Read and use the appointment book (the day diary for each location)

The appointment book is the screen you will have open most of the day. It is a diary for one location, laid out as a grid: time runs down the side, and each person on your team has a column. Every appointment is a coloured block that covers its real start and end, so you can see at a glance who is busy, who is free and where the gaps are.

It shows one day or one week at a time, in the clock of the location (not your computer's clock or anyone else's). The rows are every fifteen minutes, with a stronger line on the hour, a medium line on the half hour and a faint line on the quarter hours. When you look at today, a line marks the current time.

When you sign in, you land straight on today's diary. You do not pass through a list of locations.

1. At least one person on your team at the location. Staff are the columns. With nobody there, the diary tells you that there are no staff columns yet and asks you to add staff first.
2. Working hours for your team. The diary paints off-hours and free time from each person's weekly hours and from the location's opening hours. If a person has no hours at all, the diary treats them as free all day, so set hours to get accurate columns.
3. Services assigned to each person. Someone with no services cannot take a booking, so the diary shows them as not bookable and does not offer them as a column to tick.

Open the diary

1. Sign in. You land on the diary for today. If you work at several locations, you land on the one you used last. If that one is no longer available to you, you land on the first one in your list.
2. To change location, use the location selector (labelled Location) in the navigation, and pick the other location. The diary for that location opens, and your browser remembers it for next time.
3. You can also open Book in the left menu at any time. If you have no locations yet, Book shows an empty message asking you to create a company and a branch first.

Move around in time

1. Use the arrows next to the date to go to the previous or next day. In the week view the arrows move by a whole week.
2. Press Today to jump back to today. It only appears when you are looking at another day.
3. Press Day or Week to switch the view. The change is immediate: the diary keeps the old grid on screen with a loading indicator until the new appointments arrive, and it never flashes a false "empty" message while it loads.
4. The browser's back button takes you to the period you were looking at before.

Choose which team members you see

1. Press Team.
2. Scheduled today is the default. It shows the people who work that day, plus anyone who has no hours set. A person whose hours do not include the day you are looking at is hidden.
3. Choose All staff to show everybody at the location.
4. Or tick just the names you want. Under each name you see their hours for that day, or "off this day", or "any hours". Unticking a person only hides the column in your view; it changes nothing about their schedule.
5. Next to each name, Hours opens Staff hours, where you set that person's weekly hours and press Save hours. The diary uses the new hours straight away.

Read the grid

1. Free time is a plain cell inside working hours. Hover it and it shows the time that clicking would book, for example Book 10:15.
2. Booked time is a block covering the appointment's real start and end. It shows the client, the service and the times. Services have their own colour, and the Services legend lists the colours in use on the screen, only for services that actually have appointments that day.
3. Off hours are cells outside that person's hours or outside the location's opening hours. They are painted differently and you cannot book into them.
4. Time off is an approved absence for that person. It is painted differently from off hours and from a booking, and it covers the absence's real start and end. A request that is still waiting for approval, or was rejected, does not change the diary: the time stays free.
5. If an appointment was already booked before a time off was approved, the appointment still shows as booked and is not hidden by the time-off paint.
6. A free gap between two appointments shows how many minutes it lasts, such as "45 free".
7. A block can also show a Pending payment label while a deposit is awaited, a mark that the client is In chair after you press Check in, and a note such as Part of a group of 3 when it belongs to a group booking. A live waitlist offer appears as Offer to the waiting client's name, with the time it lasts until.

Read the day header

1. Above the grid, one line gives the location name, how many team members are scheduled out of the total, and the opening and closing time. For example: "4 of 6 staff scheduled, opens 08:00, closes 20:00". With nobody scheduled it still says "0 of 6".
2. Under it, four figures summarise the day: Booked, Open chair time, Expected take (what you would take if everyone checks out) and Waiting (people on the waitlist).

Use the toolbar

1. The arrows, Today, Day and Week are for moving around, as above.
2. Team chooses the columns.
3. Full screen expands the diary to fill the window and hides the menu. Press Exit full screen or the Escape key to come back. You stay on the same period, with the same filters and any open sheet.
4. Add starts a new appointment without clicking a free cell first. It opens the create sheet on Walk-in, with a team member and a start time already filled in. It is disabled when no column is showing.
5. Under the toolbar, the quick booking line (a client name or phone, a service, any staff or one person, and Book) finds the first free start for you. If nothing fits, it says why: nobody works that day, nobody working offers that service, or the service is longer than every remaining gap. When a later day has room it offers Next opening with the date, which moves the diary there. The booking article explains the full process.

Start a booking from the grid

1. Click a free cell, in the day view or in the week view. The create sheet opens with that time (rounded to the quarter hour) and that day.
2. In the week view the team member defaults to the first person working that day, and you can change it in the sheet.
3. Clicking an existing block opens that appointment instead, never the create sheet.

Clients never see the appointment book. What they see on your booking page is the result of what is in it: the times they can choose are your free times, so the working hours you keep here, the time off you approve and every appointment already booked decide which slots are offered. Two people can never be booked into the same slot for the same team member, whether the booking comes from the desk or from the booking page.

• Expecting a team member to show on a day off. The default view hides people whose hours do not include that day. Choose All staff or tick the person under Team.
• Reading time off as free. Only approved time off is painted as time off. A pending request leaves the time free, so approve it first (see the time-off article).
• Leaving hours empty. A person with no weekly hours looks free all day and is never painted as off hours, so clients could be offered times you do not work.
• Not finding a column for someone. A person with no services is not bookable and cannot be ticked as a column. Assign them a service first.
• Reading the clock of the wrong place. Times follow the location's own timezone. If they look wrong, check the timezone in the location's settings.
• Looking for fee or cancellation rules in the diary. Branch-wide settings do not live on the book screen. Use the branch settings.
• Unticking a person to remove them. It only hides their column for you.

The staff, time-off and branch settings articles cover the things that shape what the diary shows.