How to Limit Pre-Booked Appointments

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Why would you want to limit pre-booked appointments for your clients, patients or customers? When you have a booking system, it seems like you have the possibility of filling your schedule. But what about your other clients? 

Before the horror-show that is 2020 happened, there were still a lot of businesses, clinics, and more operating on a walk-in basis. That was how their business worked, and the old saying “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” always comes to the fore when people consider making changes to a business operating structure. 

Then the Virus came.

Operating procedures HAD to change, and with it a shift in how people viewed pre-booked appointments. There are thousands of companies around the world that have implemented online appointment bookings since the beginning of the year. These same companies are discovering that their clients love it, and wondering why they never did it before. 

There will be an end to the current situation, and while many businesses will opt to maintain their booking system, they will also want to accommodate more walk-in clients.

So now there are thousands of companies loving their online scheduling systems, but they still have people who don’t have the option of pre-booking appointments. 

Why People Can’t Always Pre-book Appointments

While your clients might love the option to book an appointment online, sometimes, the ability to walk in is also a bonus. 

Not Everyone Keeps Regular Hours

Most of us in the working world have a reasonably regular schedule. For some it might be a repeating shift pattern, others do a straight 9-6 (because no one works 9-5 anymore). However, there are always people who don’t fit those regular criteria, and they are the ones who don’t know their schedule far enough in advance to know when they could book an appointment. These are carers of young children and older relatives, and any number of people whose schedules rely entirely on someone else’s whims. 

Emergencies – In medical settings and beyond

What about emergencies? By definition, you can’t pre-book an emergency. Medical, dental and psychological clinics and businesses have to deal with emergencies regularly, but what about other companies?

You might not think that a broken set of nails or a hair-dying mishap are “emergencies”, but when it happens just before an event or a job interview, it is an emergency. And anyone with a child knows the utter devastation that can occur with a child and their first forays into cutting their hair (we all did it).

Limit Pre-booked Appointments by Clients

We designed the Limit Bookings custom feature precisely so that you can limit your externally booked appointments. Firstly, to either ensure you don’t overbook on staff and resources or secondly, so you can accommodate any unexpected changes to your schedule. While you should always hope for a healthy and happy workforce, you can’t always assume that every member of staff will be available. People get sick, have accidents, and have other emergencies that happen in their lives. If you ensure some flexibility in your work schedule, you should rarely need to cancel appointments. 

The video does a fantastic walk-through of how you can set up the limit bookings feature. However, if you want some step by step instructions you can find them in our help centre 

You can set up the limit to apply across the whole business. Alternatively, you can set the limit to apply to individual services.

The point here is that you can stop clients from booking your schedule solid, and still keep a bit of time available for your walk-ins and emergencies.

Alternatively, you can keep the limit and turn off the override ability for admins too. That means you can’t add another booking when someone walks in, even if you do have staff members free. However, if you do turn off the override, it prevents you from adding in another appointment, adding a new client at that time, and using the PoS system when they pay for their meeting with you. It also prevents you from including walk-in appointments when you run reports for analysis.

Limiting Appointments for Medical Clinics

Even though it’s useful to almost all businesses, the medical community has more reasons than most to limit pre-booked appointments. There are patients who need regular follow up care, check-ups and other common-place reasons for visiting a doctor. However, the primary reason that people visit a medical centre is that they are ill. 

And as hard as we might wish that we could schedule our illnesses for a more convenient time, we can’t.

As a consequence, pre-booked appointments at a primary care medical clinic should be the minority (or at least no more than 50% of the available appointments). 

Limiting Bookings for other reasons

There are alternative reasons for limiting the number of bookings that your clients can make through your website. You might have finite resources for a required piece of equipment. If that’s the case, a better way to limit your bookings is to use the Related Resources custom feature.

Limiting External Bookings for a Better Service

Limiting your bookings, even all it means is having a person free, means better service for your clients. You someone to act as a chaperone, someone to welcome your clients or someone to cover walk-ins. You also allow for a little flexibility in your schedule to accommodate sickness and staff leave. That little bit of leeway in your booking schedule makes you look more organised and more respectful of your clients.