What Is Appointment Scheduler Software?
Appointment scheduling software is a platform that enables businesses and individuals to set appointments or bookings. Further known as appointment booking software or online scheduling software, this service is especially helpful for hospitality as well as personal care sectors such as spas and dining.
Appointment scheduling software helps companies automate the process of booking appointments for relevant services. Clients can choose the service they want and the professional from whom they want the service. Appointment scheduling software provides clients with the option to schedule bookings anytime and from anywhere and checks the availability of slots in real-time.
Appointment Scheduling Software Features
To have a better understanding of what appointment booking systems are and what they do here are some of the top features:
Online Scheduling Software for 24x7 Booking
Appointment scheduling software allows users to book a suitable appointment for any service as per their preference. In addition to this, online scheduling software has an added benefit where inbuilt calendars can be synced with third-party calendar apps such as Google calendars.
Efficient Management of Booking Statistics
Appointment management software allows monitoring of booking statistics so as to derive knowledge of which service is most popular among clients. This helps small businesses to push more revenue as they can make their popular services more efficient and also run promotions for them on appointment booking app platforms.
Ease of Online Payments
Free online appointment scheduling software provides the added feature of online payments, thus locking in a particular time slot for the client as per their comfort. This ensures that the service provider is solely available for a particular client for their chosen time slot and prevents double bookings.
Scheduled Reminders
Businesses making use of appointment booking software can remind their client of an upcoming appointment through email or SMS marketing. These SMS or email alerts work both ways as in making both the client and service provider aware of their upcoming appointments.
Ability to Modify Appointments
Even after confirming a booking, clients can make changes to the timing or cancel the booking within a stipulated time. Some appointment booking software has the option of modifying bookings through emails or SMS alerts only, leading to better user experience.
Benefits of Appointment Booking & Tracking Software
It helps expand your customer base
Online client appointment scheduling software allows prospective customers to schedule appointments beyond business hours. This leads to an enhanced and immersive user experience. Customers can know the different time slots during which the business offers its service and schedule a relevant appointment.
Better staff management
Appointment booking software aids businesses to increase staff efficiency and workability. Appointment management software ensures that a select few individual clients can book a particular appointment at any time. Which prevents rush at peak hours and disgruntled customers. Also, you can track the performance of your staff through feedback shared by clients.
Increase in overall revenues
With appointments becoming automated, employees don’t have to deal with scheduling and following up with prospective clients manually. Rather they can focus their time and effort to provide excellent service to the customers. This not only improves your employee’s productivity but also makes the customers come back to reuse your services.
Helps avoid last-minute cancellations
Most of the time, businesses have to suffer huge losses when prospective customers cancel at the very last. This can be easily avoided when appointment booking systems are being used. Laced with powerful algorithms, the software keeps a track of scheduled appointments and periodically reminds the customers of their upcoming appointments. This ensures that a drastic reduction is seen in no-shows.
Allows companies to generate trends related to their services
You can keep a tab on which services have been booked the most through appointment booking software. A business can draw up data related to which service is most popular and then contribute resources to make it even more seamless. Such practice would be taxing if done manually without online scheduling software.
Appointment Booking Software Applications
There are a host of industries where appointment booking software can be used to automate processes and streamline services. Few of them are listed below:
Salon Booking
Salon booking apps make use of highly intelligent appointment booking algorithms, which allow clients to choose the service they want and from whom they want it. The app will notify you of any new appointments made and will also update your calendar suitably.
Doctor Appointment Booking
The days of feeling anxious while visiting your local doctor are long over. A doctor appointment booking app will not only let you book a suitable time slot, you can also access the services of specialist doctors depending on your ailment.
Doctor appointment booking apps can be integrated with online payment gateways which means payments are made right after a patient makes an appointment.
Fitness Appointment Booking
Services such as gyms, spas, and other workout routines can be scheduled without hassles using a fitness appointment booking app. Such appointment booking systems provide the option of monitoring the calendar of a service professional in real-time and clients can book the service provider of their preference.
Similarly, you can monitor the workload of your employees by seeing their booked appointments in real-time. This prevents double booking and makes sure that a service professional is dedicated to a select few clients at a time.
Dining Appointment Booking
Dining appointment booking apps help you to book the table in your favorite restaurant for your next meeting or hangout. Such apps let you see the availability and footfall at a particular time so that you can avoid large crowds. They also let you cancel the scheduled appointments with ease.
Dining appointment booking apps let businesses decide the time slot in which users can alternate or change their bookings.
Government Service Appointment Booking
Government service appointment booking apps ensure that ordinary citizens can now access government services including update or reissue of documents, resolution of grievances, postal services, etc. People can choose an appropriate time slot for utilizing those services.
Which are the best appointment scheduling software for small businesses
Each business has a different market and clientele. Therefore, their need for appointment software also varies accordingly. We list below some of the top appointment scheduling software currently available
Simplybook.me
This online scheduling software is a cloud-based software serving numerous businesses spread across various industries. Bookings are accepted on a booking site and you can collect client feedback to judge service performance and increase revenue. It also makes use of a dedicated SMS and mail service to alert both service providers and clients about upcoming appointments
Features:
- Setting up recurring services
- Customization including the inclusion of booking button on a Facebook page
- Multiple device access for the booking page
- Syncing of google or outlook calendar with simple.me calendar
Acuity Scheduling
This appointment booking software is suitable for small businesses and individuals as it allows them to have a real-time check on their own available time.
Features:
- Customized forms for intake
- Syncing of the calendar with user’s time zone
- Third-party apps integration
- Monthly subscription model available
Vagaro Software
Vagaro software is online scheduling software that is used by the spas and fitness industry to service clients. Service providers can either use Vagaro’s platform to create promotions for their services or embed their social media handles with the web portal and then share their content there.
Features:
- Automated emails
- The app is available for both Android and IOS version
- Employee management, payroll, and management of client information
- Graphics available for service providers to test the functionality of their services
Schedule
Shedul is an appointment booking software that caters to businesses involved in the fitness industry such as gyms, saunas and offers management of POS (Point of sale) transactions.
Features:
- Appointments can be booked via browser or app
- Histories of appointments for each customer
- Knowledge base support for each customer
- Activity dashboard for each customer
Appointy
Appointy online scheduling software helps schedule online orders and improve staff productivity. You can manage the staff across different locations using Appointy appointment scheduling software.
Features:
AI Tools 
Free 
Cloud Based 
For Windows 
iPhone 
For Android 
For Mac 
Small Business 
For Startups 
