Add a booking yourself

Take a booking over the phone or at the counter.

Not every appointment starts on your website. Someone rings up about a travel clinic, or walks in for a flu jab. You can create that appointment yourself, and Booked checks the time against working hours, breaks and other bookings, as the public form does — unless you have let staff override availability.

Two ways to start a booking

Open Bookings. Two toolbar buttons create an appointment. Both open the same editor and differ only in what is filled in for you.

• 1Walk-in — for someone in front of you. Opens the editor with today's date, the time rounded to the nearest 15 minutes, status Confirmed and the Walk-in toggle on. You still pick the customer and service.
• 2+ Add booking — a blank editor headed New booking, for a phone call.

You can also start from the schedule: New booking in the Diary toolbar — or the New booking button at the top of every screen, which takes you there — uses whichever date the diary shows. Better still, in Day view hover a gap in somebody’s column, press the + and choose Appointment: the date, the time and that person are filled in for you.

Choose the customer

The Customer section sits at the top of the editor. The picker reads Choose a customer until you pick one, and lists everyone you have as name (email), so you can tell two Priya Sharmas apart.

If the person on the phone is new, press New customer beside the picker. A small form asks for First name, Last name, Email (“Confirmations and reminders go here.”) and Phone; only a name is needed. Add and use for this booking creates the customer record and picks them, without leaving the booking. Their name, email and phone are copied onto the appointment when you save, so the booking still reads correctly if that record is later edited or removed.

Fill in the Appointment section

The rest sits in two cards. Appointment holds the service, the branch, who it is with, the date, the time and the length. Price and status holds the price, the status, the payment and the walk-in switch — look there first if a field seems to be missing.

• 1Customer * — one of only two things you must fill in; the other is a date and time. New customer adds somebody on the spot, and Make this a group booking turns it into one appointment for several people.
• 2Service — starts on "— Select —". Choosing one fills in the price and the length from that service, and a branch if the service is only offered at one; both stay editable. You can pick a day first if you like.
• 3Price — in your store currency. Overtype it for a discount or a top-up.
• 4Status — Pending, Confirmed, Completed, Cancelled or No-show. A booking you add here starts on Pending whatever Auto-approve new bookings says (that switch only decides online bookings), so set Confirmed yourself if it is agreed.
• 5Payment — Unpaid, or paid in person. Card payments are recorded here once a customer pays online.
• 6Walk-in — marks it as added at the counter, not booked online. The Walk-in button on the Bookings screen switches it on for you.

Branch only appears when you have more than one, and the times need it: until it is set the picker reads “Pick the branch above to see the times.” A service offered at one branch fills it in for you. With is optional — leave it on Anyone free and picking a time names who is free then.

Set the date and start time

The Appointment section is where availability is enforced. Date opens a Monday-first calendar with closed days greyed; Time then lists the day’s slots, stepped by your Time slot interval (15 minutes by default), grouped into Morning, Afternoon and Evening with a count of how many are free.

• 1Date — opens a month picker. Once a service (and branch) is chosen, days with free time get a dot; Change reopens it.
• 2Length — from the service, editable. The times are checked for this length, so lengthening it can remove slots.
• 3A taken slot — outlined red: another booking for that person at that time. It stays pickable when staff may override availability.
• 4Break or hours — amber: outside their working hours, over a break, or on a closed day. Pickable only when Let staff override availability is on under Settings › Booking rules, which also adds the Another time picker under the slots.

A time is free only if it fits the person’s working hours and the branch’s opening hours that day, clear of their bookings and breaks. The picker asks for what it still needs first, such as “Pick the branch above to see the times.” A day with no working hours at all reads “Nothing open on this day.” For a phone booking that must happen on a closed Sunday, turn on Let staff override availability in Settings › Booking rules: blocked times become pickable, and an Another time picker lets you choose any hour. With it off, taken times are greyed out and cannot be picked, and Booked refuses to save a time that is not free.

Take or record the payment

There is no card reader in the editor. Card payments arrive from the public form and are recorded on the booking for you. What you get here is a way to record money taken in person: set Payment to Paid (cash / in person).

That records the state but no amount, so the Payment section shows Amount paid as an em-dash and Method as "Recorded manually". On the list it wears the same green Paid badge as a card payment — open the booking and read Method to tell them apart. A plain unpaid booking has no Payment section; it appears once money is attached, and the dropdown then becomes a locked pill with a tick. On cash marked by hand the section offers Mark as unpaid, to undo it. Recording a payment this way sends the customer nothing: the Payment receipt email only goes when a card is charged, online or from a card on file. Later emails about the booking, such as reminders, show it as paid, with nothing left to pay.

What the customer is sent

Saving a new booking sends at most one message, and the Status decides which.

Save a phone booking you have already agreed as Confirmed, so the customer is emailed straight away. Leave it Pending only if a colleague must check it. Edit or switch off these templates in Messages › Email templates.

You do not need to add anything to the email by hand. Booked adds what applies underneath the wording: everyone in a group booking, the join link once a video appointment is confirmed, and, on the pending and approved emails, what has been paid and what is left to pay. A booking you add yourself never sends your team a New booking alert; those are for bookings customers make. See Team alerts.

After you save

Press Save booking — top right or bottom right, same thing. The editor stays open with “Saved. The booking stays open here.”: the title becomes the customer’s name, the line above it changes from New booking to Booking and the booking’s own reference, such as GB-00042, and the appointment appears in the Diary.

• Notes and Documents unlock only now, and both are staff-only. Files in Documents are stored encrypted and every opening is logged; ID and health forms collected by the booking form live under Questions & secure documents, which also appears once the booking is saved. See Notes and documents.
• Cancel, bottom left, means "discard my edits and go back". It does not cancel the appointment — for that, set Status to Cancelled and save.
• A custom Length is kept by this editor and the Diary’s quick-edit panel. Dragging the appointment in the Diary, or pressing Confirm or No-show on its popover, quietly resets it to the service default.