If your regularly scheduled hours are going to be changing—but starting sometime in the future—you can update your availability by modifying your "current" schedule, and adding one-off available blocks that will repeat until your new hours are meant to go into effect.
Please note that Cliniko currently doesn't have a "set future schedule" type of feature, so these instructions are a bit of a workaround—but they will do the trick!
To update your availability starting from a date in the future, follow the steps outlined below.
Change your schedule from a future date
Let's say that right now, you're working Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays from 9:00am to 5:00pm with a one-hour break from noon to one o'clock. In your practitioner settings, your "default" schedule would be set up in your practitioner settings, under Practitioner availability, like this:
As Cliniko uses 24-hour time on this page, in the case of "9 to 5", in this example, your schedule would be set to 9:00 to 17:00, with a break from 12:00 (noon) to 13:00 (1:00pm).
Your schedule on the calendar would look like this, with Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday all "open" during the days and times in question, and Thursday and Friday "closed", or not available (as indicated by the light grey colour):
Your availability would look like this now and in the future, because your availability is set up like this in your settings.
Note that availability can vary per location, so if you work out of multiple clinics, your default schedule may be different at each one.
This is your "permanent" schedule—each week has the same availability, but you can modify it by adding one-off availabilities (to open up spaces).
To update your schedule from a future date, we recommend modifying your existing schedule to match what you will be offering in the future. Although this means that your "current" schedule will not be accurate for the period of time between now and when your new schedule goes into effect, you can use repeating one-off availabilities to maintain your current open days and times.
Updating your current schedule will not impact any existing bookings!
The steps to change your schedule from a future date will include:
Adding repeating one-off availabilities to maintain your current open (and closed) days and times.
Update your current schedule
First, you'll want to update your current schedule. Here's a quick demonstration of what that would look like in action:
There are a few things to keep in mind here:
If you work from multiple locations, you will need to modify your schedule at each place.
Current, already-booked appointments will not be affected.
Patients will not be automatically notified that you have updated your schedule.
If you offer online bookings, your availability will be immediately changed when you save your new schedule—this is why it's important to get right onto step two (opening up or closing off spots on your "new" schedule until it goes into effect!).
Add repeating one-off availabilities
Now that you've updated your schedule, you'll want to make sure that you modify your calendar to reflect the times you still want to offer (or not) up until your "future" schedule goes into effect. By adding one-off availabilities or unavailable blocks (to block times out).
Head to the Appointments page, and navigate to the date you wish to open up. Under Availability, click One-off availability:
You'll notice that a yellow message appears across the top of the screen, prompting you to select a time to add it:
Click on the date and time you wish to open up, and a pop-up box will appear to add the availability (note the option for repeats):
To open up times for a select number of days or weeks, select the type of repeat from the drop-down menu next to "Repeat" and then select the number of repeats you want. For example, if your new schedule isn't going into effect for two weeks,
Double-check to be sure that you've got the right dates, be sure that you've set the duration (which would be as long as it is before your new schedule goes into effect), and click Save availability. You'll see your new open time (it will be a blank white space in the middle of your normally closed-off times):
That's it! This will allow you to keep your "current" schedule in place until your new one begins.
As a reminder, this is a workaround. If you have any questions, our support team can certainly help out!