How to set up Appointment Types
If you offer various types of appointments, different appointment durations, or a range of prices for different services, you can easily showcase them on your booking page using our Appointment Types feature.
This feature is available on the Professional and Teams plans.
In this article:
- Setting up Appointment Types
- Organizing appointment types on the booking page
- Set prices for Appointment Types
- Select multiple Appointment Types in one booking
- Referencing Appointment Types in confirmation emails
- Share direct links to specific appointment types
Setting up Appointment Types
1. Go to the Additional options section and select Appointment types. To activate the feature, click the Appointment Types section.
2. The initial appointment will be created and called My service. Click the pencil to edit the name and duration, or the trash icon to delete it.
3. Add additional appointment types to your booking page by clicking Create new appointment type.
4. Edit the Intro for appointment type selection section as this is the first text your clients will see when they land on your booking page.
5. For each appointment type you add to your booking page, you'll set the name of the service, the duration of the appointment, and the cost of the service. You can also upload an image to better describe the service.
We suggest avoiding the use of Appointment Types if you provide just one service, as it might add an unnecessary step for your clients.
Organizing appointment types on the booking page
If you have a long list of appointment types, organizing them into groups can be helpful.
- Just below the Intro for appointment type selection box, choose the option to Divide them into groups, and then decide how you'd like to separate each group—by colon, semi-colon, or dash.
- Next, edit the title of each appointment type to include the category name followed by your chosen separator. For instance, if you decide to use a colon (:) to organize your appointment types, you could name them like this:
- Sales: Discovery call
- Sales: Full demo
- Success: Kickoff call
- Success: Onboarding training
Make sure the text before the separator matches exactly, and that the appointment types are grouped together in order on the Appointment Types page (all Demo groups listed together, all Technical Call groups listed together, etc.).
Set prices for Appointment Types
If you want to inform your clients of the price of your service before booking, add a price for each appointment type you add to your booking page. This price will be just for informational purposes, and you can refer to it later in email communications using the shorthand code {PRICE}.
If you integrate your Stripe account and activate Stripe on your booking page, visitors will be required to make a payment before they complete the booking.
To take payments for bookings but offer some services for free (ie. free consultation) set the price to $0 for that appointment type and the booker will be able to bypass the credit card payment form for that service.
To change the default currency symbol, navigate to Booking Form Payments
Select multiple appointment types in one booking
You can allow a client to book multiple services in the same booking. The total duration and price of all appointments will be added together. The client will not be able to select different days and times for different appointments. Appointments that should fall on separate days should be booked separately.
Below the Intro for appointment type selection box, select the option to Select more than one in the same booking.
You can offer add-on services by creating appointment types with a 0-minute duration. At least one other appointment on your booking page must have a duration greater than 0 minutes.
Referencing Appointment Types in Confirmation emails
Use the shorthand Code {TYPE-NAME} in your confirmations and reminders to reference the appointment type(s) your client has booked.
Create Conditional statements based on {TYPE-NAME} to customize the body of the confirmation email to your client based on the type of appointment booked.
Use {TYPE-NAME} in the calendar event title so you can see what types of appointments you have at a glance.
Share direct links to specific appointment types
There may be times when you already know what type of appointment the client requires, or you don’t want to offer a choice of appointment types to all clients.
In this case, you can send your booking URL with the appointment type pre-selected. This will automatically assign the correct appointment type and will skip the page displaying all the appointment types.
You'll pre-fill the booking page URL using ?SERVICE=. To link directly to a specific appointment type you offer, use the URL string:
https://yourbookinglink.youcanbook.me/?service=appointment+type+name
So if we wanted to send a link to a client allowing them to only book a Discovery call we would share the link:
https://ycbm-consultations.youcanbook.me/?service=Discovery+call
The capitalization of the appointment type name must match exactly in the link as it is on the Appointment Type section. Any spaces in between the title should be replaced with a + sign to prevent the link from breaking.
Learn more about our shorthand codes here.
💡 You can also add {TYPE-NAME} to the Booking page intro under General, so the client will see what type of appointment they are booking as they are selecting a time.
For further questions, contact our team at support@youcanbook.me.
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