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.

[exodushair]

that's our current predicament, as we have multiple stylists doing each member of the family at the same time

[winniecheng]

Hi there! Re: group booking - check out my colleague Peter’s answer here.

Re: click and drag on Square Register - that makes sense, it’s something we’d like to look into although I can’t share exact timeline.

Re: returning vs new customers - we’ve heard feedback around needing to separate this in reports, but it makes sense that you’d want to be able to view this in the calendar as well. We’ll definitely keep this feedback in mind when we think about calendar customizations as a whole.

Re: waitlist - agree that it’s a key feature. Check out my answer here on our plans for waitlist.

[Loveandserenity]

Somehow my post got delete so now I have to try to remember everything I said…so Ill be quick…

• Deposits for appointments, would like to collect percentage of payment upfront without having to send invoice manually
• Categorize services on booking flow so that all services is not just one long list. Clients should be able to select the service of choice by pinpointing category
• Categorize services in the back office under service library opposed to only listing services alphabetically
• Option to have forms sent with appointment booking without using a third party, similar to contracts but form instead
• Option to track cost of services, for instance, I am a hairstylist and there are costs associated with doing hair color such as color tubes, gloves, caps, foils, etc. I would love to track the cost of each service and view in a report just as one can do with inventory and cost of goods.
• Vagaro and Acuity Scheduling have a lot of these features and I believe this should be a standard offering to appointments

[BeChewzy]

I would like to request a feature, it would be great if certain services could be auto approved while others could be set to approve by the store. This being important for those using it at a restaurant and for large parties or events.

[LoganSq]

Thanks for the feedback, BeChewzy! Could you tell me a little more about your workflow at the moment for this? Sounds like there might be certain services that need a consultation before they can be officially ‘booked’?

[StephanieH610]

Is there a way of making SPECIFIC services only available on certain days?.. There is one service I only want to offer on Wednesdays for example, but as of now a customer can book it at ANYTIME during my available hours.. 

[LoganSq]

Hi StephanieH610, thanks for the question! Unfortunately there isn’t a way to do that at the moment, but I’ve seen a few others mention something similar in these questions. Could you talk me through a little bit about what services you’re trying to limit, and whether there’s any other similar limiting examples you'd need?

[TopEnd]

1) I would love if Square could integrate a travel fee for those who select us to come to their location.

   Also a way to set travel days and non travel days instead of allowing the customer to be able to decide..

2) I also would love a deposit option because card on file usually fails us business owners.

3) Also for those who offer services on the website side of things, the ability instead of putting the service in a cart and the client purchases, the service is simply booked instead. Because currently if you want a description on your site of your service with pictures it only allows people to purchase the item instead of simply booking an appointment.

[Djwhysham617]

Can appointments/Invoice/Contract all become linked? Right now invoices/contracts are great linked but blending everything together, I can't go from Appointment to Creating an invoice, then if so, I now have two of the same events (An appointment/ An Invoice) 

[LoganSq]

Hi Djwhysham617, we’re currently working on improving the links between contract/appointment so that it’s easier to see when (for example) a waiver for an appointment has been signed. Could you talk me through a little bit about how you’d want invoices to be linked to these things too? Are you using invoices as a way to bill for appointments?

[Djwhysham617]

Sorry for the late response 

Yes to the last part! Sometimes it is easier to book it that way depending on who the person is. 

I think maybe linking the appointment to where it says "Date of Service" would go a long way! 

[nowshowing]

Hi !

I need the ability to limit online scheduling of certain appointments to certain times or days only.  I offer facials and massages and currently have to intermix the scheduling due to the way Square is designed for the basic free account. Because I only have one physical room to work from and need time to change the room from facial setup to massage setup in between appointments, it would be easier and more cost/time effective just to book massages and facials in groups of half days or full days so that I am not constantly changing the room setup all day.  Aside from eliminating online booking which is a feature my customers really love and taking in person or phone bookings only, I cannot get Square to work this way ("I need the ability to limit online scheduling of certain appointments to certain times or days only" ) without creating a second "virtual" room and upgrading to premium service.  I don't have a problem upgrading per se, it's just an unnecessary expense and will create more headache because I will have to block half of the schedule each day in each room and creates more room for error when closing the office for days off.

[Kassi_]

Thank you for the post, @nowshowing.

