Setting up and managing online appointments

Setting up and managing online appointments

Introduction

Booking appointments online has become routine in every aspect of our lives - from dinner reservations to yoga classes.  Until now, most veterinarians only offered pet owners the option to request appointments online, which is cumbersome and time-consuming for pet owners and practices because it still involves someone reviewing the request and manually confirming with the pet owner.  We think it’s time to automate this process by offering pet owners the convenience of booking appointments for their pets whenever they want to, especially when your practice is closed for the day!

Online Booking

Online Booking is available as an add-on under Settings.  The add-on will generate software code that will need to be added to your website in order to display the button customers will click on to book appointments.  The color and text of the button can be set when enabling the add-on, and can later be changed without having to update the software code that was added to your website.

Configuring Availability

Appointment availability is determined based on four factors – appointment type, provider, clinic hours, and existing appointments and blocks from the Schedule module.  All of these factors are used to determine which times should be available for customers to book appointments.

Appointment Types
Only appointment types that are designated as being available for online booking will appear to clients who try to book appointments online.  All appointment types are set to not be available for online booking by default.  To change the online booking status for an appointment type:
  1. Click on Settings
  2. Click on Configurations, and select “View Appointment Types”
  3. Click on the gear icon for the applicable appointment, and select “edit appointment type”
  4. In the form that appears, change the value of the “Book Online” field to “Allow booking online” and save your changes.

Learn more about working with appointment types.

Available Providers 
The columns that appear on the schedule will be used for purposes of selecting a "provider" when booking an appointment online.  By default, schedule columns will be opted out of being able to be booked online. To change the online booking status of a schedule column:
  1. Click on Settings
  2. Click on "configuration" and select the option to view schedule columns
  3. Edit the applicable schedule column
  4. Click on the “Available For” field, and select the appointment types for which the column can be booked (note that all of the appointment types that are available for online booking will be listed here)
  5. Click “Save + Done”
Clinic Hours
Appointments can only be booked during clinic hours.  To set clinic hours:
  1. Click on Settings
  2. Click on “Configurations” and select “View Clinic Hours”
  3. Update your clinic hours and click “Save”

Collecting Deposits

If you use our integration with CardConnect or Gravity Payments to process credit card payments, you can also collect a deposit as part of booking an appointment.  Each appointment type can have its own deposit amount.  Once the deposit is collected, a credit will appear on the client's account, which can then be used to offset the remaining balance for the visit.  

To set a deposit amount for an appointment type:
  1. Click on Settings
  2. Click on “Configurations” and select “View Appointment Types”
  3. Click on the gear icon for the appointment type for which you wish to require a deposit, and select "edit appointment type"
  4. Set the desired deposit amount in the form that appears (this option will only be enabled if the appointment type is allowed to be booked online)
  5. Click "save" 
In order to collect deposits for online appointments, you must also use CardConnect or Gravity Payments for payments processing.
You will need to register your clinic website domain with CardConnect or Gravity in order for the deposits function to work.  Not doing so will result in a permanently spinning barber pole when trying to take a deposit when making an appointment.

Learn more about managing appointment types.

Accepting, Rescheduling, or Rejecting Appointments

Whenever an appointment is booked online, an email notification will be sent to the clinic’s email address.  The appointment will appear in the clinic schedule with diagonal lines through it, which denotes that the appointment needs to be reviewed before it is completed.

Pending appointments can be accepted, rescheduled, or rejected.  These options appear by clicking on the appointment.  If the appointment is acceptable, clicking on “accept” will send a confirmation message to the client, and provide for the option to generate an appointment reminder.  If the appointment needs to be rescheduled, clicking on “reschedule” will allow the clinic to change the date and time of the appointment, and provide the option to sent an email to the clients, as well as provide for the option to generate an appointment reminder.  If the appointment is rejected, clicking on “reject” will send a rejection email to the client.  The default messages for accepted, rescheduled, or rejected appointments can be customized using email defaults under Settings > Configurations > View Email Defaults.

After an appointment is accepted or rescheduled, it will appear just like other appointments that were booked directly the practice.  Rejected appointments will be removed from the Schedule.

Reports

After the Online Booking add-on is enabled, a new report called “Pending Appointments” will appear under Reports > Schedule.  This report will list all of the appointments that have been requested online and that have yet to be approved, rescheduled, or rejected

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