Welcome to 10to8! It’s great to have you on board.
Our software has been designed to help you to make appointments happen. Our interface gives you full control, with plenty of useful and customizable features.
This guide will walk you through the simple steps involved in setting up your account. Once you’ve completed these steps, you’ll be ready to start taking appointments with 10to8!
To make your experience of 10to8 an easy one, most changes you make will save automatically.
SECTIONS:
Getting Started with Online Bookings
Set Availability for Class Bookings
Getting Started with Online Bookings
Set your Availability
The next step is to set up your working hours. To do this, head to ‘Setup’ > ‘Availability’ and select your name from the menu on the left.
If you’re a system admin (you can check this under ‘Setup’ > ‘Staff’), you can add and change working hours for yourself and for other users. If you’re not a system admin, you’ll only be able to add and change your own working hours.
Your available hours are those that you wish to be bookable. To add available hours, click ‘Add Availability’ underneath the day you’d like to edit.
You’ll then see a sidebar open to the right. Here, you can enter your working hours, your working location, and specify the services for which you’re available.
You can also choose whether to apply these working hours only to that specific day, or to multiple days.
When you’re done, be sure to click ‘Apply’ as these settings will not save automatically.
Note: your availability will need to show as ‘Public’ in order for your customers to see your bookable slots. If you see the toggle set to ‘Private’, click to switch it back to public.
‘Simultaneous bookings’ refers to the number of bookings that can take place at once within the same timeslot. A number higher than 1 means that more than one customer can book the same timeslot. If you don’t intend to do this, we recommend making sure that a number higher than 1 is not entered, as this could lead to double bookings.
If you would like your bookings to begin at specific times, for instance on the hour or every half hour, you can create each individual available slot manually. Click the ‘+ Add’ button at the top right of the sidebar (as pictured above) to add an additional slot of availability whilst the sidebar is open.
Note: If you have added a period of buffer/travel time to your service(s), make sure to consider this when setting up your available hours. For instance, a 45-minute service with a 15-minute buffer would require 60 total minutes of availability.
Add your Staff
Next, you'll need to head over to 'Setup' > 'Staff' to add staff members. You can also amend your own staff profile here.
Note: We understand every industry has a preferred name for its staff -- this will differ depending on your sector. Rather than 'Staff', within 10to8 you might see:
- Therapist
- Practitioner
- Counselor/Counsellor
- Consultant
- Room
- Teacher
- Coach
- Kennel
- Building
- Volunteer
- Sales Rep
- Hiring Manager
- Doctor
To add a staff member, click '+ Add Staff'.
You'll then be prompted to enter the staff member's name and email address. You can also choose at this point whether to assign that staff member to all of your current bookable services, or none of them.
You can then click 'Create Staff' or 'Invite Staff'.
Clicking 'Create Staff' will create the staff member's profile immediately and add it to your account.
Clicking 'Invite Staff' will also immediately create the staff member's profile and add it to your account, but will also send them an activation link via email. When they click this link, they'll be prompted to set up their own login so they can gain access to their profile.
If you decide to create the staff member's profile without immediately inviting them, you can do so when you're ready by clicking on their name, then clicking 'Invite' under the 'Status' section within their profile.
Within the 'Details' section of the staff member's profile (pictured above), you'll find the option to view and amend their name, email address(es), phone number, team and timezone. You'll also be able to use this section to add notes, toggle bookings on/off, assign a color, copy their private booking link, upload a booking page photo, enter a public description, and at the bottom you'll find a link to change their availability.
To delete a staff member, click the 'Delete Staff' button which you'll find at the very bottom of this section.
Within the 'Services' section, you'll find each of the services this staff member has been assigned to. Any services missing from this list will not be bookable for this staff member, so make sure to add any absent services via the drop-down if needs be.
Within the 'Permissions' section, you'll be able to view and amend this staff member's permissions if you are an admin.
For more information on managing your staff within 10to8, head to our guide here!
