Appointments¶

Customers book an appointment on your site, and your front desk runs the day from the Diary. This page walks through setting it up and using it day to day. How it works underneath is in Appointments.

1. Take appointments at a location¶

Open Settings › Locations, open the practice's location and tick Takes appointments under What happens here. Save. An Appointments card appears on the location. (A location can't have both a dining room and appointments: use a separate location for each.) Then switch bookings on in Settings › Dining in (Take table bookings covers appointments too) and, if you like, set What you take bookings for to appointments so the admin menus speak of appointments.

2. Set up the team¶

On the location's card choose Set up appointments. Save with Save appointments in the bar at the bottom (or Ctrl/Cmd+S). The editor has four tabs.

• Team. Add each practitioner. For each: their name and what they do, whether they take appointments and can be booked online, their working week (a line for each stretch they work; two lines on a day is a split shift; Fill Monday to Friday 9 to 5 is a start), regular breaks such as lunch, and leave. Times are on the quarter hour. The Order decides who comes first when Any available has to pick between equals. Add a room only if you have just one thing to book.
• Appointment types. One for each thing customers book, such as NHS eye test and Private eye test (two types, so each has its own note and, if wanted, length). Set the length, how often start times come, padding before and after (held, never shown), the least notice online bookings need, who can do it, a description and a price note ("Free on the NHS", "£25, pay in store"). How do customers pay? offers No online payment only for now. A type can use its own way of choosing for Any available.
• Any available. How a customer who doesn't mind who is given someone. See below.
• Booking rules. How many days ahead customers can book, the late cancellation window (which is also the notice the emails ask for) and when a late customer can be marked a no-show.

If something doesn't add up (hours not on the quarter hour, a break that ends before it starts, someone listed who isn't on the team) the editor lists the problems and saves nothing. If someone else saved while you were editing, you're asked to reload rather than overwrite their changes.

3. How Any available chooses¶

A customer who picks a practitioner by name always sees all of that person's free times. For Any available you choose a way of choosing, for the whole location and, if you like, per appointment type:

• Spread evenly offers everyone's free times. The booking goes to whoever has the fewest appointments that day (or that week), then whoever was given one longest ago.
• Fill one practitioner first books the first practitioner until they are part full, then opens the next. Open the next practitioner once the first is 50% booked is the setting to tune: it is the share of their working time that day, less breaks. While the first is below it, only their times are offered for Any available, so the others keep their days for customers who ask for them by name. If the first is busy at a time, Offer the next practitioner's time too (the default) still offers it with someone else so the customer's time isn't lost; Never offer the next one early doesn't. You can list the order to fill in.

Use Test a booking to see a day: who would take each time, who is held back and why, and each practitioner's share booked. Staff bookings and reassigning ignore the way of choosing.

4. Put it on the site¶

Add the Book an appointment block (appointmentBooking) to any page, or link to /book. The block's settings are an optional location, a heading and a short introduction. Customers get an email with a calendar file and a link to change or cancel, and a reminder the day before.

5. Run the day¶

Bookings › Diary shows a row for each practitioner. Click an appointment to open it: mark it Arrived, Start it, Finished, or No-show (once the customer is late by the grace period), move it to another practitioner (the drawer says who is free then) or cancel it with a reason; the customer is emailed. Drag a bar to another practitioner's row to move it. Book by phone takes a booking for a type, a person or Any available at a time someone is free. Set time aside blocks time on a practitioner's day for a meeting; click the grey bar to open it up again. A customer who chose Any available isn't emailed when you move them; one who chose a person is.

Booking a paid appointment by phone. For a type paid in advance, Book by phone asks how the customer pays:

• Send payment link (the default): the time is held while they pay through the shop's checkout. If you give an email address they're emailed the link; you can also copy it from the message at the top of the diary, or from the appointment, and text it to them. The appointment shows Awaiting payment until a time: 24 hours by default (Payment links hold the time for (hours) under Settings › Dining in), but never later than 2 hours before the appointment. Open it to Copy link, Resend the email or Cancel request (frees the time; the customer isn't emailed). Once they pay it's booked, and they get the order confirmation. If they don't pay in time it's cancelled as not paid and the time is freed.
• Pay in the shop: it's booked now and shows To pay in the shop until you link the till order (below).

Paid in store? For an appointment with no online payment, or one booked to pay in the shop, open it and choose Link a till order, then type the number of the order you rang up on the till. The drawer then shows the order's number (a link to the order) and its total; Unlink the till order removes it. This only records which order paid for the appointment: cancelling the appointment does not refund the till order, which you refund from the order as usual. An appointment customers paid for online already has its own order and doesn't offer this.

A paid appointment that wasn't finished. When a customer starts to pay online but the payment fails, or they leave before it goes through, their time is held for a short while so they can try again, then given back. It shows as Awaiting payment until then. How long is Free unpaid appointment times after (minutes) under Settings › Dining in (30 by default, never less than 5).