Ask Our Appointments Product Managers and Designers Anything

[Tom]

Hello Sellers! On July 13th at 1pm PT / 4pm ET, we hosted a virtual office hours session within this thread where sellers had the opportunity to post questions and hear back from our Appointments team members! 

@rvoluck, @LoganSq, @winniecheng, and @pbarfield are product managers and designers on the Square Appointments team and, together, they took the lead in today's session. Having worked on a variety of features within Square Appointments and more than 6 years combined experience at Square, they addressed questions and make sure feedback went to the right decision makers. Learn more about Square Appointments.

A few example questions:

• How can I make sure I'm getting the most out of Square Appointments?
• What are the best strategies for using Square Appointments within my business type?
• There are so many different features available within Square Appointments, what are the top three things to keep in mind for someone who is getting started?

Note regarding account-specific questions: For your privacy and security, we are not able to address issues related to specific account status details in our public forums. If you need account assistance, please contact our Customer Success team and they'll be able to take a deeper dive.

[Trail-Angels]

I run a shuttle biz so need the time to auto set the travel time of each booked route to next so  it allows me time from last shuttle drop off to get to next pick up.

Example:

The first appointment is at point A and takes 30 min to get to from home base, then 30 min to bring to point B (Total 1 hour) and then 30 min back to home the next appointment at point C takes 40 min to get to then 20 min to get to point D, the second appointment if booked after the first should auto change from home to next appointment time (40 min) instead of home (30 min) 

hope that makes sense.

[pbarfield]

Hi @Trail-Angels! I wonder if you could utilize our processing time feature to help with this, which allows you to buffer the time before and after an appointment. Visit our support center article on this feature to learn more and determine whether it would work out for your use case.

Otherwise, feel free to reach out to our dedicated support team also through the support center for more assistance.

[ggv]

Is there a way to limit which weekdays a client can book an appointment online? For example, I'm open Monday through Friday, but want to make consultation calls only available on Tuesdays/Thursdays. How can I do that?

[pbarfield]

Hi @ggv! We don't have a direct way of limiting appointment types (e.g. phone, in-person) by day. However, a workaround for this may be to create another location that is "phone only" and set its hours to be Tuesday/Thursday and set the physical location hours to not be open on Tuesday/Thursday.

Hope this can work for you!

[Dandiesbarbers1]

How do we block, restrict people fr appointment system? 

[LowdownBallroom]

I own a dance studio, and based on my limited workings with the software thus far (all new to me), I would love to see the following: 

• A way to easily offer discounts for service items
  
  
• A way to select client appointments from the calendar and add these as items of an invoice (I'd love to be able to sort by name and select boxes to check the items that need invoicing); more generally, increased integration between the different parts of Square would be wonderful.
  
  
• A place to put a "I agree to Terms & Conditions" button or field before any booking takes place, AND have it integrated w/ booking buttons on Facebook, Instagram, etc.). I want to know that no matter where my clients book from, they will always be checking a box to agreeing to the terms and conditions (even just having a field that says "By booking you agree to our Terms & Conditions" that shows up when they click one of those buttons would be helpful).

Thank you!

[Kassi_]

Welcome back to the Community, @LowdownBallroom - 

Currently, there is an option to add discounts to services through your Dashboard > Items > Discounts. 

With these discounts, you have the option to apply them to all services or just specific ones. The customizations are up to you. 

Is there something else you would like to see when it comes to discounts? 

[pbarfield]

Hi @LowdownBallroom! I wanted to chime in on the other few questions you have around better integrations with Invoices and custom intake information.

For Invoices, at the moment you are able to select Invoices as a payment method when checking out the appointment, which adds the items from the appointment to the invoice and sends it to the customer to complete. Is this what you are interested in trying out?

Related to a custom button, we are working on the ability to have custom intake information or fields, such as the one you mentioned. I think this would be a suitable feature to meet your needs, and if you’re interested in trying this feature out when it’s in beta, let us know and we’ll be sure to include you when things are ready.

[java4life]

Is it possible to change it so when a customer books an online appointment, they can do multiple pets at once. They have to make a separate appointment for each pet, which is annoying for them...

When I look at my appointment page, all the appt's are blue, is there a way to make them be different colors for the different services offered? 

When using the appointments page on a laptop/desktop, the calendar is it's own screen within the page screen, it's a bit annoying to have to scroll the page up/down to be able to scroll the calendar window, is there a way to make the calendar it's own page screen?

[pbarfield]

Hi @java4life! Someone asked a similar question to having multiple pets be booked at once - see here for the answer.