Add some Services
When you’re ready to start creating your bookable services, head over to ‘Setup’ > ‘Services’.
With 10to8 you can create regular services which are based on your working hours, and class services for bookings with multiple customers, which are based on classes you've already scheduled into your calendar. Feel free to create as many services as you like; there’s no limit!
Each service can be individually customized. You can open the service settings for each service in ‘Setup’ > ‘Services’ by clicking on them within the list.
The function of each service setting is as follows:
- Direct link to service – the specific URL that can be used to navigate directly to the booking page for this service
- Availability – the type of availability the service is based on (regular or based on scheduled classes)
- Public description – the description viewable for this service on your public booking page
- Duration – how long bookings for this service last
- Buffer/travel time – periods of time added before/after bookings for this service, to allow for travel/preparation
- Location – the location(s) at which this service can be booked
- Color – the color assigned to this service within 10to8
- Online booking – who can book this service, and with how much notice
- Staff selection by customer – how staff members are assigned to bookings for this service
- Staff – the staff members able to take bookings for this service
- Customer cancellations – whether cancellations are allowed for this service, and with how much notice
- Customer changes – whether changes are allowed for this service, and with how much notice
-
Payment – whether a price is shown for this service, and whether payment is required
Note: staff members’ ability to create or change services depends on their specific permissions under ‘Setup’ > ‘Staff’. System admins can manage this permission in each staff member’s profile, under ‘Permissions’.
For more information on managing staff permissions, head to our guide here.
For a more in-depth guide on creating services, click here!
Enter your Business Details
The first thing to do is enter your business details under 'Setup' > Business Details'.
Here you can input your business name, email address, phone number and website. This information will be shown on your public booking page.
You'll also be able to amend your country, language and timezone if necessary.
Under 'Configuration' > 'Online Booking' > 'Booking Page' > 'Page Details', you can input additional business information that will be displayed on your online booking page.
Here you can enter your page title, business description, cancellation policy and privacy notice. You can also amend your contact details from here and add your social media links if applicable.
The 'No slots support message' field can be used to customize the message your customers will see if there are no available slots at their desired time.
Take Bookings in Person
Add your Locations
At 10to8 we understand that for appointments to happen, they need to be scheduled at the right location. Whether your appointments take place at one location or across many; whether you prefer to host appointments solely online or provide a hybrid service, 10to8 works around you.
You can use 10to8 to offer your services at three different location types:
- Business Premises
- Online/Phone
- At Client’s Address
To set up your locations, head to ‘Setup’ > ‘Locations’ > ‘Premises’ and input your business address/booking locations by clicking ‘Add location’.
You can add as many locations as you like. There is also no limit to the number of services you can host at each location.
When you add a new location, this will not be saved automatically, so make sure to click ‘save’ when you’re done!
If you’d like to remove a location, head back to ‘Setup’ > ‘Locations’ > ‘Premises’, click on the location from the list, then click ‘edit’, then scroll down and click ‘delete location’.
If you have the Online/Phone location type enabled, 10to8 will add this to your list of locations with the default name of ‘Online/Phone’. We understand that this might not be accurate for everyone, so you can change this by clicking on it, then clicking the ‘edit’ button, inputting a new location name, then clicking ‘save’.
As an example, you might want to change the ‘Online/Phone’ location name to ‘Video Call’ if your online appointments are hosted with a video conferencing tool.
The new name you have given to this location will then be displayed on your public booking page.
At Client's Address
This location option enables you to host bookings at your customers’ addresses, making it very popular with mobile hairdressers, electricians and home tutors (to name a few)!
To use this option, you'll first need to add a location that will be used as a central point. You'll then configure your availability within a radius of this location.
For more information about making use of this option, head over to our guide on customizing your availability.
Take Group Bookings
Set Availability for Class Bookings
At 10to8 we offer you the option to take group bookings as well as 1-1 bookings. Group bookings within 10to8 are called ‘Class’ bookings. This booking type is ideal for teachers and tutors, and anyone else offering services to multiple people at once!
