If you see patients who live in a different time zone than your clinic, it would probably be handy if, when booking appointments, they saw availability in their local time!

For example, let's say you offer telehealth appointments. You could be speaking with patients who live pretty far away! In order to make things easier for everyone, offering availability in their time will make it easier for them to select the appropriate time and date for their booking. (And, in this scenario, appointments will still be booked into your calendar in your clinic's time, but your patients will see their time!)

If you'd like a video walk-through, Rachel will give you a demo below!

Read on below to learn how to set it up.

Head to Settings, and then Online bookings:

Under Allow patient to select their time zone, toggle it to On:

Save those settings! Now, when your patients go to your online bookings page, they'll see the option to select a time zone. The times shown will default to your account's time zone, but the patient can change this if they want—for example, below, we can see that the time zone is set to Sydney. This is because this Cliniko account is set to Sydney's time zone:

Your patients will be able to use the time zone "drop-down menu" to select their appropriate time zone. See the short video below for an example of what this would look like:

As you can see from that example, when a new time zone is selected, the times and dates that are offered change.

Finally, the patient will see the time zone mentioned in the booking summary:

And once they actually make the booking, the confirmation will include the time zone, as well:

As mentioned, these appointments will still go into your calendar in your clinic's time zone (the one that your Cliniko account is set to). But the patient will only know that their appointment is at 5:00 p.m. their time, for example, rather than at 3:00 p.m. your time!

Finally, if you're offering online bookings in the patients' time zones, be sure to add the time zone placeholders to your confirmation emails and reminders. That will ensure that all their communications include their local time zone!

We know that multiple time zones might not matter to all businesses—that's why you can disable this feature if you'd like. Head over here to learn how.