Calendar · Daily operations · 8 min read

Book and manage appointments

Book a customer into a free slot, confirm requests, mark appointments done or no-show, cancel, and how customers book and cancel online.

Before you begin

• An active appointment type with staff exists. See Set up appointment types.
• You need calendar.appointment.

Steps

Book for a customer

1. Open Calendar > Appointments and press Book appointment.
2. Choose the Type and the Day. Free times appear as pills. Next day -> moves forward. 'No free time this day.' means none.
3. Pick a time.
4. Enter Customer name. E-mail and Phone are optional for staff bookings; add Notes if useful.
5. Press Book. Book stays grey until a slot and a name are given.

Work the register

1. The Appointments page has tabs with counts: Upcoming, All, Requested, Confirmed, Done, No-show and Cancelled. Search by number, customer name or e-mail.
2. Open a row to see the card: what, when, with whom, customer details, notes and state.
3. For a Requested booking (types with Staff confirm) press Confirm.
4. After the appointment has started, press Mark done, or No-show if the customer did not come.
5. To cancel, press Cancel, type the reason and confirm.

What the customer does

1. The customer opens the public booking link you copied from the type card. No sign-in is needed.
2. They choose a day (today up to 21 days ahead), a time, and enter name and e-mail (required on the public page), phone and notes. They press Book this time.
3. They see a thank-you page with the reference (APT-00001) and a link to manage the booking. Under Staff confirm the page says it is requested.
4. On the manage page the customer can enter an optional reason and press Cancel this appointment, while the booking is requested or confirmed and the cancel notice has not passed.

What happens next

• The booking is numbered and an event named "<type> - <customer>" (kind Appointment) is created in the assigned staff member's calendar, with the customer as a guest and any room booked. The staff member gets a notification.
• Confirmation e-mails go to a customer with an e-mail address, with the manage link. A reminder e-mail follows one day before when the booking was made more than 25 hours ahead. A company mail account must exist.
• A cancelled appointment cancels its event, releases the room and offers the slot again.
• A customer cancelling notifies the staff member: "Cancelled by customer".

Good to know

• 'That time is no longer available. Choose another slot.' Someone took it first.
• 'You already have three bookings of this kind coming up.' One e-mail may hold at most three upcoming bookings of a type.
• 'It can be cancelled online up to 24 hours before it starts; please call us.' Staff can always cancel.
• 'It has not started yet.' You cannot mark a future appointment done or no-show.
• 'This appointment type is closed.' The type is inactive.
• 'This request was not accepted.' appears if a bot fills the hidden field.
• The e-mail's manage link is written as a path (/api/v1/public/appointments/...) without the site name. If a customer cannot open it, send them the full address of your site followed by that path.
• When staff cancel, the customer is not e-mailed. Tell them yourself.
• The public page shows no staff names and no reason why a time is busy.