Skip to main content
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.

​
What is in the workspace

The appointments sidebar has four entries. Overview is the calendar itself; the other three open the matching page in clinic Settings, so do not be surprised when the screen changes around you.

​
Read the calendar

Overview is a full-screen calendar, not a dashboard — there are no stat tiles, because at a front desk the day itself is the summary.
  • Move with Today and the arrows either side of the month.
  • Switch how the day is arranged: Day, Week, Month, Providers or Resources. Providers is the hospital view — one lane per clinician, which is how you spot the consultant with a hole in their morning.
  • Colour the book By Status or By Service, and narrow it with Search patients, services… or More filters.

​
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 two tabs, Event and Task, put something in the day that is not a patient booking.
2

Find the patient

Search under Patient. If they are not registered, select Create patient without leaving the sheet — or register them properly first in Register and find patients.
3

Choose the service

Services offers the bookable list — “Select clinic service”. 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 staff member, and Location the room or address. A resource attached to the service shows as Auto-reserved for this service.
5

Add what the clinician needs

Symptoms Description, Patient Notes and Clinic Notes. Set Notification so the patient is told, then read the Appointment Summary back before you save.
A booking is made against a provider, not a department. There is no department field on this sheet — the department comes later, at triage, where the patient is routed into a consultation queue. Booking the right clinician is what matters here.

​
Set your availability

Appointment Settings — “Configure availability, special dates, and communication preferences” — has five tabs: 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. The channels — SMS, voice, fax and email — live under Settings → Communications, and a reminder with no enabled channel reaches nobody.

​
Charge the card automatically

Auto Pay — “Automatically charge a patient’s saved card on file when their appointment is confirmed or completed — no manual invoicing.” Switch on Enable Auto Pay, then pick the trigger under Charge when the appointment is…: Confirmed, Completed, or both. Each invoice is only ever charged once, and Email a receipt to the patient sends a confirmation each time. It needs the Essential plan or above and a connected Stripe account — without one you get “Connect Stripe to use Auto Pay”. Only the owner can change it.
Auto Pay carries a 1.9% platform fee per charge, on top of your normal card processing, and it charges a real card with nobody at the desk pressing a button. Confirm your patients have consented to a card on file before switching it on, and check the first day’s charges by hand.
Patients without a saved card are skipped and left for manual collection, and a card that is declined or needs 3-D Secure is never force-charged — you are notified to collect it instead.

​
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 slot outside a 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.

​
If something goes wrong

The Front desk care area is off — see Turn on your care areas.
There is not one. Appointments are booked onto a provider; the department is chosen 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 Essential plan or above, a connected Stripe account, and a card saved for that patient. Any one missing and the appointment stays unpaid.
Check the channel under Settings → Communications before you touch the reminder schedule. See Notifications.
The room was not added under Resources. A resource is what makes the book refuse a double booking.

​
Where to go next

Register and find patients

Create a record before you book against it.

The front desk

The live check-in board the booked patient arrives onto.

Record triage and route a patient

Where the department is finally chosen.