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Tag: Online Booking

Online Booking Settings: General

In the General Booking Settings, you can make the most important basic settings for your online booking.

Price Display
Prices are displayed during booking. If this checkbox is not set, customers cannot see any prices during online booking.

Notifications
Determine here who will be notified in the event of an online booked appointment. You can view all self-booked appointments at any time in the booking list.

Please note that only employees with an assigned email address can receive messages. In the employee file, you can create a separate login for each employee.

Reservation Duration

Determine how much time employees and customers have to enter an appointment.

In both cases, clicking on the desired time creates an appointment draft, which from that point on is no longer bookable for customers and already appears to colleagues as a "dotted" draft in the calendar. This makes unnoticed double bookings in the calendar impossible. However, to ensure that the appointment becomes available again after an improper cancellation of the booking, the draft is automatically deleted after the reservation duration.

We recommend not setting the time period too short, so that your customers have enough time to book the desired appointment, even if something comes up for them in the meantime, for example.

Locations
If you have linked multiple locations in one calendar, it may make sense that not all customers should be able to book at all locations.
If you enable the option "Customers may only book at locations they have been approved for", you will find the option in each customer file to assign this customer to a specific location.

Example use case:
You have several locations grouped together in one account, but you do not want your customers to be able to choose a location during online booking.
You can specify exactly in each customer file which location you want to make available to the customer.

Linked Location
Optionally select a location here that should be offered if no more appointments are available.

Example of a linked location during booking:


Example of common general settings:

You can find an overview of all online booking settings here.

Edit prices and services: online booking

In the online booking settings of each service, you can specify the special features of your service regarding online booking.

You can access this area via Settings > Prices & Services > Click on a service

General Options

Online bookability - Hide the service…
In online booking, the complete category is often offered and all services contained in it are automatically bookable. If you want to remove individual services from this category from online booking, activate this function.

Service can only be booked by phone
If you offer services that require explanation or are complex, which customers may only book after telephone consultation, you can set this up. You can find more information in the article Service can only be booked by phone.

New customer lock
In the online booking settings of each team member, you can specify that a person is blocked for booking by new customers. However, for individual services you can define an exception so that new customers can also book with team members who are locked for new customers.

Bookable from/to and appointments from/to
If you want to offer a time-limited service, you can use the following settings to specify when it is bookable and in which time period the booked appointments may take place.

Example for an Advent promotion that takes place only during Advent season, but is available for online booking from early November:

Linked fields
If you want your customers to provide certain information when booking online for a service, you can create service fields for this. For each of your services, you can define your own service fields so that customers only have to provide information that is necessary for the desired service. You can find more information in the article Extended customer file: Service fields.

Conditional Options

The following options are only available if you have activated certain functions in Belbo.

Minimum age
Specify the minimum age from which this service may be booked. This can be useful for services such as permanent makeup or piercings. Your customers will be asked to confirm their age during online booking. You can find more information in the article Minimum age.

This service must always be paid for online.
If you have activated online payment, you can specify here that your service should generally be paid for, even if its price does not exceed the payment limit you have set.

Disable online payment discount for this service
If you grant a discount to customers paying online, you can exclude individual services from the discount.

Disable deposit option for this service
Specify whether this service must be paid as a deposit online or not.

Booking group
If you have specified in the online booking settings that your customers can select different employees when booking multiple services, booking groups help you assign these employees. Services in the same booking group are assigned to only one employee. You can find more information in the article Selection of multiple employees in online booking.

You can find all settings for your services in this overview

Online payment with Stripe


You can find your online payment settings under Settings > Online Payment.

With Stripe, you can accept online payments via credit card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, TWINT, Klarna and SEPA direct debit.

You can find all information on how to set up Stripe's payment functions for your online booking in our video.



Update to the video as of 03/2025: In the current version of Stripe, the required codes can be found using the search term "API" in the search field at the top of the Stripe overview page:

Search field in Stripe

Overview page with displayable secret key

Links from the video:
Stripe homepage
Stripe Docs test card numbers


Please note that fees apply to online payments according to your contract with Stripe.
Belbo does not charge extra for integrating online payment into your booking page.

