13 things you should be doing in your appointment book

Your salon appointment book is great for, well, booking appointments. But, it also has many capabilities that go beyond basic scheduling to help you drive revenue and provide an amazing customer experience.

Here are 13 tips that we think you’ll love.

Drag and drop appointment blocks to quickly make changes. This is useful on busy days when you have to move appointments around to maximize providers’ available times and make use of those small gaps between services.

The appointment log tracks all movement so you can quickly look up a history of all changes. And, a color coded bar indicates if the customer requested a specific provider – so you know not to move this particular appointment block.

Duplicate guest records can be created if a customer uses a different number from earlier visits or if the receptionist spells the customer’s name differently (e.g. Katy rather than Katie).

Software with this merge feature combines the two records, keeping service, product, package, membership, and gift card history intact.

You can limit the ability to merge to a manager – so that it’s a controlled process.

When a guest books an appointment through online salon booking software, you’ll know immediately if they’re a member or a package holder and their service should be redeemed from these accordingly.

The salon appointment software system also makes it easy to check and book against services in a series package.

When a customer books an appointment, they can request a specific employee. The appointment block will reflect this request, so the receptionist knows not to reassign this service to any other service provider.

The system also tracks the number of requests that each employee receives. This is a good indication of their ability to retain customers. You can use this to reward employees as well as set goals for number of requests that an employee should aim for.

By default, your online salon booking software sorts employees by name. However, you have additional options to sort employee names. You can use this to reward and motivate employees as well as make the front desk’s job easier. For details on different ways to use this capability, check out this post - salon appointment booking software.

Use a biometric device (fingerprint scanner) for staff to check-in and check-out. The system not only tracks this for legal purposes and payroll, but is also used to track punctuality, which are part of performance goals that you can define in the system.

Your front desk should be closing the register every night. The system will automatically trigger a text message or email to you if they fail to close the register.

Keep your staff in the know. If you’re not using a mobile app for employees, then you can print your day’s schedule using the Print Appointment Book button in your appointment book.

You can also print each providers’ schedule for a week.

Many times the service provider needs to look up historical information for a service. For example, when giving a massage, the therapist should be able to look up the guest’s consultation form and any preferences from an earlier visit.

This allows a service provider to offer a highly personalized experience to all your guests.

Store prescriptions or create them on the fly for any guest. Prescriptions can include home care instructions as well as medications with dosage and instructions.

Your front desk can create and assign prescriptions to a doctor for approval and signing. Once signed by the doctor, the prescription is locked and cannot be modified. These prescriptions can then be emailed to the guest or printed and given to her before she leaves the center. (Note: if your prescriptions are simple instructions that don’t require a doctor’s approval, you can disable that step.)

If you’re still using a physical petty cash register, switch to our digital one. Petty cash entries automatically deduct from your register for easy end of day close out.

Whether it’s a group of friends or a corporate event, book appointments for the entire group easily and quickly. Bills can be paid individually or by a single person.

The day’s sales and collections data is available from the appointment book. These are useful to track down an invoice, if for example end of day closure amounts don’t match up.

You can choose to hide access to the financial data from your front desk, in which case only your manager would have access.

If you’re a spa, salon or medi-spa owner and looking for software that can help you drive business results, learn more about Zenoti software today.