What you’re looking at
The sidebar row is Appointment, singular. Its own rail, headed Appointments, has four entries — and only the first stays in the workspace:
Changing a service or a working pattern is therefore the same edit wherever you start from.
The calendar’s top row carries Today, back and forward arrows, the month, a Live or Syncing connection pill, the view switcher — Day, Week, Month, plus Providers and Resources swimlanes — and a colour control offering Color by Status and Color by Service.
The row beneath it holds Search patients, services, out of office…, More filters with a count badge, Refresh, Current Schedule and Create.
More filters opens Calendar Filters — “Refine your view by status, service, or staff.” — with sections for Appointment Status, Urgency Level, Out of Office, Event Types, Task Status, Task Priority, Venue Type, Services and Staff Members, and Reset all filters at the bottom.
A booking carries one of seven statuses, which is what Color by Status colours: Scheduled, Confirmed, In Progress, Completed, Cancelled, No Show and Rescheduled.
Opening a booking shows how it is paid under Payment method — for example Card, Pay later for an online booking to be paid at the visit, or Membership for a visit a membership covers. A booking made with an option or add-ons keeps its services as booked when you edit it; to change them, cancel it and book again.
When you change the services on a booking, its price and length come from your services — a fee you type that differs is kept as the price for that booking — and the end time moves to match. A booking that has already been paid keeps its services. Changing how a booking repeats re-plans the later visits at that booking’s price in one go: if one of the new dates clashes with another appointment, you’re told which date and nothing in the series changes.
A brand-new practice sees the empty hour grid, not a message — the calendar always renders the day. The swimlanes do explain themselves: Resources reads “No rooms or equipment yet. Add them in Appointment Settings → Resources.”
Only Overview, Services, Booking Page and Settings are part of the workspace today. Anything else you reach by editing the address bar is unreleased.
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.
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.Book an appointment
1
Select a slot, or select Create
Selecting an empty slot opens the sheet with that time already filled in. Create opens the same sheet — titled Initial Entry — with no time imposed, which is what you want when the client is standing in front of you. Its four tabs are Appointment, Event, Task and Out of office.
2
Choose who it is for
Leave the type on Individual or couple, or choose Group for a group session — that needs the Essential plan, and the gate reads Upgrade for group sessions. Then find the person with Search Client; Create client beside it registers somebody who is not on file yet.
3
Pick the services and the provider
Add one or more under Services. A service with options shows an Option list, and one with add-ons shows Add-ons to tick; the summary adds them to the Visit Time and Appointment Total. Under Select Provider, choose a staff member or leave it on Any available provider and let the slot decide — a provider’s own price for the service is used when you choose them. Where colleagues have a clinical specialty set (Settings → Team), a Filter by Specialty dropdown appears above the provider list to narrow it down.
4
Set the time and place
Set the start, end and Duration under Schedule. Choose Location: Physical Office, which asks for an address or room number, or Video Office, which generates its own joining link.
5
Select Book appointment
The toast reads Appointment created successfully and the booking appears on the calendar. Confirmation and reminder emails go out from your notification settings — you do not send them by hand.
Set availability
Availability is not on the calendar — it is in Settings → Booking Settings, and four things there decide every free slot:
A slot only appears when the schedule is open, no special date closes it, and any resource the service needs is free. Which reminders go out is set under Notifications; the channels they travel on are set under Settings → Communications, and a reminder with no channel is never sent. See Notification settings.
Charge the card automatically with Auto Pay
Auto Pay charges a client’s saved card when their appointment is Confirmed or Completed — you choose which — so a routine visit never needs a manual invoice. Turn it on in Settings → Auto Pay. Card details are held by Stripe and never reach ClinikEHR. Connect the account first under Settings → Online Payments; until you do, the Auto Pay card shows Connect Stripe to use Auto Pay and stays inert.Who can do this
Role decides whether Appointment opens. Permission decides what you may do once it is open.
On Solo and Team the real levers are the role somebody holds and the access tier you picked when you invited them. There is no per-role navigation editor on these plans — that is an Enterprise feature — and no per-action permission covers booking: the Permissions sheet on a team member (“What they may do on the pages their role already opens”) carries only clinical-authority acts such as signing and countersigning.
Two behaviours surprise people:
- Enforcement is opt-in, per person. A colleague never saved in the permissions sheet is unrestricted. The sheet warns “Saving starts enforcing”.
- A denied action is recorded; an allowed one is not. Hiding a module from somebody’s sidebar is a convenience, not a security boundary.
Check it worked
- The new appointment is on the calendar at the right time, in the right provider’s column.
- Opening it shows the client, the service and the venue you entered.
- With Auto Pay on, a confirmed appointment for someone with a saved card produces a paid invoice rather than an outstanding one.
Common issues
No free slots show for a provider
No free slots show for a provider
“No bookable slots for this date in your configured schedule.” The provider has no schedule, a special date is closing the day, or a resource the service requires is already booked. CONFIGURE AVAILABILITY in that warning takes you straight to Booking Settings.
The person I want to book is not in the search
The person I want to book is not in the search
They have no client record yet. Use Create client inside the booking sheet, or add them from Clients first — see Manage your client list.
Group is flagged and will not open
Group is flagged and will not open
Group sessions need the Essential plan — the gate reads Upgrade for group sessions. See Change your plan.
This appointment would run past midnight
This appointment would run past midnight
A start time plus a duration that crosses into the next day is refused: “Pick an earlier start time or a shorter duration.” Split it into two bookings instead.
Auto Pay is on but nothing is being charged
Auto Pay is on but nothing is being charged
Three things stop it: the plan is below Essential, Stripe is not connected, or the client has no saved card. The screen says so itself — “Only patients with a saved card are charged.” Everyone else is invoiced as normal.
Reminders are not arriving
Reminders are not arriving
Check the category is enabled under Notifications, then check the channel exists under Settings → Communications. A reminder with no channel is not queued and not retried.
FAQ
Does cancelling an appointment refund the client?
Does cancelling an appointment refund the client?
No. Setting a booking to Cancelled frees the slot and stops its reminders; money already taken stays taken. Refund it from the invoice — see Invoices.
What is the difference between Cancelled and No Show?
What is the difference between Cancelled and No Show?
Cancelled means the appointment was called off. No Show means it stood and the client did not arrive. Keep them apart: they are the two numbers you will want when you review a month.
What does the email about a due task say?
What does the email about a due task say?
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, because an email subject shows on lock screens and shared inboxes. Open task in that email opens the task on the calendar after they sign in.
Why does an online booking say Unassigned?
Why does an online booking say Unassigned?
A client who booked without choosing a provider lands under Unassigned / Online in the Staff Members filter. Open the booking and set a provider.
Can I book somebody into two places at once?
Can I book somebody into two places at once?
The calendar will let you; the booking page will not offer the slot to a client, because online availability checks the provider and any resource the service needs. Double-booking is a deliberate act, never an accident of the public page.
Should the team use Color by Status or Color by Service?
Should the team use Color by Status or Color by Service?
Pick one and keep to it. The setting is held per person and per browser, so a room full of people reading two different colour schemes is the failure it causes.