Activate payment methods in Stripe

In Stripe, the desired payment methods (credit cards, Klarna, Twint, etc.) can be found via the "Payment Methods" menu item. The easiest way to reach this is to enter this term in the search field:

Here you can select the desired methods from the extensive list. In the Belbo online booking or in the shop, only those payment methods can be offered that are also activatable in Belbo. In Belbo they must also be activated under Settings > Online Payment > Stripe:

If you want to activate online payment via PayPal, you can find more information here.

Tip: Configure minimum credit balance

So that your customers automatically receive their money refunded in case of a cancellation, we recommend depositing a minimum credit balance in your Stripe account settings:

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.

General Settings

Here you can change the general settings of online booking.

General settings online booking
In the appointment availability, you can set that your customers cannot book every free appointment when booking, but for example only adjacent appointments are available.

Online Booking Design

You can customize the images and colors of your online booking page to match your company's design.

Main Image
The main image should be representative and contain your logo. We recommend using a wide, not too tall image that fits well into your online booking page.

Example of a suitable main image:

Recommended dimensions:

  • Width: 800 pixels
  • Height: 150 – 250 pixels

Your graphic design office can assist you in designing a suitable main image. You can also contact us: design@belbo.com.

Browser Favicon
If you wish, you can add a custom browser icon. This is displayed to the user as a thumbnail in the browser tab.

Example of browser icon with Belbo logo:


Use Background Image
If you enable the background image function, you can add a background image to your online booking page after saving.

Example of a booking page with background image:


Background Color
If you don't use a background image, you can set a color that matches your company.

Button Design
To set up the buttons on your online booking page, you can use 2 different colors to achieve a gradient effect. If you don't want a gradient effect, you can specify the same color both times. We recommend bright colors that stand out well from the basic design of the page.
The text color should have good readable contrast to the button color.

Example of a button with white text and subtle color gradient:


For an overview of all online booking settings click here.

Special Booking Process

Basically, all your services are available for online booking if you have not specified within the service that it should not be available for online booking. If you only want to offer certain categories or want to ask some selection questions before the booking process, you can activate the special booking process.

You can access this area via Settings > Special Booking Process
If this function is not activated, it can be activated via "Settings > Add Function".

To make online booking as optimal as possible for you and your customers, you have complete freedom in designing your booking page.

You can decide whether you want to show all your services in an overview on the booking page, or whether you want to guide your customers through a few questions about the services that would best suit them.


Example of overview page

On the overview page, you can offer all service groups that you want to offer online in an expandable list.


Example of questionnaire
In the questionnaire, you can first collect some information about the customer in order to then offer him only the appropriate services.



Creating an overview page

Short video on creating online booking with overview page:

To edit or supplement your service list, first click on Edit online booking.

Question texts
You can customize the texts of your online booking. If you decide on the service overview, we recommend text such as "Please select the desired services:".

Add service groups to online booking
To add a new service group, click on new answer option. A new empty line is created at the end of the existing list. Click on no service linked to select a service group. If you click on the name of the group, all services it contains will be made available for online booking. If you click directly on a service, that service itself will be added to the list.

To exclude individual services in an online available service group from online booking, please go to the online booking settings of the respective service.

Edit offered service groups
Remove service groups: By clicking the red X at the end of each row, that group or service is removed from online booking. The services are not deleted from your calendar, but can no longer be booked online.

Move service groups: The order of your services displayed here corresponds to the order in online booking. If you want to change the order, you can "grab" each row at the right end and move it to the desired position.


Creating a questionnaire

If you want to offer your customers only the services that are suitable for them and not your entire service list, you can create a questionnaire. This way, the customer will then be directed to a dedicated service overview which provides the services that are suitable for him.

Examples of frequently asked initial questions:

  • Are you male or female?
  • Are you already a member?
  • Have you been with us before?
  • Would you also like a coloring or just a cut and styling?

Short video on creating questions and follow-up questions:

Question texts
To create a questionnaire, first formulate the initial question.
Then create the desired answer options that your customers can select online.
Then click the + Question button to create a new questionnaire page.
Here you can create the service groups that match the question (see above) or formulate further questions that the user must answer first before being shown the services on a further subpage.

Edit questions
Remove questions: By clicking the red X at the end of each row, that answer and all follow-up questions are removed from online booking.

Move service groups: The order of your answers displayed here corresponds to the order in online booking. If you want to change the order, you can "grab" each row at the right end and move it to the desired position.