Scheduling appointments

You create and change appointments in the appointment form. Open it from the agenda, from a customer’s page, from a series step, or from search.

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Creating an appointment

Next to Create, a checkbox such as Notify the customer by SMS sends the booking confirmation. It names the channels that are on for that message and that the customer has contact details for. Untick it to save without messaging the customer. The checkbox doesn’t show for an appointment in the past, which sends no messages, or for a recurring one, which is created without notifying the customer. If you close the form with unsaved changes, it asks before discarding them. The form warns you when the time clashes with another appointment, falls outside someone’s working hours, or falls in time off or a closure. Whether it still lets you save depends on your conflict settings in Settings > General.

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Custom fields

When an appointment type has custom fields, the form shows them, grouped by type, with the required ones first and a count such as Required 1/3. On a wide screen they open in a panel beside the form. If you save with a required field empty, the form takes you to it. Taking off a type whose fields you filled in asks first, because it clears them.

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All-day appointments

All-day appointments appear at the top of the day in their own row. They’re useful for multi-day events, such as a training course, and for reminders that don’t need a time. To mark someone as away, add time off instead of an all-day appointment. Time off also stops online bookings.

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Several appointment types

An appointment can have up to five appointment types, each once: a haircut and a beard trim, or a colour and a cut. In the form, pick them in order under Service; each one shows as a chip with its duration, and the × on a chip takes it off. On mobile, tap Type and tick them in the list.

• Length. A new appointment lasts as long as its types together, a 30-minute haircut and a 15-minute beard trim make 45 minutes. The form shows the total, and you can still change the end time. Once you set the end or the duration yourself, or open the form on a range you dragged on the calendar, picking types leaves it as it is. Changing the types of an existing appointment doesn’t change its length either.
• Calendar. The first type gives the appointment its colour. An appointment without a title shows the types joined, “Haircut + Beard trim”; long names are cut short on the card and shown in full in the appointment’s details.
• Custom fields. The form shows the fields of every type on the appointment, plus the fields that apply to all appointments.
• Messages. Wherever a message names the service, it names every type: “Haircut + Beard trim”. Each type sends its own aftercare message, once.
• Insights. An appointment counts once in the totals and once under each of its types, so the By Appointment Type chart can add up to more than the total.

Recurring appointments, series sessions and online bookings carry several types the same way. The assistant can book them too, and works out the end time from their durations when you don’t give one.

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Editing an appointment

Click an appointment on the agenda to see its preview, then click edit to open the form. Double-clicking the card opens the form straight away. Change any field and click Save Changes. Once an appointment exists, the form also shows its attachments. See Attachments. To move an appointment to another time, you can also drag it on the agenda, or drag its bottom edge to change its length. See Moving and resizing. An appointment that belongs to a recurring appointment says so in the form. When you save, CalGest asks which occurrences the change applies to. See Recurring appointments.

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Cancelling and deleting

To cancel, set the status to Canceled and save. The customer gets the Appointment Cancelled message if it is on, and their reminders are cancelled. The appointment stays on record. To delete, open the ⋯ menu in the form, or right-click the appointment on the agenda, and choose Delete. Deleting removes the appointment with its reminders, aftercare, custom field values and attachments, and sends no message. You need permission to delete appointments.

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Time off and closures

Time off marks a team member as away: a holiday week, a sick day, or part of a day for a doctor’s appointment. A closure does the same for the whole business, for example a day of stocktaking. Public holidays don’t need a closure; see Public holidays. Each entry covers whole days (first and last day) or a start and end time, with an optional reason that shows on the calendar. Whole days follow your organization’s timezone, from midnight to midnight, including on the days the clocks change. In the mobile app, tap an entry to change its days, times or reason. On the web dashboard, remove it and add it again. Who can add, change or remove time off:

• Anyone with permission to edit team members, for every team member and for closures
• A team member with a login, for their own time off

What changes while someone is away:

• Online booking stops offering those times for the booking page’s team members, and refuses a booking request that arrives for them anyway. A closure removes the times for every booking page. See Availability.
• Staff can still book. The appointment form shows who is away (or that the business is closed) as a warning, whatever your conflict settings are, including when nobody is assigned yet. Dragging an appointment into time off on the calendar works and shows the same warning. Without permission to see the team, the warning says who is away but not why or for how long.
• Appointments already booked stay booked. When you add time off, CalGest lists the appointments inside it so you can move or cancel them yourself.
• Recurring appointments don’t book dates inside time off. When you create a series, or change all of its future dates, CalGest lists those dates so you can leave them out or book them anyway. Dates the series fills in later are skipped, and owners and admins get a notification.
• The agenda shades the time. Closures show in every view, and List names them under each day. A person’s time off shades their column in Day in Team mode. In the other views it shows while the agenda shows only that person: in Solo, when you pick only them in Team mode, or when your team has one person. On mobile, the timeline shades closures and your own time off, and a line above it names everyone who is away that day.

You can also ask the assistant who is away, or have it prepare time off for you to confirm.

