Appointment Based Bookings

This guide describes how to offer one-on-one private sessions.  Your clients can pick a time slot that works best for them only when you're available to make scheduling quick and easy. 

If you are on a Studio subscription plan and have staff members that you would like your clients to book appointments with, please also read this help article.

Tutorial Video

Watch this short video on how OfferingTree can make your scheduling life easier! You can also read the sections below to get step-by-step instructions for setting up your appointment schedule.

Enable Appointment Bookings on Your Offerings

Once you have your availability set, you can enable each of your offerings individually to offer appointments. To get started, visit the "Offerings" page under the "Manage Schedule" section. Create or edit the Offering you wish to enable appointments for and check the "Enable Appointments" checkbox under "Appointment Information".  

This will bring your to the "Edit Appointment Information" pop-up. Here you can define the price of the appointment and select if you want to accept online payments for registration.

Appointment time and duration

You can set the duration of the appointment (how long the session with the client / student is). Under Additional Settings you can set how much setup or cleanup time you need before or after the appointment.  The setup and cleanup time is time that is needed as a buffer before and after the appointment and we'll make sure this time is blocked off when someone books an appointment. For example, if the session duration is 45 minutes and you have 10 minutes of setup time and 5 minutes of cleanup time, when someone books this appointment OfferingTree will block off 1 hour from your availability.

Note: Please set your availability for the actual times you are available (e.g., 9:00 am - 5:00 pm). You do not need to account for setup or cleanup time at the start or end of your day. The system automatically handles this:

• Setup time is not added before your first appointment.
• Cleanup time is not added after your last appointment.

When people can book an appointment

Under Additional Settings, you can set up minimum and maximum advanced notice. Minimum notice prevents someone from booking a last-minute appointment in case you need time to prepare or travel. Maximum notice prevents someone from booking an appointment too far in the future.

Other features here allow you to set a location, online appointment information and waivers. When you have everything just the way you want it, press the "Done" button.  Don't forget to "Save" the offering when you're done so you don't lose all the appointment information. Your offering is now set up for appointments! 

Set special availability for an Offering

If you want your availability for this offering to be different from your main availability schedule described in the previous section, you can set up a custom schedule. Under Additional Settings, there is an Availability for this Offering dropdown with two options, Use main schedule and Use custom schedule. The Use main schedule option will use the main schedule described above in the previous section and is used for all offerings that don't have a custom schedule. The Use custom schedule option will allow you to set a custom schedule for this specific Offering.

Block off your Event/Class times

If you also teach a class or hold events, you can have these events automatically block of your availability time. To do this, ensure that you toggle the "Automatically block event times" option when creating your availability.

If you have existing availability setup, you can toggle this by editing your availability.

Add Time Off

You can request time off from your normal availability. You may need to do this because you have a personal day off or you need to be away for a few hours. To do this, navigate to the "Manage Your Availability Schedules" page by clicking on the "Edit Your Availability Button" on the "Schedule Page" (see Set and Edit Your Appointment Availability section above). Once on the "Manage Your Availability Schedules" page, click the "Add Time Off" button. 

Now you should be on the "Manage Your Personal Time Off" page. This page shows you all the days and times you have requested your availability to be blocked from appointment bookings. If you don't see all your time off, make sure the date range selection is correct. To add time off, press the "Add Time Off" button.

When you press the "Add Time Off" button the "Add Personal Time Off" pop-up displays. Fill out the Start Date / Start Time and End Date / End Time for your corresponding time off.  You can add a helpful note for yourself as to why you are adding the time off (this will not be visible on your site to the public). Make sure to press "Create" to save the time off entry. Your time off should should now be visible in the table. You can edit or delete your time off entry from the table as well.

How Clients Book Appointments With You

Now that you know how to set up appointments with OfferingTree, we'll describe how it looks to your clients and students. On the Offerings page, your visitors will see a "Book Now" button under any offering that is enabled for appointments.

Once your clients select the Offering they would like to book, they are taken to a calendar page where they can pick an open date and time to book the appointment. If another client or student already booked a time slot on a particular day, that time will not be shown to others making scheduling convenient and easy for you and your clients. 

We hope you learned everything you need to know about OfferingTree's appointments feature. Feel free to drop us a line at support@offeringtree.com if you have any further questions.

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