Set up your practice

Before you take your first booking, AppointmentGuru needs to know where you work, when you work and what you offer. Your Home page has a checklist, Get ready for your first booking, that links to each of these steps. This page walks through them in the same order.

Everything here lives under Settings > Practice.

Spaces and locations

Two words come up a lot in your settings, so it helps to know what they mean first.

• A space is one business. It has its own name, invoice details, branding, locations and appointment types. Most practices only ever need one.
• A location is a place where you see clients. One space can have several locations, and they all share the space’s name, branding and banking details.

Note

If you run the same practice from two rooms, add a second location to your space. Only add a second space if you want a different name, logo or banking details on your invoices, for example a physiotherapy practice and a Pilates studio that you bill for separately.

Set up your practice step by step

1. Add your practice name

   Go to Settings > Practice. Fill in your Practice name, and your Practice number if you have one. Check that the Currency and Timezone are right, then click Save.

2. Add a location

   Under Spaces, click your space to open it. In the Locations section, click + Add location.

   Give the location a Name, and fill in as much of the address as you’d like your clients to see: Street address, Suburb, City, Phone and Email. Then click Add location.

   If you see clients online, tick This location is online. If you always use the same meeting room link, for example for Zoom, paste it into Meeting URL.

3. Set your working hours

   Click the location you’ve just added. Under Who works here, and when, click Add hours next to your name.

   Switch on each day you work and set your hours. A day that’s switched off is closed. To add a lunch break, add two times on the same day with + Add another time. If your hours are the same every day, set Monday and click Copy Monday to every day.

   Click Add hours to save.

   Note

   Clients can only book online during your working hours. For one-off time away, like a long lunch or a day off, block the time in your calendar instead of changing your hours. See Book your first appointment.

4. Add an appointment type

   Appointment types are the services you offer, such as Initial consultation or Follow-up. Each one has its own price and length.

   Back on your space, in the Appointment types section, click + Add appointment type. Fill in:

   • Name: what the appointment is called. Your clients see this.
   • Duration (minutes): how long it takes.
   • Price: what you charge. You can still change the amount on an individual invoice.
   • Available at: the locations where you offer it.

   Then click Add appointment type. Repeat this for each service you offer.

5. Add your invoice details

   On your space, open Space details. Add your Billing address and Banking details so they appear on your invoices, then click Save space details.

That’s the checklist done. You’re ready to add your first client.

More about appointment types

A few options on an appointment type are worth knowing about:

Flexible location: for home visits

Tick Flexible location if the appointment happens in person but not at a fixed address, such as a home visit or a meeting at a coffee shop. When you book one of these, AppointmentGuru asks you for the address. In your appointment type list, these show a Flexible tag.

Online: for video calls

Tick Online for appointments that happen over a video call, for example on Zoom. These show a Virtual tag in your list.

Private: hidden from your booking page

Tick Private to keep an appointment type off your website and booking page. You can still send a client a direct link to book it.

Discount, notice periods and codes

• Discount adds a discount automatically to every appointment of this type.
• Notice periods set how much warning a client must give to book, reschedule or cancel online.
• Automatically add these codes adds the billing codes you always use for this type, so they’re on every appointment without retyping them.

Copying types from a colleague

If a colleague in your practice has already set up their appointment types, click Copy from a colleague, choose the ones you want, and click Copy selected.

Removing an appointment type

Open the appointment type and click Archive. It stops being offered for new bookings, but your past appointments and invoices keep it. If you change your mind, find it under Archived and click Bring back.