Plannit's Online reservations are a great way to save time by allowing your customers to book appointments easily from your website. No need to contact you directly - it's quick and easy to set up, leaving you more time to concentrate on other important tasks.
Here's how to set it up:
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📙 Step-by-step guide
Install Plannit's virtual assistant on your site
For this step, simply send us a request via Plannit's Help chat or here are the steps for you to send to your webmaster Website integration instructions
Choose the services you want to make available online
To make services available for online booking, you must first make them visible on your website. Here's how to do it:
In Settings<Services, create and/or open each of the services you want to make available and deactivate the Exclude service via web button.
This will make it visible online to your customers.
Define booking rules for selected services:
You can customize the booking rules for each selected service. Here's how, from your Plannit account Settings<Online booking:
Check the services in the list you wish to make available for online bookings. These will then appear at the bottom of the page for you to click to customize the booking rules.
For each service you wish to make available, click on the service name to open the options to complete:
Resource(s) associated with the service: Check the resource(s)/employee(s) whose schedules will be available for this service.
Reservation interval: corresponds to the frequency at which customers will be able to make a reservation, i.e. every 15 minutes, every half-hour, etc.
Duration: corresponds to the average time it will realistically take to perform this service.
Time between visits: allows you to allocate an average travel time and/or cover for unforeseen circumstances.
Maximum reservation lead time: is the number of weeks in advance available for access to your calendars (i.e. you want customers to be able to see your calendar for the next 2 weeks or for the next month, etc.).
Minimum booking lead time: is the minimum number of hours/days notice required to book in your calendar so as not to miss any appointments (i.e. 1 day's notice to ensure resource availability, etc.)
You will need to repeat these steps for each service you have ticked off the list.
Configure your employees schedules:
Schedule configuration lets you choose when the employee is available to offer each service. Plannit allows you to customize it to your operational needs (i.e. customers will only be able to choose from the slots available within the assigned availabilities and those not reserved by other customers).
Go to Settings,
Click on Users
Select the user ( employee )
Click on Availability to configure the schedule as follows:
The regular schedule determines the employee's weekly availability:
Click on + Add availabilities, and select the day of the week and hours available. Repeat the steps to add all days of the week.
To delete a schedule, click on the trash can.
The schedule for a specific period allows you to create specific schedules for certain times of the year. All you have to do is:
Select For a specific period
Add the start and end date of the period
Add availability periods.
The vacation schedule can be adjusted from your Settings as follows:
Click on Online reservations tab.
Uncheck the resource in each department to which it is assigned.
All you have to do is check the same spot again when upon return from vacation.
Once you've set up online booking, customers will see this on your virtual assistant, and will be able to select a range from those available:
NOTE: You will need to refresh the page after adding/changing settings to update your account.
Testing the experience for your customers
Once online booking is installed, customers will see this on your virtual assistant and can select a range from those available:
Once they have confirmed the booking, the appointment will be automatically added to the diary of one of the available employees assigned to this service.
