Under My Practice > My Services, you can add services that clients will be able to choose from when requesting sessions with you. This article covers the key aspects of setting up and managing your services.
- Adding a Service
- Payment Options
- Service Availability
- Booking Options
- Booking Restrictions
- Notification Options
- Advanced Payment Options
- Rearranging My Services
- Require Intake Forms & Waivers when Booking
Adding a Service
- Go to My Practice > My Services,
- Select Add service from the Fast Action Button in the bottom-right corner.
- On the Professional plan and up, you'll see a pop-up prompting you to choose a Service Type.
Choose One-on-One Service.
Learn more about Group Services.
- Choose a banner image from our set of choices, upload your own image, or select no image.
- Name your Service and assign a color code for easy visual reference in your Practice Better Calendar.
- Click the color circle to choose a different color, or type in the text field if you know the hex code for your desired color.
- Click the color circle to choose a different color, or type in the text field if you know the hex code for your desired color.
- Use the Description field to give clients a brief overview of what to expect during the service. This description is visible on your Bookings Page.
Adding Terms & Conditions (Optional)
Require clients to accept your Terms and conditions before completing their booking. Learn more.
- To create terms, go to My Practice > Disclaimers
- Add them when setting up your services.
Fee & Payment Options
Require clients to pre-pay, suggest pre-payment, or simply display your service fees (no payment).
This setting can be the same or different in the Client Portal and on your public Bookings Page. Learn more.
On the Professional plan and up, you can set up payment plans for your services to accept a deposit upfront, collect installments, or ongoing payments. Learn more.
Service Availability
Set up your service to be In Person, Online/Video Chat, By Phone, or a combination of the three.
Clients can specify their preferred format when requesting the service.
These service methods can be further restricted when setting up your availability. Learn more.
You also have the option of setting up the default method that is selected when you manually book a session.
Booking Options
Set up buffer time, date restrictions, and customize button and confirmation labels.
These settings override the defaults in your Booking & Cancellation Settings. Learn more.
Buffer Time
Buffer time is useful if you need to account for prep time and travel between sessions. On days that you set your availability, we'll ensure your clients' bookings always account for buffer time between sessions.
You can specify buffer time before and after sessions based on this service.
Restrict how early or late clients can book services
To help reduce last-minute bookings, you can restrict how much in advance a client can book this service. For example, requiring clients to book no less than 1 day in advance gives you a 24-hour notice of new appointments.
You can also set up a rolling date range to prevent clients from requesting sessions too far in advance. For example, a 14-day rolling date range will ensure clients can only request sessions within the next 2 weeks.
Availability Increments
Depending on your service duration, you can set the availability increments accordingly.
For example, a service of 45 minutes should display availability in 15 minute increments to accurately display the following start time on your booking page.
Recording Summary Format
When you have the AI Charting Assistant enabled, you can choose your preferred format for the AI Summary. This selection can be different for each Service or set to use the Default. Learn more.
Multiple Bookings (Optional):
Although we don't yet support true group sessions, we do allow multiple clients to double-book the same day and time in your calendar. Learn more.
Including buffer time when displaying available times to clients
Let's say you have a 60-minute service with a 15-minute buffer time after each session. By default we display times as follows:
- 2:00 - 3:00 PM
- 3:00 - 4:00 PM
- 4:00 - 5:00 PM
With this setting enabled, we will display times as follows:
- 2:00 - 3:00 PM
- 3:15 - 4:15 PM
- 4:30 - 5:30 PM
Rolling availability will override this setting.
Require a reason for booking (Optional)
With this option enabled, clients will be required to provide a reason for booking this service when requesting sessions from your public Bookings Page:
Button and Confirmation Labels
We provide a couple of options to customize the display of the "select service" button and confirmation prompts on your Bookings Pages. The Button label appears when clients are presented with a list of services; the Confirmation label appears when clients have successfully requested your service.
Redirect URL
Customize the page clients are redirected to after booking this service from your Bookings Page. You can use this option to redirect clients to a thank you page, newsletter sign-up, or an external payment page if you're accepting payments outside of Practice Better.
This will override the redirect set in your Booking & Cancellation Settings
Track page views for your URL redirects with integrated analytics from Google or Facebook.
Booking Restrictions
On your default Bookings Page, we will display a list of all publicly available services. You may want to hide certain services if they are only available to specific clients or can only be booked as part of a Package.
This setting can be overridden by using a custom Bookings Page which gives you full control over what Services (and Packages and Programs) are presented to clients. Learn more
Notification Options
On the Professional plan and up, you can customize the default notifications sent to clients for confirmed, updated/rescheduled, or canceled bookings.
You can include links to resources on your website, directions for in-person sessions, or general reminders to bring documents or complete forms before an appointment.
Customized templates within your Service will override the templates you've set up on your Settings > Notification Preferences page.
Advanced Payment Options
You can set up advanced payment options for your service (e.g. override your default tax setting, require billing information) from the Advanced Options tab of the Add/Edit Service page.
Change the Displayed Fee (Optional)
Use this option if you want to highlight a limited-time offer or subscription-style payment plan (e.g., $100 monthly).
If payment will be collected at the time of booking, you are responsible for accurately reporting the fees associated with your service.
Learn more about setting up:
Rearranging My Services
You can change the order in which your Services are displayed in your portal.
- Go to My Practice > My Services
- Click Change Order near the top-right.
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Click and drag to rearrange your services, using the group of dots to the left of each Service name.