What are online bookings?
If you want your patients to be able to book online without having to call your clinic, they absolutely can!
Cliniko provides you with a unique bookings page that you can direct your patients to, embed in your website. Any patient (new or existing) can then book an appointment!
This tutorial will walk you through how to set up online bookings so that your patients can book appointments. There will be a few key steps that need to be completed:
After that, you'll be able to customise some of your settings (if you wish), which will let you get the most out of online bookings.
Step one: display business locations in online bookings
The first thing you'll have to do is make it so that your business locations are "enabled" for online bookings. You'll want to edit your business information to do this.
Head to Settings, and then Business information:
Click Edit information under the business that you want to display:
Ensure that under where it says Display this business in online bookings, you have it set to On:
Click Update business, and that's step one, completed!
Step two: set up practitioners
Depending on how you have your clinic set up, some practitioners may want to offer appointments online, and others may not. No worries!
You can select who will (and will not) be available if you edit your practitioners' information. Head to Settings, and then Users & practitioners:
Click on the practitioner who should be offering appointments in online bookings, and edit their settings:
There will be a few things you'll want to do:
Display in online bookings (required!).
Add a designation.
Add a description.
The most important thing when editing the practitioner information is that you tick the box next to Show this practitioner in online bookings:
That will ensure that their name is available for patients to see when booking an appointment!
Next (and this is not required, but is recommended!), you can include a designation and a description.
The designation field is where you would include your professional title, along with any qualifications that you would normally show at the end of your title. This will show under your name on invoices (see above), and beside your name in online bookings.
The description field is used strictly for online bookings. It can be used to provide some background information about who you are, what your history is, or any other information you may want to convey to your patients—it's essentially a biography!
Here's what that area looks like in the practitioner settings:
And here's what it all looks like together on the online bookings page:
Be sure you save the practitioner settings, and that's step two, completed!
Step three: turn online bookings on
Now that you've selected which businesses and which practitioners should be visible, it's time to actually turn on online bookings!
Head to Settings, and then Online bookings:
It will be very clear that online bookings aren't turned on—yet!
Tick the box next to Allow your patients to book appointments online:
Down at the bottom of the page, save the settings. And…drumroll…online bookings is now enabled for you! 🎊
If you head back to the online bookings settings page, you'll see that it's active, along with some other information you can customise:
Now, there's just one more thing to do!
Step four: set up appointment types to display in online bookings
By default, all appointment types will be shown on your online bookings page. If you want all services to show in online bookings you can skip this step!
If you want to be more selective in what's offered online, though, follow the steps below!
Head to Settings, and then Appointment types:
Select the appointment type that you don't want to show on your online bookings page. At the bottom, untick the box under Show in online bookings:
Click Update appointment type, and you're all set. Now, this appointment type can be booked internally, but it will not be available for patients to select when booking their own appointments!
Other online bookings options
Check out the information below if you want to further customise your online bookings!
Specify the next available appointment that patients see (i.e. a minimum of one hour from the time they're looking at the available times).
Set restrictions around when patients can cancel their own appointments (i.e. if they try to cancel less than one day before their appointment, they won't be able to—this is only relevant if you let patients cancel their own appointments).
Set up booking notifications for practitioners (so that they know when a patient has booked an appointment with them!).
Add a logo to your online bookings page.
Hide the prices of the services you offer.
Hide the duration of your appointments.
Require the patient to enter their address when they make a booking.
Add some extra information that a patient would see when selecting the time and date of their appointment.
Add terms of use that a patient would need to agree to before making a booking.
Finally, add online bookings to your website!
The last part of the process is actually showing this to your patients! If you don't have a website, no worries; you can simply give your patients the online bookings URL that Cliniko generates for you and they'll be able to book.
If you do have a website, though, you can link it to your online bookings page! There are a couple of different ways this can be done:
On your website:
You can create a simple link or button on your website with "Book Online Now" or similar text. If you're not familiar with how to do so, your website developer can assist with this!