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Appointments is the hospital’s book. In a solo practice patients mostly book themselves; at a hospital front desk it is usually the other way round — reception books on the patient’s behalf, onto a named provider and service, while the patient is at the counter or on the phone.

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Before you start

The Front desk care area must be on — see Care areas. You also need something bookable: a service under Appointment Services, and a provider with hours under Availability. A provider with no schedule offers no times at all, rather than every time.

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What you’re looking at

The module has its own left rail headed Appointments, with four entries. Overview is the calendar; the other three open the matching page in hospital Settings, so do not be surprised when the screen changes around you. Overview is a full-screen calendar and nothing else. There are no stat tiles, because at a front desk the day itself is the summary.

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Events and tasks

  • Event and Task each have their own date and time, in the clinic’s time zone — shown under the fields.
  • Assign staff (events) and Assigned to (tasks) let you pick All staff or search for people by name. All staff includes everyone on the team when you save.
  • Each person added to an event gets an email with a calendar invite and a notice in the app. Each person given a task gets their own copy to complete, and an email that says a task was assigned and when it is due — never what it is or who it is about.
  • Reminder sends each person an email before the start or due time: at the time, 15 or 30 minutes, 1 hour or 1 day before.
  • Repeats adds it every day, week, month or year, ending after 1 to 50 times or on a date — the same as repeating appointments. People are told once, not once per date.
  • These emails follow your clinic’s email and Appointment notification settings, and each person’s own email setting.
To block time so clients cannot book it, use the Out of office tab — see Add Out of Office.

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Out of Office on the calendar

Out of Office time shows as a grey, striped band behind the calendar, labelled Out of office, with its note where there is room. A block for the whole clinic or all staff covers the full day column. A block for one person covers part of the column in Day and Week, and only that person’s lane in Providers. A block for a room or piece of equipment shades that item’s lane in Resources. All-day blocks also appear in the All day row, and Month marks each day that has one. Select the label to open the block. Appointments inside a block stay on the calendar, with a grey outline and an icon so you can see they clash. More filters has a Show Out of Office blocks switch to hide the bands, and search finds a block by its name or note. Blocks show in your own time zone, the same as appointments.

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Book an appointment

1

Select Create

Or select the empty slot you want on the calendar — both open the same Initial Entry sheet, on the Appointment tab. The other tabs, Event, Task and Out of office, put something in the day that is not a patient booking.
2

Find the patient

Search under Patient. If they are not registered, create them without leaving the sheet — or register them properly first in Patients.
3

Choose the service

Services offers the bookable list. This is what the visit is for, and what it is charged at.
4

Set the schedule, provider and place

Schedule is the date and time, Select Provider the clinician, and Location the room or address — “Enter office address/room number” if it is not one of the saved locations. A resource attached to the service shows as Auto-reserved for this service, so nobody else can claim it.
5

Add what the clinician needs

“Describe the symptoms or reason for visit…” under Symptoms Description, plus Patient Notes (“Any notes from the patient…”) and Clinic Notes (“Internal notes for clinic staff…”). Set Notification so the patient is told.
6

Read the summary back, then save

Appointment Summary repeats the provider, location and schedule. Check it against what the patient just told you, then save.
A booking is made against a provider, not a department. There is no department field on this sheet, and people look for one. The department is chosen later at triage, which is what puts the patient into a consultation queue. Booking the right clinician is what matters here.

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Set availability and reminders

Appointment Settings has five tabs: Availability (your operating hours and slots — Add Schedule for each pattern you keep), Booking Rules (how far ahead people may book and how late a change is accepted), Resources (rooms and equipment a booking claims), Special Dates (holidays and off-days — Add Special Date) and Communication (confirmations, reminders and message templates). Enter special dates in advance and in bulk. Every holiday you forget is a patient who arrives to a locked door. Reminders need a channel as well as a schedule. Channels live under Communications, and a reminder with no enabled channel reaches nobody.

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Charge the card automatically

Auto Pay charges a patient’s saved card when their appointment is confirmed or completed, with nobody at the desk pressing a button. Switch it on under Settings → Auto Pay, choose the trigger, and each invoice is charged once only. Patients with no saved card are skipped for manual collection, and a declined card is never force-charged.
Auto Pay carries a 1.9% platform fee per charge, on top of your normal card processing. Confirm your patients have consented to a card on file before switching it on, and check the first day’s charges by hand. Full detail and the setup steps are on Auto Pay.

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Who can do this

Enforcement is opt-in per person. Someone who has never been saved in the permissions sheet is unrestricted, and the sheet warns “Saving starts enforcing” — so nothing changes for your existing staff until you save them once. A denied action is recorded in the audit log; an allowed one is not. Hiding Appointments from a role in Role Navigation tidies their sidebar; it is not a security boundary. See Permissions.

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Check it worked

  • The appointment is on the calendar for the right day, and the Providers view shows it in that clinician’s lane.
  • The patient’s confirmation reached them on the channel you expect.
  • A time outside the provider’s schedule is not offered, and a special date is closed off entirely.
  • With Auto Pay on, confirming an appointment records a payment against it without anyone taking one.

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Common issues

The Front desk care area is off — see Care areas — or your role has the group hidden.
There is not one. Appointments are booked onto a provider; the department is assigned at triage.
They have no schedule under Availability, or a special date covers the period. Check the schedule first — an empty one offers nothing rather than everything.
Three things must all hold: the plan, a connected payment account, and a card saved for that patient. Any one missing and the appointment stays unpaid.
Check the channel under Communications before you touch the reminder schedule.
The room was not added under Resources. A resource is what makes the book refuse a double booking.

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FAQ

No. Only triage does that. A booking reserves a provider’s time; triage takes vitals and routes the patient to a department.
An Appointment is a patient booking. An Event is something in the day that is not a patient — a meeting or a seminar. A Task is a job somebody has to do, with a priority and a status, and no slot on anyone’s clinic list. When a task falls due, the person it is assigned to — or, with nobody assigned, whoever created it or your clinic’s email address — gets an email that says only that a task is due and when — never what the task is or who it is about. Open task in that email opens the task on the calendar after they sign in.
Yes, through your public booking page. Reception still books most hospital appointments, but the two share one calendar and one set of availability rules. See Booking page designer.
Those entries are not released. The appointment rail deliberately shows four: Overview, Services, Booking Page and Settings.
No — cancelling frees the slot and notifies the patient, but money is handled separately in Billing. Refund or void the payment there.