Welcome to Sign In Scheduling! 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.
SECTIONS:
Getting started with online bookings
Set availability for class bookings
Getting started with online bookings
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 Sign In Scheduling you might see:
- Therapist
- Practitioner
- Counselor/Counsellor
- Consultant
- Room
- Teacher
- Coach
- Kennel
- Building
- Volunteer
- Sales Rep
- Hiring Manager
- Doctor
These all have the same function and meaning within Sign In Scheduling.
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 whether to make them bookable. You can always change this later.
Once you've entered their details, you can click 'Create Staff' or 'Invite Staff'.
'Create Staff' creates the staff member's profile immediately and adds it to your account.
'Invite Staff' immediately creates the staff member's profile and adds 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.
You can always invite staff later on by clicking the 'Invite' button in their profile, under the 'Details' tab at the top.
Under the 'Details' tab, you can amend the staff member's name, contact details and time zone. You can also add notes, toggle bookings on/off, assign a color, copy their booking link, upload a booking page profile photo for them, add a public description, and amend their availability.
You can delete the staff member by clicking the 'Delete staff' button at the bottom.
Under the 'Services' tab, 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.
Under the 'Permissions' tab, you'll be able to view and amend this staff member's permissions if you're an admin.
You can read more about managing your staff here.
Set your availability
The next step is to set up your availability/working hours. During your available hours, you will be bookable.
Note: your permissions under 'Setup' > 'Staff' will determine whose availability you're able to edit. Only account admins can change these permissions.
To add your working hours, head to ‘Setup’ > ‘Availability working hours’ and select your name from the staff selection bar at the top of the screen (if not already selected).
First, click to edit a day.
Then, click the '+ Add' button in the sidebar.
Using the fields in the sidebar, you can then enter the working hours, location(s), and specify the services you'd like the working hours to apply to.
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’ at the bottom of the sidebar, as these settings will not save automatically.
Under the 'Advanced settings' drop-down in the sidebar, you can set the availability as public or private.
Your availability will need to be public in order for your customers to see your bookable slots. Private availability is intended for internal meetings/events only, and your customers will not be able to book your private hours.
‘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 want to allow this, make sure the number here is kept at 1.
If you would like your bookings to begin at specific times, e.g. on the hour, you can create each available slot separately.
Click the ‘+ Add’ button at the top right of the sidebar to add additional slots of availability.
Once you've added all of your available hours and clicked 'Apply', they'll appear in your availability calendar.
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.
You can read more about customizing your availability by clicking here.
Add some services
When you’re ready to start creating your bookable services, head over to ‘Setup’ > ‘Services’.
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 Sign In Scheduling
- 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. You can find an in-depth guide on creating services here.
Enter your business details
Your business details tell the world who you are and what you're offering! To enter your business details, head to 'Setup' > Business details'.
Here you can enter 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 'Setup' > 'Booking page customization' > 'Page details', you can input additional business information that will be displayed on your 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
Whether your appointments take place at one location or across many; whether you prefer to host appointments solely online or provide a hybrid service, Sign In Scheduling works around you.
You can use Sign In Scheduling 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’ > ‘Sites' and input your business address/booking locations by clicking 'Set your address', then ‘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' > 'Sites' > 'Set your address', select the location from the list, click ‘Edit’, then scroll down and click ‘Delete location’.
If you have the Online/phone location type enabled, Sign In Scheduling 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 using this option, click here.
Take group bookings
Set availability for class bookings
Group bookings within Sign In Scheduling 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 Sign In Scheduling 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 scheduling class bookings, click here.
Take a basic account tour
Basic dashboard navigation
At the top of the left-hand menu within your Sign In Scheduling account, you’ll find the ’Dashboard’ tab. Clicking this will send you to your dashboard, which has been designed to give you useful information about how your business is doing.
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 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 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 account will have their own calendar. To open the calendar, head to the ‘Calendar’ tab within the left-hand menu.
The 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 signified by the striped areas.
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, 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).
You can also choose the display size of the calendar events, toggle canceled appointments on/off and print a copy of the calendar from here, too.
Another option within the calendar is to view appointments by 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, or click the plus icon in the bottom-right corner.
Doing so will bring up the booking details sidebar to the right.
You can then 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 the calendar.
For more information on the calendar and its features, click here.
Basic inbox navigation
Your Sign In Scheduling 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.
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 have received.
To delete a message from your inbox, click the trash can icon at the top.
Deleted messages are moved to the 'Trash' section within the left-hand menu.
Deleted messages are kept in the trash indefinitely until you empty the trash folder by clicking the empty trash button. When you empty the trash, all messages within it will be permanently deleted at once.
For more information on using the inbox, click here.
Your booking page
Every Sign In Scheduling user is granted their very own online booking page. Your customers can book appointments with you via your booking page.
Your booking page link, details and settings can be found under ‘Setup' > 'Booking pages & URLs'. You'll also find your booking page link on your dashboard.
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, click on the ‘Style and branding’ drop-down. Here you can upload your own header, logo and favicon images. You can also select a booking page theme.
Note: the option to upload custom images is limited to our Pro plan and above. For more information on this process, click here.
Under the ‘Page 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 a detailed overview of the advanced options within your Sign In Scheduling 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.
Become a power user!
Location combinations
You can choose where your services will be hosted. To set your service location settings, head to ‘Setup’ > ‘Services’. Click on the service you’d like to edit, to open the service settings menu.
You can assign your services to a single location type, or choose to make them bookable at multiple types of locations (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.
Set up your calendar sync
Busy people often make use of more than one calendar! For that reason, you can sync your Sign In Scheduling 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; Sign In Scheduling will pull your ‘busy’ times from your third-party calendar to prevent you from appearing as available in Sign In Scheduling when you’re not.
Sign In Scheduling 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 'Setup' > 'Apps' and click the 'Calendar sync' option.
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, click the ‘Activate calendar sync for more calendar providers’ button.
Once completed, your third-party calendar will automatically sync with Sign In Scheduling. Sometimes, this can take a few minutes – the system will let you know once the appointment data has finished syncing.
You’ll have the following options when syncing information between calendars:
- Sync Sign In Scheduling appointments into your third-party calendar
- Sync appointments from your third-party calendar into Sign In Scheduling
- Sync only mine, or everyone’s appointments
- Sync only ‘busy’ time, or include all appointment information
Some additional things to note:
- Sign In Scheduling does not support syncing with shared calendars.
- Blocked time and travel time booked into your Sign In Scheduling calendar will not be synced into your third-party calendar.
- Changes can take a little while to sync from one calendar to another, so you might not always see these immediately.
For more information on setting up 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 Sign In Scheduling, to help you host online appointments with ease. All staff within your Sign In Scheduling 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 'Setup' > 'Zoom integration' and/or ‘Setup’ > ‘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 Sign In Scheduling. Appointment length for free Zoom accounts is limited to 40 minutes.
Set up your messaging
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 configure the messaging settings for your customers, head to 'Setup' > ‘Customer messaging’.
For every booking scheduled with Sign In Scheduling, 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 booking changes and cancelations. 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: Sign In Scheduling 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!