Appointments have an option for the business owner to accept the appointments instead of automatically accepting all appointments when customers make them with Online Booking. Go to your Dashboard > Appointments > Settings > Calendar & Booking. It will look something like this. 

To help with the time between appointments, you can add a "prep time" directly to the service. It will be a small block of time to allow you to clean or change the set up for the next service. Under the Edit screen of the Service, you will turn on "Block Extra Time" and it will allow you to select your own amount to add. 

A workaround for limiting certain services to specific time/day could be setting up certain "team members" and set their availability to what you need for that particular service.

Please let me know if you were looking for something different!  

[chris-setty]

I use square for pretty much everything at the hair salon my wife and I own and operate. It would be nice to have some flexibility in the employee availability settings for online booking. We have a lot of stylists that work the same two or three days, but then every other Saturday, e.g. Right now we can deal with this by creating personal events and having them repeat, so this isn't something "missing", just something that would be nice to set in availability rather than adding stuff to your calendar to tweak when online booking shows you available.

[pbarfield]

Hi @chris-setty! It sounds like you’re familiar with customizing each stylist’s availability, but you’re looking to have additional customization when their availability is not necessarily the same each week. We do not have plans to add more customization or “per-week” availability at this time, but we’ll continue to assess our roadmap plans and if we do hear more interest for additional customization, we will consider building in the future.

Thank you for the feedback!

[chris-setty]

Enabling clients to check in when they arrive at the salon would be helpful too. We have configured our no-show protection and it would be nice to have that additional step for both our clients and for our business when it comes to charging for no-shows. I want to make sure there is every possible opportunity to avoid it as a client, and provide back up for us as the business when charging no-shows.

[EricAllanHair]

Hi!

First question: I have a hair salon and the stylists are employees. I'm using squarespace scheduling as my customer facing system because it integrates with google analytics. This allows me to run google/facebook/instagram ads more effectively. I use square appointments only on the backend for sales attribution. When will square appointments integrate with google analytics?

Second question: Why is it still impossible to reassign sales attribution once an appointment is completed?

Third question: When will Square Appointments integrate with other payroll apps for sales attribution?

Fourth question: When will I be able to make my square appointments look more like my brand rather than the Square brand? Like customization

[winniecheng]

1: Thank you for your feedback -- this is not currently on our roadmap, but we will plan to discuss this as part of our upcoming annual planning process to uncover whether this is a broad request and something we should prioritize.

2&3: We recently integrated with Square Payroll so you can now automatically import commissions into Payroll to make paying your team easier.

4: We also just integrated with Square Online, which allows you to create a fully customizable website that reflects your brand. You can sell retail alongside your services, fulfill orders, and manage inventory. Hope that helps!

[CanvasNC]

For my salon

1. The ability for my staff "book" or "claim" a resource/room prior to booking clients or accepting. Kind of like assigning a wait-staff to a grouping of tables.
2. For the Admin staff dashboard to show
   1. percentages booked vs. open
   2. Projected daily/weekly/monthly revenue vs. Actual daily/weekly/monthly revenue
   3. Service dollars by time, $$/hour
   4. Highest ranking service providers, like a leader board
3. The option for a deposit instead of a card on file
4. For each service provider to have their own pricing instead of each service

[pbarfield]

Hi @CanvasNC! See below for answers to your questions above:

1) We recently launched a resource management feature (see our Support Center article for more information) but unfortunately, it cannot be tied to a certain staff member at this time.

2) We’ve heard a lot of feedback on additional reporting details around staff members, so I’ll be sure to share your feedback with the proper team as we plan our product updates for 2022.

3) For deposits, we agree that this is a key feature and I can confirm it’s on our roadmap, although we’ll need to wait to see how our 2022 planning process shakes out to see when it will be prioritized. Stay tuned.

4) Although we’ve heard the need for staff-based service pricing, we do not have immediate plans to add this feature. However, we’ll continue to assess our roadmap plans and if we do hear more interest in it, we will consider building in the future.

Thank you for the feedback!

[CanvasNC]

Also in the phone/tablet app

1. The ability to make sure the app doesn't double book future appointments, this doesn't happen when using the desktop function.
2. It would be nice when we are rebooking using the "Book Next" function, to see an additional screen that lets us choose how many weeks in advance (1-52),  we're currently having to ask Siri before or else we have to leave the app to check our calendar and then go back in the app...