Want patients to be able to book in at a particular time and interval, say, 9:00am, 10:00am, 11:00am or 12:00pm, 12:30pm, 1:00pm but not sure how to make that happen? While Cliniko doesn't have a setting that lets you hand-pick individual time slots, we've got some tips and tricks to optimise the times your patients see.
The times patients see online are the result of four settings working together: a practitioner's availability, their default appointment type, their max appointments per day segment setting, and their lead time.
This guide walks through how to adjust each one to get as close as possible to the time slots you're after.
Step 1: Make sure your practitioner is actually available at that time
Before touching any online bookings settings, check the practitioner's calendar. Online bookings only offer a time when the practitioner is scheduled to work. If you want 9:00am and 1:00pm to be bookable, the practitioner needs availability on the calendar at those times.
Here's a guide on setting up your schedule if you need to adjust this.
Step 2: Set the default appointment type to match the interval you want
The practitioner's default appointment type controls the interval between the times patients see. A 60-minute default appointment type will show times an hour apart (9:00, 10:00, 11:00, and so on); a 30-minute default will show times half an hour apart (1:00, 1:30, 2:00, and so on).
If you want patients to land on 9:00am and 10:00am specifically, choose a default appointment type with a duration that divides evenly into the hour (60 minutes, for this example).
If the default appointment type is set to "N/A", Cliniko falls back to whatever the first appointment type in your list is instead. If you happen to archive the first appointment type, this may affect your default. For better control, we recommend you pick a specific appointment type.
You can check How to adjust the intervals in your online bookings and Set the time between appointments in online bookings for the full steps.
Step 3: Open up max appointments per day segment
Cliniko splits each day into three segments, morning, afternoon, and evening, and by default only shows a limited number of times within each one. If you want 1:30pm to be offered, a low limit (like 1 or 3) may mean 1:30pm is cut off:
To fix this, go to Settings → Appointments → Online bookings and set Max appointments per day segment to Unlimited. This shows every available time in each segment, rather than capping it which is what surfaces later times like 1:30pm alongside the rest.
Check this guide for more info: Specify the number of available appointments shown online.
Step 4: Check your lead time isn't hiding the time you want
Lead time sets the minimum notice a patient needs to give before booking. If it's set to 1 hour and a patient is looking at the page at 12:59pm, the earliest time they'll see is 2:00pm which means a 1:00pm slot won't show, even if it's available. If a specific time is missing, check whether lead time is filtering it out based on when the patient is looking.
For a more detailed look into how lead times affect the times your patients see, check out examples of lead time in action.
Putting it together: getting, say, 12:00pm to 4:30pm to show
With all four steps applied, here's what that looks like in practice:
The practitioner has availability on the calendar between 12:00pm and 4:30pm.
The default appointment type is set to a duration that lands on those times (e.g. 30 minutes).
Max appointments per day segment is set to Unlimited, so the afternoon segment isn't capped before it reaches those times.
The lead time doesn't push the next available time past 4:30pm.
With those four in place, your patient should see 12:00pm, 12:30pm ... 4:30pm as bookable times, alongside the practitioner's other available times.
Where you won't be able to get an exact match
Forcing every appointment to start on the hour (or another fixed time), no matter what.
There's no setting that outright prevents bookings from landing outside a practitioner's first available time. Using an hour-long default appointment type gets you most of the way there, but a shorter appointment type booked earlier in the day can still shift later start times off the hour.
For instance, if you already booked in a 45-minute appointment at 9:00am, the slots a patient will see in online bookings then becomes 9:45am, 10:45am, 11:45am etc. assuming your default appointment type is a 60-minute appointment.
The only way to guarantee fixed start times is to offer a single appointment duration and never book anything else outside of it.
Restricting which appointment types appear at which times.
Online bookings will show all available times for a practitioner's offered appointment types, based on their availability. There's currently no way to limit this to a hand-picked set of times or types.
If you have more questions about adjusting slots offered in online bookings, feel free to get in touch with our support team! 💬