Booking an appointment

This is the bread-and-butter task: a patient wants to come in (or join a video call), and you book them a slot.

Before you start

An appointment always needs three ingredients:

• a patient (existing, or you create one during booking),
• a doctor,
• a treatment (the service — e.g. "Initial consultation, 30 min").

Steps

1. Open Appointments from the left menu.
2. Click New Appointment — or simply click an empty time slot on the calendar to start a booking at that exact time.
3. Patient: start typing a name or phone number and pick from the list. Person not there yet? Create them right here — fill their name and contact details without leaving the booking.
4. Doctor and Treatment: pick from the dropdowns. The treatment decides how long the appointment lasts and what it costs.
5. Date & time: pick a day and choose one of the available slots shown. You only see times the doctor can actually take (see "Where do the time slots come from?" below).
6. In-clinic or Online: if the treatment can be done as a video call, choose the mode. Online bookings get a video link created automatically.
7. Add a Note if there's anything the doctor should know ("returning patient, knee pain").
8. Click Save.

What happens after you save

• The appointment appears on the calendar immediately.
• The patient gets a confirmation email with the date, time, doctor, and clinic details (and SMS too, if your clinic has SMS switched on).
• For online appointments, the confirmation includes the video join link.
• If reminders are on, the patient will automatically be reminded before the appointment.

Where do the time slots come from?

You never have to guess whether a doctor is free — the slot list already accounts for:

• the doctor's weekly working hours (set in Schedule),
• any one-off Extra Hours added for that date,
• minus slots already booked,
• minus times the doctor is busy in their connected Google Calendar (holidays, meetings, personal blocks).

If no slots show, the doctor genuinely has no availability that day — try another day or another doctor.

Common questions

The patient wants a time that isn't in the list. The doctor isn't available then. Either an admin adds Extra Hours for that date, or pick another slot.

Can I book weeks or months ahead? Yes — pick any future date.

I made a mistake in the booking. Open the appointment and edit it, or reschedule. The patient is kept informed automatically.

Does booking create an invoice? Not automatically — see Invoices & payments. If the patient has a membership covering the treatment, the session counts against their plan.