Bookings and appointments
Let staff and customers book times with a person, a room or a piece of equipment, never double-booked, within working hours, with holds, notice periods and reminders.
Your application can take bookings: an appointment with a stylist, a service visit from an engineer, a place in a class, a room, a van or a piece of equipment on hire. Whatever is being booked, your application makes sure it is never booked more times than it can take, and only offers the times it is free.
You get this by asking for it on Changes (see Ask for a change), or by starting from the bookings template (see Templates and the marketplace), which has it already.
Ask for bookings
Say what is booked, for how long, and what the rules are. For example:
- "Clients book an appointment with a stylist. Appointments are an hour, starting on the hour or half hour, with 15 minutes after each to tidy up."
- "Each engineer can do one visit at a time. Office staff can book outside working hours for emergencies."
- "Our puppy class takes 12 dogs. Show owners how many places are left."
- "Customers can't cancel or move a booking less than 24 hours before it starts."
- "Hold a slot for 15 minutes while the customer pays, then let it go."
- "Remind the client by email the day before their appointment."
Divvent proposes a change you read and approve like any other. See Read a change and approve it.
What you can set
| Rule | What it means |
|---|---|
| What is booked | A person, room, vehicle, piece of equipment or class. Each booking is for one of them. |
| How many at once | One (a stylist's chair) or a number (a class of 12). The number can be different for each one, such as a bigger room. |
| Slot length and start times | How long a booking is, and how often a new one can start, such as every 30 minutes. |
| Time before and after | Setting-up or travel time around each booking, which also counts as taken. |
| Working hours | When each person or thing is available, day by day. Several spells a day are fine, such as a split shift. |
| Time off and closures | Holidays, training days or a van in for repair. A closure with nothing named closes everything, such as a bank holiday. |
| Which statuses take a place | For example, "requested" and "confirmed" take a place, and "cancelled" doesn't. |
| Holding a slot | A slot held for a set time, such as while somebody pays. If the hold runs out, the slot is free again. |
| Notice to cancel or move | How close to the start a booking can still be cancelled or moved. |
| Who can override | Which of your staff roles can book outside working hours, over a closure, inside the notice period or in the past. |
| Reminders | A reminder a set time before each booking, such as the day before. |
Working hours and time off are records your staff keep up to date in the application, like any other record, so changing next week's hours is not a change on Changes.
What your staff and customers see
On the page of the person or thing being booked, your application shows its free times: a calendar of the slots still available. Choosing a slot opens the booking form with the time already filled in.
- Free and busy, never who. The free times show when something is taken, and for a class how many places are left ("3 places left"). They never show who booked or why.
- No double-booking, ever. Every booking is checked against the others at the moment it is saved. If two people go for the last place at the same moment, exactly one of them gets it, and the other's booking is refused.
- The rules apply to everyone except the roles you chose. Your customers, and any staff role you didn't name, are held to working hours, closures and notice periods. Nobody, not even the office, can book past how many something can take.
- Times follow your application's time zone, including on the nights the clocks change: an hour's appointment is an hour long.
Reminders
A reminder is raised a set time before each booking that still takes a place, and a flow sends it: an email, or a notification inside the application. Reminders are checked every 15 minutes, so one can arrive up to 15 minutes early or late. A booking moved to a new time is reminded again; a cancelled one is not.
A reminder can't be sent as a text message by itself yet, because a flow can't call Twilio on its own. See Messages, email and texts.
Working with a Google calendar
If you connect Google (see Connect other services), your application can keep busy times from a person's Google calendar out of the free times it offers, without reading what those events are. It can also put a booking in a Google calendar when somebody presses a button to do it, and move or cancel it the same way. If Google can't be reached, your application still offers its own free times.
What you can't do yet
- Let a visitor who hasn't signed in book. Customers who book need to sign in to your application.
- Recurring bookings, such as the same slot every week.
- Waiting lists.
- Extra opening times as their own kind of record. Add another working-hours row instead.
- Count a class exactly minute by minute. For a class, any booking that overlaps another at any moment takes a place, which can occasionally turn away a staggered booking that would have fitted.