Return to Getting Started overview
This guide walks you through the basics of your calendar on both the web dashboard and the mobile app, as well as the online scheduler that your clients will use to book appointments.
Contents in this article:
Setting your availability
Setting your available appointment times
Setting your Scheduling Policies
How clients can schedule with you
How you can set appointments for clients
Sharing or syncing your calendar
Setting your availability
More information: Managing your availability and Managing your availability in the mobile app
Your availability determines when clients can book appointments with you. You can manage your availability in several ways:
Work hours - The regular schedule you are available each week to offer services. You can also update your work hours in the mobile app.
Personal appointments - Allows you to block out time on your calendar when you are unavailable. These work for lunches or breaks, doctor's appointments and other personal engagements, splitting work days, taking vacations/holidays, and more.
Daily overrides (Flex time) - Allows you to override your schedule for a specific day without affecting your regular work schedule, take the day off, or make a day available that is regularly off. You can also override your schedule in the mobile app.
Setting your available appointment times
More information: Managing duration, appointment times, and availability
Service availability is based on the following settings:
Your availability - These are your work hours, including your regular work schedule, time blocked out by personal appointments, and any flex time overrides you set.
Appointment times - The frequency of your available appointment times can be set by a scheduling interval (i.e., every 30 minutes) or by specific appointment times. Specific appointment times can be set for all services or by specific service.
Other settings that could affect appointment times:
Service duration - The length of a service appointment. For example, if your scheduling interval is every 30 minutes, your work hours are 9-5, and a service is 1 hour long, an appointment booked at 10am would block the 10:30 time from appearing in the scheduler.
Optional settings - Setup/cleanup time or split appointment times could affect which set appointment times will appear in the scheduler.
Scheduling policies - Length of policies like lead time and how far in the future clients can schedule can also impact appointment times. See more on Setting your Scheduling Policies below.
Google Calendar Sync - The optional two-way sync with a Google Calendar can block out time in your schedule. See more on the sync in the Sharing or syncing your calendar section below.
Setting your Scheduling Policies
The Scheduling Policies page allows you to setup the following:
Cancellation Policy - How far in advance are customers allowed to cancel online. You can also add specifics of your cancellation policy to the standard text.
Lead time - The minimum amount of time you require before clients can schedule an appointment. A 4-hour lead time means the earliest the next available appointment someone scheduling at 8am would see would be 12pm.
Future - How far in the future clients can book appointments online. Can be set as short as 1 day up to as far out as 2 years.
Choosing Providers - This setting determines whether clients get to select a specific provider when scheduling or just see a list of all available appointment times and allow the system to select the provider.
Available Appointment Times - Determines what times are available for clients to schedule. See more in the Setting your available appointment times section above.
How clients can schedule with you
More information: Adding to your website and Social media integration
Clients can book with you through your scheduling page or the scheduler embedded on your website. You can find the URL (web address) to your scheduling page on the Let clients know page in your settings.
You can also provide scheduling through your Facebook business page or through your Instagram business profile.
No client account necessary
Clients do not need to sign up for an account and do not need to sign in to book an appointment. One less online account they have to manage, and you don't have to worry about supporting lost or forgotten client login information.
They simply select their service, choose a provider (on multi-user accounts), choose a date & time for their appointment, and fill in the quick scheduling details form to book.
Checking the Remember me at this computer option while scheduling will autofill their contact information anytime they schedule going forward.
Disabling online scheduling
If you don't want clients to be able to book with you through your online scheduler, you can check the Clients must call for appointment option for all your services. We can also disable your online scheduler for you, just send us an email to support@schedulista.com.
How you can set appointments for clients
More information: Setting appointments on your calendar
You can schedule appointments for clients directly in your online calendar by clicking the date/time slot for the appointment or by clicking the New Appointment button.
You can create appointments for clients in the mobile app by clicking the plus (+) sign in the upper right of the calendar. Select Service as the appointment type to continue.
You can also create repeating appointments for clients directly on your calendar or in the mobile app.
Sharing or syncing your calendar
More information: Sharing your Schedulista calendar
You are able to share your Schedulista calendar with other calendar programs using an iCalendar feed. This one-way (read-only) sync allows your Schedulista appointments to appear on another calendar you might use, like the following:
Google Calendar Sync
More information: Google Calendar Sync
This two-way sync shares appointments both ways between Schedulista and Google Calendar. Google Calendar events/appointments can block out time on your Schedulista calendar to help manage your availability.
The sync allows you to import a single calendar or multiple calendars from a single Google Calendar account or calendars from multiple Google Calendar accounts. You can then export your Schedulista calendar to a single or multiple Google Calendars.
On a multi-user Schedulista business account, each user's calendar can be synced to their own Google Calendar.
