Booking & Cancellation Settings

This article discusses various options for customizing your scheduling and booking workflow in Practice Better:

• Setting up session reminders
• Adjusting availability for events in external calendars (Google/Apple)
• Setting up restrictions on how early or late clients can book sessions
• Customizing the availability times displayed to your clients
• Customizing your Bookings Page defaults
• Customizing your Practice Better calendar
• Adding a session cancellation notice

Session reminders

Reminders can be automatically sent to your clients for upcoming sessions. Use the Session Reminders option to customize when these reminders are sent (e.g. 1 day before, 2 weeks before). Clients will receive email and Instant Alerts notifications with the details of the upcoming session.

We'll also provide a map and contact information for your office location if you've booked an in-person session.

Email reminders can also be sent to you by selecting the Also send me session reminders option. These notifications are sent out at the same time clients receive their reminders.

SMS Text Reminders
If you've signed up for the Plus Plan, you have the option to send text reminders for upcoming sessions. This method can be used in combination with regular email reminders. Under the Session Reminders section, you'll see a list of reminder delivery options:

• Email only - the default setting
• Text messages (SMS) and email - Both a text message and email are sent to your client
• Text messages (SMS) only - We'll attempt to send a text message to the mobile phone number listed in your client's records. If there are any issues sending the text (e.g. invalid phone number), we'll send out an email to your client.

View our article on SMS reminders to learn more about SMS availability in your country and tips on formatting numbers to ensure reminders are delivered to your clients.

Sending Reminders Manually
We provide the option to send one-off reminders in the event your client did not receive or confirm their upcoming session. To do this, go to My Schedule > My Bookings, then select Send reminder from the More Options menu (3 dots):

Advanced Availability Options

We encourage you to set up your availability so your clients will request sessions when you're most likely to accept these bookings. 

Allow my clients to request sessions outside of regular availability
Enable this option to allow clients to book sessions on days where you have not set up availability. On days without availability, we display availability from 9-5 PM.

E.g., if you've setup availability on Monday-Wednesday from 9 am to 3 pm, your client can still request a session on Thursday at 4 pm. 

Allow my clients to request sessions regardless of conflicting events in external calendars
By default, if you link your Google/Apple calendar to Practice Better, we ensure clients cannot request sessions which conflict with busy events in your Google Calendar.

Keep in mind, clients will still be able to request sessions which conflict with "Free/Available" events, which is the typical setting for birthdays and holidays.

Enable this option to ignore events in your external calendar when displaying availability times to your clients.

Exclude external calendar all-day events
By default, we allow clients to book sessions which conflict with all-day events, so long as these events are labeled as "Free/Available" in your Google Calendar.

Enable this option to ignore both Free and Busy all-day events.

Buffer time for external events
Buffer time is useful if you need to take into account prep-time and travel between sessions and personal appointments. We'll ensure no sessions are requested during your buffer time periods.

For example, let's say you've set up your buffer time for 30mins before and after external events. On Wednesday you have a dentist appointment from 10am-11am.

If you've set up Availability on that day, your clients will be unable to select a time slot between 9:30 am and 11:30 am inclusive. The earliest slot available to them will be @ 11:30 am.

Learn more about managing your availability.

Booking Restrictions

Use booking restrictions to restrict how early or far in the future a client can request a session. 

Rolling Availability
You can set up your availability to restrict bookings based on a rolling date range. 

E.g. if you set this to 7 days and it's currently January 1, we'll prevent clients from booking after January 7

Availability Display

Use these options to customize how availability times are displayed on your Bookings Page. 

Rolling Start Times
Example rolling start times for a 30-minute service will be displayed as: 

• 10:00 - 10:30 AM
• 10:15 - 10:45 AM
• 10:30 - 11:00 AM
• 10:45 - 11:15 AM

(Based on 15-minute availability increments)

Rolling start times may limit the number of bookings available if a client requests a session in the middle of your availability period.

Booking Page Options

Redirect URL
Customize the page clients are redirected to after booking a service or package from your Bookings Page. This setting does not currently apply to the embedded widget.

You can also adjust the Redirect URL for individual services, packages, and programs.

Calendar Display Options

Customize the display and behavior of your Practice Better calendar.  You can set up defaults for the first day of the week displayed (default is Sunday) and the first time display when the calendar is loaded. 

Event Naming Convention
Customize how events are displayed in your Practice Better and Google Calendars. This setting applies to sessions and booking requests.

Cancellation Options

Practice Better gives you the option to display a cancellation notice (e.g. no refunds if session canceled within 48 hours) if a client attempts to cancel an upcoming session. You can specify the hours and message to display when a client attempts to cancel a session.

Note: your client may still choose to cancel their upcoming session and accept any subsequent penalties.