For the appointment colors, they are connected to the staff member booked on that appointment. To have the colors be changed, you would have to have different staff members assigned to each appointment, as each staff member will have their own color.

I’ll be sure to share the laptop/desktop calendar feedback with our design team as we make any enhancements over the coming months. If we have any follow ups, we may reach out for more information on your experience.

Thank you for the feedback!

[Krys2]

Can you make the design in appointments more user friendly? 

Ex. Automatically sending certain consent forms to clients after they book certain appointments.
Customers being able to leave reviews for others to see.
Setting up membership/packages and being able to track them for each client

[winniecheng]

1) Thanks for your feedback! Yes, we have intake forms on our roadmap this year. Stay tuned.

2) We haven’t heard the need for reviews as much as other requests, so it’s not on our current roadmap, however we will take this input into annual planning to better understand how large of a need it is and whether this is something we should take on in 2022.

3) We agree packages is important and it's on our roadmap.

[Volition]

I 100% agree about the reviews! It would be great if it was linked to google reviews or a place where you can link the reviews to your website. 

[Krys2]

Can you make it easier to switch between two locations with out having to log out?

[winniecheng]

We’ve heard this feedback a lot and it’s on our roadmap. Thanks for your patience as we work on making this a more seamless experience.

[Loveandserenity]

Can you create the option to list each service under a category so that clients can see each service under a specific category in the scheduling flow? An alternative to just having all the services listed in one long list and making it hard for clients to pinpoint exactly what they need. I know I can categorize in back office but I want it to be categorized from the clients perspective. Also, in the back office under service library, I would like the option to categories services by each category and not list all services by alphabetical order. For instance, I am a hairstylist and I want all “Color Services” to be grouped together so I can have “balayage”, “color retouch”, “Highlights” all under the same category. I hope I am making sense.

Also, is there a way to collect deposits for booked appointments. I know there is a way to collect monies if clients cancel or no show in due time but I would like to collect a percentage of the appointment monies upfront without having to manually send an invoice.

Also, is there a way to track Cost of Services? For instance, Vagaro allows you to track how much a services cost a business to perform. For instance, when I do a color service, my business has to pay for color tubes, gloves, developer, etc. It would be nice to know how much I am paying to do the services I offer to help me better determine if I need to go up in prices or even remove a service offering, etc. A report should be able to measure this Cost of Service just as it is for inventory with Cost of Goods.

Also, can forms be available for certain appointment types instead of having to use a third party?

I would recommend looking at competitors such as Vagaro and Acuity Scheduling for some of the potential features that should really be a standard offering (forms, cost of services, deposits, categorizing services by groups etc.)

[jolibeautique]

Is there anyway to delete the creator of the square account from showing up on appointments? Ex: Joann is the creator but does not do services, she still comes up when we are booking our services. If someone books with her, the rest of the employees cannot see their appointments. It seems as if we cannot delete her from the services and appointments at all. Let me know if you can help!

[LoganSq]

Hey jolibeautique, unfortunately hiding staff members is only possible for the online booking site that your buyers use today. Thanks for the feedback though, you bring up a good point and sounds like something we should look into adding to the app too!

[Krys2]

Is there a way to clients can book multiple appointment variations. 

[exodushair]

Hi!

• our most needed feature from appointments (on square register) is the ability for one client to check out multiple clients. For Fathers/sons, Mothers/daughters, husbands/wives. The only way to do this currently, is schedule "Mom haircut with Brittany at 2pm, mom haircut with Mat, Mom haircut with Jaydan." This doesn't work because it doesn't let you pick the start time for the second two services, it just puts them after one another. Also, that doesn't allow client-specific notes or product purchase history. Because, in this example, everything is under Mom.
• The ability to click and drag a client's appointment to a different time that day, would be an intuitive functionality feature on square register that would be helpful. since it's already touch screen, your mind tells you "drag it" but you can't lol
• some sort of designation between returning and new customers. Square already tracks this info, but there's no way to tell by looking at the appointments screen. Making a new client a different color or something would be helpful to know who's new and who's returning.
• probably the most requested feature I've seen in the forums is having the client's be able to add themselves to a waitlist! Almost every other appointment software allows for this, and I think it's the only feature that Square is behind the ball on. 

[BLGC]

Yes. I have a pet salon so its very common to have multiple clients from the same family. Right now we merge them to one spot and its fine because its scheduled for one groomer but that is still a pain. If I add a second groomer schedule that would be a nightmare