Availability for class bookings works a little differently. For these bookings, you’ll first need to schedule the booking yourself within the 10to8 calendar. Once you’ve done this, you can click on the booking to view the details, including the link your customers will use to book themselves into the class.
For more information on customizing your availability with 10to8, click here.
Take a Basic Account Tour
Basic Dashboard Navigation
At the top of the left-hand menu within your 10to8 account, you’ll find the ’Discover 10to8’ tab. Clicking this will send you to your 10to8 dashboard, which has been designed to give you useful information about how your business is doing with various statistics available at a glance.
At the top of your dashboard, you’ll find the link to your booking page along with integration shortcuts. You’ll also see shortcuts to add staff, services, locations and working hours.
When they are available, you will also find quick links to recordings of our demos and product tours here.
A little further down, you’ll find cards to show you your top staff, services and locations. These are the staff, services and locations that are booked the most frequently.
There’s also a handy graph to show you how many bookings and no-shows are processed within your 10to8 account each day.
At the bottom of your dashboard, you’ll see a selection of cards displaying other useful statistics.
For more information on the 10to8 dashboard and how to make the most of its features, head over to our guide here.
Basic Calendar Navigation
Each bookable staff user within your 10to8 account will have their own calendar. To open the calendar, head to the ‘Calendar’ tab within the left-hand menu.
The 10to8 calendar gives an overview of all bookings scheduled with yourself and the other staff members within the account. You can use the staff selection menu in the top-right to pick which staff member’s calendar you’d like to view. You can select more than one staff member at once if your permissions permit this!
Available time within the calendar is displayed in plain white. Busy or unavailable time is displayed as turquoise diagonal stripes. You can schedule appointments or events into the unavailable areas if you like, but bear in mind that the staff member might not be available to attend unless their available hours are amended.
To change the calendar view, you’ll need to click the settings icon in the top-right corner of the screen, which will open a sidebar to the right.
Within the settings sidebar, you can choose whether to view your events in a daily or weekly view, as a timeline, or as an agenda. You can also choose how to color-code the events and which information you’d like displayed at a glance (e.g. service name, location, customer name, time).
We understand that people have different viewing preferences and screen sizes, so you can choose whether to shorten or elongate the calendar to best suit you.
Another capability of the 10to8 calendar is to sort and view appointments according to their assigned Room. The rooms feature is available on our paid plans.
Appointments can be viewed by Room within the calendar by selecting ‘Room’ from the drop-down menu at the top of the screen. When the Room option has been selected, you will also see the list of booked Rooms within the staff selection bar at the top-right. You can click to add or remove Rooms in order to filter the visible appointments.
For an in-depth overview of our Rooms feature, click here!
To schedule a new booking or event into the calendar, you can either click on your desired timeslot directly within the calendar, or click the ‘+’ icon in the bottom-right corner.
Doing so will bring up another sidebar to the right, which contains all of the necessary fields to create a booking. You’ll need to select a service from the drop-down menu at the top, or type in your own title if you’re booking another type of event.
You can then select your customer(s), the allotted time, the location and the staff. You can add a private note if you like (these are not visible to customers), set the booking to recur, and add buffer time if needed.
When you’re done, click ‘Book’ and your booking will be placed into your calendar.
For an in-depth look at your 10to8 calendar and its features, click here!
Basic Inbox Navigation
Your 10to8 inbox has been designed to help you to stay on top of all booking notifications and customer communications.
Head to your inbox by clicking the ‘Inbox’ tab in the left-hand menu of your account.
To the left of the inbox page, you’ll see the navigation menu. Within this menu, you’ll find the option to view messages within specific folders and to choose whether to sort the messages by appointment or arrival time. For simplicity, you can also filter the messages to ensure that you’re only shown your own notifications.
If you have unread messages in your inbox, you’ll see these displayed next to the folder they’re in. If you have three booking requests, you’ll see ‘Booking Requests (3)’ for example.
