Configure Online Booking

Why online booking is worth configuring carefully

Online Booking (/settings/online-booking) turns a public web page into a front desk that never closes. Patients can find an open slot and book it themselves, at any hour, without a phone call. That convenience is exactly why the settings matter: a page that's too permissive lets patients book appointments your clinic can't actually deliver — the wrong practitioner, a time slot with no real availability, or a same-day slot with no time to prepare. A page that's too restrictive defeats the purpose and quietly pushes patients back to the phone.

This settings page is organized into five tabs — General, Patient page, Availability, Sharing, and Payments — and each one answers a different question: whether booking is open at all, what patients see and enter, which locations and services are actually offered online, how you distribute the link, and whether a deposit is collected up front. Getting all five right is what makes online booking reduce administrative load instead of creating cleanup work.

The Online Booking settings page with its five tabs across the top — General, Patient page, Availability, Sharing, Payments — and the General tab active.

General tab: turning booking on and setting the guardrails

The active/inactive toggle at the top of the General tab is the master switch for the entire public booking page. Turning it off doesn't delete anything you've configured elsewhere — it simply stops accepting new online bookings until you turn it back on. This is the setting to reach for during a temporary closure, a system changeover, or while you're still finishing the rest of the tabs and don't want patients booking against an incomplete setup.

Below the toggle sit the booking rules that shape how the schedule fills up. These exist because an unattended public page will otherwise be booked exactly as aggressively as patients are willing to click:

Lead time and booking window are the two settings most responsible for reducing no-shows and last-minute scrambles. A very short lead time (same-day, zero-notice booking) is convenient for patients but gives your team almost no time to prepare, confirm supplies, or send a reminder. A booking window that stretches too far out tends to fill with patients who forget they booked, and a same-day cancellation policy problem follows naturally. Most clinics find a middle ground — enough lead time to send at least one reminder, and a window measured in weeks rather than a full year — works best, though the right numbers depend on your own appointment mix and cancellation history.

The General tab with the active/inactive toggle switched off, showing the resulting disabled-state message panel with Title and Message fields, plus the booking rule fields below.

Patient page tab: what patients see and enter

Where the General tab governs the rules behind the scenes, the Patient page tab governs the actual experience a patient walks through on your public booking page. Every toggle here is a small trust decision: showing more information up front (price, duration) tends to reduce no-shows and mismatched expectations, while requiring more from the patient (address, timezone) adds friction that can cause drop-off partway through.

• <strong>Show price</strong> — displays the service price on the booking page before the patient commits, which tends to reduce sticker-shock cancellations after the fact.
• <strong>Show duration</strong> — displays how long the appointment type takes, helping patients plan around it.
• <strong>Require address</strong> — makes address entry mandatory during booking; useful for clinics that do home visits or need it for billing, but adds a step for everyone else.
• <strong>Patient timezone selection</strong> — lets the patient pick their own timezone rather than assuming your clinic's, which matters if you see patients booking from outside your local area.
• <strong>Extra time-selection info</strong> — additional explanatory text shown near the time picker, useful for clarifying anything not obvious from the calendar itself.
• <strong>Terms of use text</strong> — custom terms the patient sees and agrees to before confirming the booking.
• <strong>Privacy policy URL</strong> — a link to your clinic's own privacy policy, shown alongside the terms.

The important notice is worth reserving for things a patient genuinely needs to know before they book — a temporary closure of one location, a change in parking arrangements, a reminder to arrive early for paperwork. Because it sits directly in the booking flow, overusing it for routine announcements trains patients to skim past it.

The Patient page tab showing the show price/duration toggles, require address and patient timezone options, the Show important notice toggle expanded to reveal Notice title and Notice message fields, and the terms of use and privacy policy URL fields below.

Availability tab: deciding what's actually offered online

Turning booking on doesn't automatically open every location or appointment type to self-scheduling. The Availability tab is where you choose exactly which locations and which appointment types show up on the public page — everything else stays phone-and-front-desk only. This separation matters most for clinics running a mix of well-defined, repeatable visits alongside more complex or judgment-heavy appointment types that really need a staff member's input before they're scheduled.

A common pattern is to open straightforward, standard-length visits to online booking while keeping first consultations, procedures requiring pre-approval, or anything needing a triage conversation off the public page entirely. That way self-scheduling handles the routine volume, and your team's time goes toward the bookings that actually need a human judgment call.

Sharing tab: getting the link in front of patients

Once the page is configured, the Sharing tab is where you get it in front of patients. You have two options, and most clinics use both:

<iframe src="https://yoursite.com/book/your-key" width="100%" height="800" style="border:0;"></iframe>

The direct link is the more portable option — it works anywhere you can paste a URL and doesn't depend on your website's own hosting or content management system. The embed is a better fit once your website already gets meaningful traffic and you want booking to feel native to the site rather than sending visitors elsewhere.

Payments tab: deposits and why this tab may look empty

Once a supported provider is connected, this tab comes alive: it shows the connected provider and its status, along with a Require a deposit toggle.

Requiring a deposit is one of the most effective levers available for reducing no-shows on self-booked appointments — patients who have already paid something are measurably more likely to show up, and if they don't, the deposit at least partially covers the lost slot. The tradeoff runs the other way at the top of the booking funnel: a deposit requirement adds friction right before commitment, and some patients will abandon the booking rather than pay upfront, especially for lower-value visit types. A modest percentage on higher no-show-risk appointment types (first visits, popular time slots) tends to strike a better balance than a flat, clinic-wide requirement.

The Payments tab with a payment provider connected, showing provider status, the Require a deposit toggle switched on, and the resulting Deposit percentage field.

What patients hand over, and how it's handled

Common setup mistakes worth avoiding

• <strong>Turning booking on before Availability is configured</strong> — leads to the save being blocked, or worse, a page that goes live with the wrong locations exposed if it was configured earlier and forgotten.
• <strong>Setting lead time to zero</strong> — technically allowed, but leaves no buffer for staff to prepare, and tends to produce same-day bookings your team can't properly support.
• <strong>Leaving the important notice on with stale content</strong> — a notice about a holiday closure that's still showing weeks later erodes trust in the banner.
• <strong>Requiring a deposit on every appointment type uniformly</strong> — can suppress bookings for low-cost, low-risk visit types that didn't need the friction.
• <strong>Forgetting the embed snippet needs the current booking key</strong> — if your booking link ever changes, an old embedded iframe elsewhere on the web will keep pointing at the stale URL until it's updated.

Measuring how online booking is actually performing

This settings page controls how online booking behaves — it doesn't tell you how well it's working. For that, use the separate Online Booking Report, which tracks self-booked appointment volume, deposits collected, and how much lead time patients are actually using in practice. Reviewing that report periodically is the best way to tell whether your lead time, booking window, and deposit settings are calibrated well, or need adjusting.

Frequently asked questions