You can minimize the possibility of you accidentally scheduling new appointments in front of clients who are waiting, by allowing waitlist appointments to appear in the scheduler day view. This feature is controlled by the "Display waitlist appointments on Day View" setting that can be enabled on your Settings page. Before utilizing this feature, please note the following:
- Once the setting is enabled, any client that is added to the waitlist will be shown as a striped block on the selected staff member’s schedule for the next available appointment slot. Currently, the reserved slot will not block online and in-store booking availability.
- If a previously scheduled client has canceled, the waitlist appointment will automatically shift to the next available appointment slot. For instance, a client was scheduled for 1 pm and the next available slot was 5 pm. The client for the 1 pm slot canceled, the waitlist appointment will now be shown in the 1 pm slot.
- If a client is removed from the waitlist, they will also be removed from the scheduler.
Now let's look at how this feature works:
1. Navigate to Business Setup > Settings
2. From there, activate the "Allow clients to be added to waitlist?" and “Display waitlist appointments on Day View?” options.
3. Once activated, from your Scheduler screen, click the +Open Waitlist button on the left side of the page. This will open the waitlist modal.
4. From the waitlist modal, click the +Add Client button to add someone to the waitlist, select their service, and choose their preferred staff member and save. In the example below, the preferred staff selected is Mary.
5. The client will be successfully added to the waitlist and will be shown as a striped block on the selected staff member’s schedule for the next available appointment slot. The appointment will be in Waiting status. Currently, the reserved slot will not block online and in-store booking availability.
6. When a slot opens up, you can click on the waitlist appointment and start the service.
7. The appointment status will change to Checked-In and the client will be removed from the waitlist.
For general information on the waitlist, you can read more here.