  • 2:00 PM - 2:30 PM - Bordering a break
  • 6:30 PM - 7:00 PM - Bordering work end

You can find more information here

In contrast to the "Flush Booking" mode, only the earliest possible appointment is offered here to prevent any breaks through online booking. This mode is typically suitable for single studios.

In contrast to the "Flush Booking" mode, only the latest possible appointment is offered here to prevent any breaks through online booking. This mode is typically suitable for single studios.

This mode is suitable for businesses with highly varying appointment lengths. It enables the definition of rules that define an allowed length of gaps for each appointment length.

For example, you want to prevent a 2-hour appointment from being blocked by booking a 20-minute appointment. This can be easily enabled by creating the rule.

An overview of all online booking settings can be found here.

Waiting List

In the waiting list, you can enter customers who want an appointment on an already fully booked day. As soon as an appointment is deleted, the calendar will alert you that there is an interested person for the newly available appointment.

Important requirements for the waiting list

If you don't see a waiting list button in the top right of the calendar, you can activate the waiting list.

  1. Go to Settings > Add Function.
  2. Select "Waiting List".
  3. Click "Activate".

Waiting list in the calendar with number of entries:

Using the waiting list

Add waiting list entry

When you select the Waiting List button in the top right of the calendar, you can view the current list and add entries.

Here you can enter your customer's details and add a small note, for example. Name and telephone number are mandatory fields, the others are optional.

Time selection

Once you have entered the details, click on "Time selection".

Here you can select a time. "As soon as possible" or a time period within which the customer would like to come. Furthermore, you can assign the staff member to whom the customer would like to go.

View the waiting list

When an appointment is now deleted and a slot becomes available in your calendar, this field automatically appears as a reminder and you can see which customers are still on the waiting list.


Contact customers
If you wish, you can contact all customers on the waiting list by email or SMS.

For this, SMS sending must be activated.

Waiting list in online booking

Customers can also register on the waiting list in online booking if the desired time is no longer available.

Waiting list in the booking process
Once you have activated the waiting list, customers can register online in the list.


Notification for waiting list entries
If you wish, staff members can be notified about waiting list entries. You can activate this in the calendar settings under Waiting List Notification.

Settings

  • Waiting list: Here you can enable and disable the waiting list. If you remove this option and then save, the waiting list will no longer be available to your customers in online booking or on-site.
  • Online booking - Notification: You can specify that an email is sent to the location address as soon as a customer registers. This address is set in the location settings and is used in many different places.
  • Working time: Customers only have the option to register on the waiting list on those days for which working hours are already entered in the duty roster.

Create categories for rooms and devices

In principle, rooms and equipment also have a category. These categories are very helpful when you have multiple rooms or equipment that serve the same function.

You can access this area via Settings > Rooms and Equipment (Resources)
If this function is not enabled, it can be activated via "Settings > Add Function".

Create a new category

  1. In the "Rooms and Equipment" module, you will find an overview of your categories.
  2. Click the "+ Category" button to add a new category.

  3. Enter the desired name (e.g. "Cabins" or "Nail tables") and save your entry.

Edit category

To edit a category, click on the desired category > Settings and make the changes.

Next article on this topic: Create and edit rooms and equipment

Rooms and Equipment (Resources)

Rooms and equipment can be linked to your services. This way they are blocked and double bookings are prevented.

You can access this area via Settings > Rooms and Equipment (Resources)
If this function is not enabled, it can be activated via "Settings > Add Function".
Application example:
The service "facial treatment" can only be performed in the only cosmetics room, the service "manicure" only at the manicure table. These rooms and equipment are displayed in the calendar in addition to the staff members and their occupancy is visible, so that double bookings are avoided.

To be able to block rooms and equipment, you must:

  1. Create categories for rooms and equipment
  2. Create and manage rooms and equipment
  3. Automatic working hours for rooms and equipment
  4. Manually plan availability for your rooms and equipment
  5. Block rooms and equipment during a service

Example of a calendar with booked rooms:

In the calendar itself, when the staff member enters an appointment and there is a double booking, an error message appears if the strict product mode is active.