New messages/notifications within your inbox will be shown in turquoise, so it should always be clear which messages require your attention. Each message/notification will display the service name, staff name, customer name, date and time of the booking it corresponds to.
Tags at the top of each message/notification will tell you the type of message or request you’ve received.
To delete a message from your inbox, click the red trash can icon. Deleted messages are moved to the 'Trash' section within the left-hand menu. Deleted messages are kept in the trash indefinitely until you empty it by clicking the 'Empty Trash' button. When you empty the trash, all messages within it will be permanently deleted at once.
Your Booking Page
As a 10to8 user, you’ll be granted your very own online booking page, hosted by 10to8. You can find a link to your booking page within your 10to8 dashboard, and your booking page details and settings can be found under ‘Configuration’ > ‘Online Booking’ > ‘Booking Page’.
To navigate to your booking page, click on your booking page URL.
Note: your booking page will be created and activated automatically. If you’d prefer not to use your booking page, click on the ‘Advanced options’ drop-down menu, then scroll down and click ‘Disable online booking’.
To personalize your booking page and increase brand awareness, you can click on the ‘Logo and Header images’ drop-down to upload your own header and logo.
Note: custom logo and header images are limited to our Pro plan and above. To upload properly, headers must be 1200x200 pixels in size. Logos must be 200x200 pixels. For more information, click here.
Under the ‘Business Details’ drop-down, you can manage your business overview, which will be shown to the left of your booking page. You can add descriptions and notices here, along with links to your business's social media platforms.
You can configure your booking preferences under the ‘Advanced Options’ drop-down. For example, you can opt to redirect your customers to another site following a successful booking, enable/disable customers’ ability to book more than one appointment simultaneously, restrict bookings to specific domains or require customers to create a login before they can book.
For an overview of the advanced options within your 10to8 booking page, head to our guide here.
Within the ‘Services’ drop-down, you can adjust each of your services’ specifications, amend the order in which they appear on your booking page, group your services, and add/remove services.
Note: 10to8 is constantly evolving and improving, thanks to the hard work of our developers. We’ve recently refreshed the look of the booking page, incorporating a new color scheme and font. We’ve also swapped sharp corners for rounded ones, owing to a much more modern look.
Users subscribed to our Premium plan or above can choose whether to display the booking page in our new ‘modern’ style, or stick to our older ‘classic’ style. You’ll find the option to select your preference under ‘Configuration’ > ‘Online Booking’ > ‘Booking Page’ > ‘Logo and Header images’.
Become a Power User!
Location Combinations
With 10to8, you can choose where your services will be hosted. You can assign your services to a single location type, or choose to make them bookable at multiple types of location (e.g. both online and in person). You’ll see checkboxes for this purpose; simply click to select the locations you’d like to use for the service you’re editing.
You can also specify which particular premises you’d like to assign to a specific service. For instance, if you have three business addresses but only want to assign two of those addresses to a service, you can do this with the location selection box.
To add a premise, start typing the name of that premise into the location selection box, and select it from the drop-down menu when it appears. Simply click the ‘x’ next to a premise if you’d like to remove it from a service.
To configure your service location settings, head to ‘Setup’ > ‘Services’. Click on the service you’d like to edit, to open the service settings menu.
Set up your Calendar Sync
At 10to8 we understand that busy people often make use of more than one calendar! For that reason, you can sync your 10to8 booking calendar with your third-party calendar, to ensure that bookings and other scheduled events are consistently visible across the different platforms you use.
Syncing your calendars will also help to optimize your availability; 10to8 will pull your ‘busy’ times from your third-party calendar to prevent you from appearing as available in 10to8 when you’re not.
