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Booking systems

Every business that takes bookings has rules the generic tools ignore: the twenty minute gap between appointments, the room that seats twelve unless the partition is open, the deposit that is refundable up to Thursday. Where members book at a different rate, the rules behind that are [a membership system](/services/membership-system). A booking system worth having is one that knows those rules so nobody has to police them by hand.

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Ten of my fifteen years were spent building workflow systems on enterprise platforms, mostly ServiceNow, for FTSE 100 companies and government. Awkward scheduling rules are the ordinary case there, and they are the part most booking tools ignore.

A week of appointment slots with one held by a paid deposit, syncing both ways with a staff calendar

Where it usually hurts

The rules live in someone's head
Which staff can do which appointment, how long to leave between them, which slots to hold back for regulars. It works while that person is there and falls over the week they are not.
Double bookings are a calendar problem
Bookings arrive by phone, by email, and through whatever is on the website, and they land in different places. Anything that does not write to one calendar is a double booking waiting for a Saturday.
No shows are expensive and quiet
An empty slot costs the same as a full one. Reminders and deposits fix most of it, and both need to be built into the flow rather than added afterwards as somebody's daily job.

What the job covers

  • Availability that follows your rules, including the awkward ones
  • One calendar that everything writes to, whoever took the booking
  • Reminders by email, and by text if the no show cost justifies it
  • Deposits and cancellation windows, applied consistently
  • A view for the front desk that shows the day at a glance

What it has to talk to

Staff calendars
Two way with Google or Outlook, so a dentist appointment in somebody's personal calendar blocks the slot. One way sync is where most booking systems quietly fail.
Payments and deposits
Deposits run through Stripe, so a client can pay with Apple Pay in two taps and you are not reading card numbers over the phone. Taking one changes behaviour more than any reminder does, and refunds follow the cancellation rule you set rather than somebody's judgement on the day.
Reminders that arrive
Email for most, text where a missed appointment costs real money. Email goes from your own domain with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC configured, because a confirmation in a spam folder is worse than no confirmation at all. Both are scheduled against the booking and both stop automatically when somebody cancels.

A worked approach, not a client

How I would approach a clinic with four practitioners

  1. 01

    Model the awkward rules first

    Appointment types, durations, the gaps between them, who can do what, and which slots are held back. Get these right and the rest of the build is straightforward.

  2. 02

    Make one calendar the truth

    Everything writes to it, including bookings taken on the phone, so availability on the website is availability in the room.

  3. 03

    Add deposits and reminders together

    They solve the same problem from two directions, and they are much easier to introduce at launch than to bolt on once patients are used to neither.

Questions I get asked about this

The ones that come up on almost every first call. If yours is not here, ask it and you will get a straight answer.

Can it work with our existing calendars?

Yes, and two way, which matters. If a practitioner blocks out Thursday afternoon in Outlook, those slots disappear from the website. One way syncing is the reason a lot of booking systems end up producing double bookings, including most of the WordPress booking plugins.

Can we take deposits?

Yes, through Stripe in your own account, so the money never passes through mine. Apple Pay and Google Pay come as standard, which matters when somebody is booking on a phone. Your cancellation window is applied consistently, and a deposit changes no show behaviour more than any reminder does.

What about bookings taken over the phone?

They go into the same system, which is the point. The front desk gets a view built for taking a booking quickly while somebody is on the line, and availability on the website stays correct because everything writes to one calendar.

Can we control which staff take which bookings?

Yes, and it is usually the first rule worth getting right. Appointment types map to the people qualified to do them, with durations and gaps set per type, so the availability a client sees is availability that actually works for the person delivering it.

Do group classes work, or is it one to one only?

Both. Classes have a capacity, a waiting list if you want one, and a cancellation window that can differ from your one to one appointments. The rules for a class are usually simpler than the rules for a practitioner's diary.

Can clients move their own bookings?

Yes, within whatever window you set, and it removes more phone calls than anything else in the build. Somebody rescheduling at nine at night is somebody not leaving a voicemail for your front desk in the morning.

Will confirmation emails actually arrive?

They will if they are set up properly, which means transactional mail from your own domain with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC in place. Confirmations and reminders are the emails people notice missing, and a booking confirmation in a spam folder produces exactly the no show the reminder was meant to prevent.

Is it secure to take deposits on our site?

Card details go straight to Stripe and never touch your site, which is both safer and much simpler for you. You get Apple Pay and Google Pay included, and no card numbers read out over the phone at reception.

What does a booking system like this cost to run?

Hosting, the payment percentage on deposits, and text messages if you use them. There is no per booking fee, no monthly charge per practitioner, and one price for the build, set out in how the money works, which is the model most hosted booking tools use and the reason their cost grows as you do.

Related

Tell me what you have now

Half an hour on a call, and a straight answer about whether this is the right job and whether I am the right person for it.

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