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Public holidays

For organizations in Portugal, the calendar shows public holidays on their day. Nobody has to add them, and CalGest works the dates out for every year:

• National holidays, all 13, including Good Friday, Easter Sunday and Corpus Christi, which move with Easter. Carnival isn’t one: the labour code makes it optional and most businesses open. Add a closure if you close that day.
• Regional holidays for a municipality in the Azores (Azores Day, the Monday after Pentecost) or Madeira (2 April, 1 July and 26 December). With no municipality chosen, an organization whose timezone is Atlantic/Azores or Atlantic/Madeira gets them too.
• Your municipality’s holiday, once the municipality is set in Settings > General > Holidays. Lisboa’s is Santo António on 13 June, Porto’s is São João on 24 June. For 19 of the 308 municipalities we haven’t confirmed the date yet. CalGest adds nothing for those rather than guess, and the setting says so.

Organizations in other countries don’t get holidays yet. On the web, every agenda view names the holiday: Day, Week, Month and List. On mobile, a line above the timeline names it. By default a holiday only shows on the calendar. Many businesses, hairdressers and cafés among them, work on holidays, and a booking page that closes without anyone noticing loses customers. Turn on Close online booking on holidays and every holiday works like a closure:

• Online booking offers no times that day and refuses a booking request for it. See Availability.
• Staff can still book. The appointment form warns that the business is closed for the holiday, and so does dragging an appointment onto it.
• Recurring appointments skip the date, like any closure.
• The calendar shades the day, and a lock marks the holiday.
• The assistant treats the day as closed.

On the web you can also choose holiday by holiday: open on 10 June but closed on Christmas Day, for example. Each choice applies every year.

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Appointment statuses

Change the status in the form, or right-click the appointment on the agenda and use Status. Mark no-show and Undo no-show are in the same menu.

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Attachments

You can attach files to an appointment, such as consent forms, photos of the result, reference images or documents. Open the appointment and use the attachments section to upload files. Supported uploads are images, videos and PDFs; SVG images are blocked. One file can be up to 100 MB, and each person who takes bookings adds 10 GB of storage. Settings > Usage shows how much you use. You can also add and view attachments in the mobile app. Open the appointment to see them. Tap a photo to see it full screen, or tap a video or PDF to open it. If you can edit the appointment, tap Add to take a photo with the camera or pick one from your library, and tap the bin on an attachment to delete it. The app makes large photos smaller before uploading them and removes their location data. iPhone photos in HEIC format upload as JPEG. Videos and PDFs are uploaded from the web dashboard. A customer’s page shows the photos from their appointments and series, newest first and grouped by month, with the date and services under each one. It looks at the customer’s last 40 appointments up to today, so photos on older appointments are not shown there. You still find them on the appointment itself.

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Importing appointments

CalGest can import appointments from external calendars. This is useful when migrating from another system or syncing events from your personal calendar.

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Where to import

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Import from your phone

The CalGest app on iPhone and Android reads the calendars on your phone, including the Google, iCloud and Exchange accounts added to it.

1. In the app, go to More > Organization Settings > Import calendar
2. Allow access to your calendars
3. Choose the calendars to import from
4. Select the events you want to import
5. Optionally choose one appointment type and location to apply to all imported events
6. Review and start the import

The app reads events from a year ago to 180 days ahead, one appointment per occurrence of a repeating event. Importing again from the same phone skips the events it already imported.

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Import an ICS file

1. Go to Settings > General and open calendar import
2. Upload an ICS export from Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Outlook, or another calendar app
3. Select the events you want to import
4. Optionally choose one appointment type and location to apply to all imported events
5. Review and start the import

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Export from Google Calendar

Google Calendar exports from the website only. Its phone app can’t do it.

1. On a computer, open Google Calendar
2. Click the gear icon, then Settings
3. In the left menu, choose Import & export, then click Export
4. Google downloads a .zip file. Open it: it holds one .ics file per calendar
5. Upload the .ics file of the calendar you want in CalGest

To export a single calendar instead, open Settings, choose the calendar under Settings for my calendars, and click Export calendar.

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Export from Apple Calendar

Only Calendar on a Mac exports. iPhone, iPad and iCloud.com can’t, so import from your phone instead.

1. Open the Calendar app
2. In the sidebar, click the calendar you want to export
3. Choose File > Export > Export… and save the .ics file
4. Upload the .ics file in CalGest

A few rules apply to every import:

• A repeating event in an ICS file becomes one appointment per occurrence, from a year ago to 180 days ahead. Dates removed from the series in the source calendar are left out, and occurrences moved there keep their new time.
• Cancelled events are not imported. One file yields at most 5,000 appointments, and one repeating event at most 1,000. The ICS preview says how many events it left out or cut short.
• One import from the phone takes at most 5,000 events, the earliest first. The app says when it left some out.
• All-day events, and ICS times without a timezone, use your organization’s timezone.
• Imported appointments don’t send reminders or aftercare messages. Nobody agreed to receive them for an event copied from another calendar.
• If your organization blocks conflicts or enforces working hours, events that break those rules for the chosen team members are skipped, and the import summary counts them.

To find an appointment, a customer or a team member, use search.