Holding a time for somebody who hasn’t replied yet
You send that, and then you wait. There are two more of these going with two other people, about the same few days. So Tuesday at 3 is being held for somebody who hasn’t answered, Tuesday at 4 for somebody who might, and you’re not putting anything else in either one, just in case. You check your calendar before you reply, and again before you confirm, because what was free on Monday isn’t always free by Wednesday.
Then two of them come back wanting the same one.
None of it is hard. It’s just never finished.
What happens instead of the back-and-forth
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They pick from the times you’re actually free. The calendar you already keep decides what gets offered, so a time you’re busy elsewhere is never on the list.
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Once somebody takes a time, it’s gone. Nobody else is shown it. Two people can’t come back wanting the same one.
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Your team can take bookings, not just you.
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The confirmation goes out, and so does the reminder. By email and by text, and you didn’t send either one.
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You can take payment at the moment they book. How getting paid works
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Whoever booked is a contact in your account, not a name sitting in a thread somewhere.
Not every booking is one person and a thirty-minute call
Most scheduling tools picture one of you, one of them, half an hour. Businesses turn out to be messier than that, and yours probably has at least two of these in it.
- One of you, taking everything.One calendar, one link.
- Any one of several people can take it.One link, and it goes to whoever’s free.
- One of you and a roomful of them.A class, a workshop, an info evening. People book a seat, not a slot.
- Two of you genuinely needed in the room.It only offers the times you’re both free.
- A menu of services, each with its own length and its own price.And a room, a chair, or a piece of equipment that only one booking can have at a time.
- Something with nobody hosting it at all.A room, a slot, a time to register interest.
You don’t have to work out which of those you are. Tell us how a booking actually happens in your business and it gets set up that way.
Something that happens once, with a page and tickets? That’s an event
Already have a scheduling tool? Here’s what it usually leaves unsolved
You solved the simple version of this, and it worked. Three things usually stay unsolved.
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The awkward bookings. The list above is the range a real business turns out to have. Most standalone tools were built for the first line of it.
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Getting the booking where it needs to be. The person who booked has to end up in your CRM, and the booking has to show up on your site. Getting it there takes hoops.
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Making it look like yours. Embedding somebody else’s scheduler so that it doesn’t look like somebody else’s scheduler is a fight of its own. Why the first impression is the website’s job
Then there’s the part underneath all three. All the usual show-up tooling is here: confirmations, reminders, follow-ups. But this calendar sits in the same account as everything else you run, so a booking can set a workflow going. That’s the part a standalone calendar tool can’t do, however good it is at calendars.
Confirmations and reminders that get people to turn up
A confirmation when they book.
A reminder before.
A follow-up after.
Email and text, and you didn’t write any of them.
That includes the “still on for 3?” text you send the morning of, because you’re not sure they remember. It goes out anyway, and remembering wasn’t your job.
A standalone tool stops about there, because a reminder is the most it knows to send. Yours knows who booked. So what happens next can depend on what actually happened: somebody who came gets one thing, somebody who didn’t gets another, and neither one is waiting on you to notice.
What booking costs
Booking is part of the software at $127 a month. Set the calendars up yourself, or put them in your queue and the team builds them.
Questions people ask about booking
What if two people pick the same time?
They can’t. Once a time is taken it stops being offered to anybody else. And what’s offered in the first place comes from the calendar you already keep, so a time you’re busy elsewhere never shows up.
Can I take payment when someone books?
Yes, on any of the calendars. Booking and paying happen in the same step.
Can my team take bookings from the same link?
Yes. One link can go to whichever of you is free.
Do the reminders really go out on their own?
Yes. The confirmation, the reminder, and the follow-up, by email and text, and you don’t send any of them.
Other features that work with booking
Automations
What can happen after a booking, and how it gets set up.
Getting paid
Taking the money. This is the page that explains how payment works.
The CRM
The person who booked, and everything else you know about them.
Websites
Where your booking link lives, and why it should look like yours.