The purpose of this article is to help you understand: 

  • How each type of scheduling works
  • Where to set up your scheduling preferences

 

Scheduling Types

There are three different types of scheduling in BookingKoala.

  1. Accepted Automatically: Whenever someone books or reschedules an appointment, it will be automatically assigned to a provider or team based on availability and priority.
    • You can set your provider priority by going to the Providers page and clicking on the orange "Set Priority" button.


      Drag and drop providers to reorder their priority, then click the blue "Update Priority" button at the bottom of the page.  

    • Click here to learn how to open availability and set schedules for your providers.  
    • Customers will receive a "Receipt Email" and "Booking Confirmed" email automatically after scheduling an appointment to let them know a provider has been assigned to their booking.  

  2. Accept or Decline: Whenever someone books or reschedules an appointment, an invitation will be sent to each provider in order of priority, asking them if they would like to accept the job.  



    If they decline or the waiting period has passed, the next provider on the list will be notified.  This process will continue until a provider picks up the job. 
    • By default, accept or decline scheduling will place all new bookings into the unassigned folder until a provider accepts the booking invitation or picks it up.
    • Providers can be notified whenever a new booking comes into the unassigned folder. 
    • Providers can pick up jobs from the unassigned folder at any point during the process.  
    • If all providers decline a job, it will stay in the unassigned folder where it is visible to all eligible providers.  
    • Invitations to pending jobs are sent out one at a time, meaning the provider must accept or decline the job before they can see additional booking invitations.
    • Providers will be blocked from other bookings until they accept or decline the invitation unless you manually assign a job to them or they pick one up from the unassigned folder.  
    • If a provider grabs a job from the unassigned folder instead of accepting a job invitation, the invitation will be automatically sent to the next provider in line.
    • Customers will receive a "Receipt Email" confirming the booking details once they submit a booking.
    • Customers will not receive the "Booking Confirmed" email until a provider has accepted the job.
    • If a job is rescheduled, customers will receive a "Booking Modified" email as soon as a new provider grabs the job.
    • If a job is canceled, a "Never Found a Provider" email will be sent to the customer letting them know that you were unable to locate a provider for the job.  

  3. Accepts Same Day Only: This type is a combination of both "Accepted Automatically" and "Accept or Decline" scheduling.  All jobs set beyond today's date will be assigned automatically based on availability and priority, while all same-day bookings will trigger accept/decline notifications.
    • This option saves a lot of manual labor if you previously had to contact each provider for same-day requests.
    • Customers booking after today will receive a "Receipt Email" and "Booking Confirmed" upon booking.
    • Same-day customers will only receive a "Booking Confirmed" email after a provider has accepted the job.
    • If a job is canceled, a "Never Found a Provider" email will be sent to the customer letting them know that you were unable to locate a provider for the job.  

 

Set Your Scheduling Type

To change the type of scheduling your store uses, please go to: 

Settings > General > Store Options

At the top of the page, click on the Scheduling tab.

Next, click on the "Scheduling" section to expand it.  

Scroll down until you see the question, "How would you like the system to assign bookings to your providers?" and select one of the options:

  • Accepted Automatically
  • Accepts Same Day Only
  • Accept or Decline

If you selected "Accepts Same Day Only" or "Accept or Decline", there will be another option to control how long they have to accept the job before another provider is notified of the new job.

Under "How long do providers/teams have to accept the job before it is passed on to the next provider/team?", enter the length of time into the "hours" and "minutes" boxes.

If you are finished making changes in this section, be sure to click the blue "Save" button at the bottom right corner of the page.  

Click here for an in-depth overview of all the scheduling rules in this section.