10to8 currently syncs with the following third-party calendar providers:
- iCal
- Exchange
- Office 365
- Outlook.com
- Google Calendar
To set up your calendar sync:
1. Make sure you’re able to take bookings under ‘Setup’ > ‘Staff’. If not, click the switch to enable this.
2. Then, head over to 'Integrations' > 'Calendar Sync'.
3. Click ‘Activate Calendar Sync’ under ‘Calendar Sync Settings’.
4. You’ll then be taken to Cronofy (our calendar sync provider). Follow the on-screen steps to sync your calendar.
5. You should now be done! If you’d like to sync another calendar with 10to8, click the ‘Activate calendar sync for more calendar providers’ button.
Once completed, your third-party calendar will automatically sync with 10to8. Sometimes, this can take a few minutes – 10to8 will let you know once the appointment data has finished syncing.
You’ll have the following options when syncing information between calendars:
- Sync 10to8 appointments into your third-party calendar
- Sync appointments from your third-party calendar into 10to8
- Sync only mine, or everyone’s appointments
- Sync only ‘busy’ time, or include all appointment information
Some additional things to note:
- 10to8 does not support syncing with shared calendars.
- Blocked time and travel time booked into your 10to8 calendar will not be synced into your third-party calendar.
- All-day and multi-day appointments/events cannot be synced.
- Changes can take a little while to sync from one calendar to another, so you might not always see these immediately.
For a more in-depth guide on configuring your calendar sync, click here.
Connect Zoom/MS Teams
These days, online meetings are just as common and important as in-person meetings. You can connect Zoom and Microsoft Teams to 10to8, to help you host online appointments with ease. All staff within your 10to8 account can have both Zoom and Microsoft Teams enabled at the same time.
Zoom and Microsoft Teams work exclusively with services assigned to the ‘Online/Phone’ location, and will generate meeting links automatically once they’re connected to your account.
To connect Zoom and Microsoft Teams, head to 'Integrations' > 'Zoom Conferencing' and/or ‘Integrations’ > ‘Microsoft Teams’. After clicking the ‘Connect’ button, you’ll be prompted to sign in to your Zoom/Teams account. Then, follow the on-screen instructions.
Note: You must have a business account with Microsoft Teams in order to connect it to 10to8. Appointment length for free Zoom accounts is limited to 40 minutes.
Set up your Messaging
At 10to8 we understand that effective communication with your customer base plays a crucial role in making appointments happen. Moreover, keeping customers informed has been proven to significantly reduce no-shows! We offer you a wide range of customer messaging settings to ensure that your customers know where they need to be, and when.
To begin setting up your messaging, head to ‘Configuration’ > ‘Messaging’. Here you can configure automated booking notifications for both your customers and your staff.
To configure the messaging settings for your customers, head to ‘Customer Messaging’.
For every booking scheduled with 10to8, automated emails and SMS can be sent to your customers containing the date, time and location of their appointment. Emails and SMS can also be sent to notify customers of changes to their bookings, and of cancellations. To enable these messages, ensure that ‘Email Notifications’ and ‘SMS Notifications’ are toggled on.
The following email and SMS notifications can be sent to your customers:
- New booking
- Booking proposal
- Changed booking
- Cancellation
- Class signup
To view the content of each email and SMS notification, click to open the drop-down.
If you’re on our Pro plan or above, you can edit the content of these messages.
Staff messaging settings can be configured under ‘Staff Messaging’. Email and SMS booking notifications can be enabled/disabled, as well as the option to manually confirm attendance. We also offer the option to enable desktop reminders directly from your web browser!
Note: 10to8 will only send booking notifications to staff members assigned to that booking. If system admins would like to be notified of bookings they’re not hosting themselves, they’ll need to add their own contact email into the profile of the staff member who will be hosting the booking, under ‘Setup’ > ‘Staff’.
Messaging settings configured on this page will be applied across the board. If individual staff members wish to disable their booking notifications, they’ll need to remove their contact information from their staff profile.
Need More Help?
We hope you’ve found this guide helpful! If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to our friendly support experts who will be more than happy to help.
Visit our Blog!
Check out our blog articles for more inspiration on how to create a top-performing online booking system, and how to run virtual meetings effectively!