An appointment type is the thing patients book: its length, price, color and the messages it sends. Getting these right is most of what makes online booking and invoicing work on their own.

What an appointment type decides

An appointment type is the thing you book: Initial consultation – 60 min, Physio – 45 min, Pilates class. It carries far more than a name. The length, the calendar color, whether it's in person or by video, what the invoice will contain, which practitioners can do it, which forms and messages the patient gets and whether a recall follows all come from the type, so a well-set-up type makes every booking of it right by default. Open Settings, then Appointment Types, and select a type or start a new one. The settings are grouped into six sections.

The Appointment Types settings page listing types in groups with their durations and colors, filter chips All, Needs billing and Archived, and a warning marker on a type that has no billing set.
The Appointment Types list with the Needs billing filter showing one type that has no price or items yet.

Appointment types are one list for the whole clinic. Which site offers a type is decided on its Practitioners step: a type is offered at a location when a practitioner based there is checked. There's no separate per-location setting, and online booking lists, per location, the types someone there offers.

Info and Mode & capacity

Info holds the Name, a Description patients see when booking online, a Category for grouping the list, the Duration and the Calendar color.

Mode & capacity is how the visit is delivered. In-person is the only mode that supports group bookings; raise the capacity above one to make it a group type, and every booking of it gets that many places. Telehealth appointments get a video call link and run through ClinyPal's telehealth; Home visit is for the practitioner traveling out. Both are always one patient. A type has one mode, so a visit you offer both in person and by video is two types.

Billing

This is what the visit's invoice will contain. A Fixed price adds one line at that amount. Services and Products add your billable items, each with a quantity and an optional discount as a percentage or an amount; they're added on top of a fixed price if you set both. A type with no price and no items is marked No billing set in the list and under the Needs billing filter: its appointments will produce an empty invoice, which is fine for a free check-up and a mistake for everything else.

Prices are fixed when the appointment is booked. Changing a type's price, discount or items affects appointments booked from then on. An appointment already on the calendar keeps the billing it had when it was booked, so past and future bookings aren't re-priced by a settings change.

Practitioners, Patient forms and Communications

  • Practitioners: switch on everyone who performs this type. Only they are offered when it's booked, by staff or online. The same link can be set from the practitioner's own settings under Services this practitioner provides.
  • Patient forms: forms sent to the patient with their confirmation, such as an intake form for a first visit.
  • Communications: the Treatment note template that opens for this visit, the Default recall created when a visit of this type is completed (or None — don't auto-schedule a recall), and for each event (confirmation, reminder, cancellation, follow-up) which Email and SMS template is used. The list shows each type's state as Email + SMS, Email only, SMS only or Not set, and a type with nothing set is flagged in red: patients get no messages at all for it. The starter types, Consultation 30 min, Follow-up 15 min and New Patient 45 min, come fully linked, and a type you create starts on the clinic's default templates, which you can change here.
The Communications settings of an appointment type showing Treatment note template, Default recall set to 6-month check, and Email and SMS template choices for Confirmation, Reminder, Cancellation and Follow-up.
The Communications section of a type with confirmation, reminder and follow-up templates chosen for email and SMS, and a 6-month check as the default recall.
A type with no templates sends no messages. The list shows it as Not set in red. A new type starts on the clinic's default templates, but if they're cleared, patients booked on it get no confirmation or reminder until the Communications section is filled in again.

Archive a type you no longer offer with Archive on the type. It disappears from booking and from online booking, and shows under the Archived filter, where it can be unarchived. Appointments already booked with it, past and future, keep the type: they still show its name and color, can be opened, moved and edited, and the type stays selected on them. Only a new booking can't use it.

Unlinking a practitioner from a type works the same way: their existing appointments of that type stay editable as long as the practitioner on them doesn't change. Switching an existing appointment to that practitioner, or booking a new one, is refused with This practitioner cannot perform this appointment type.