Frequently Asked Questions
Does the calendar allow overbooking on the same calendar at the same time?
It’s up to you and how you setup the booking form settings. You can limit your services and packages to timeslots with no appointments, 3 appointments, 10 appointments, or accept any time slots – the choice is yours. Many shops and mobile detailers, including ours, have several staff and can handle more than one appointment at the same time so we configure ours to allow overbooking on timeslots with 1-2 appointments or less but maybe you want to restrict bookings to only those slots with no appointments and that is perfectly fine and capable within OrbisX.
Checkout the full video tutorial walk-through on setting up your booking form and limitations here:
What views does the calendar have?
You can toggle back and forth between monthly, daily and weekly as well as set your preferred default view. The monthly view is by far the most efficient and the calendar has both the birds-eye view with the daily list accessible on the same page with a click. This has been the most effective way to book appointments especially as you can see which days are full, empty, needing a few more appointments etc. See a screenshot of our shop in June. The green dollar values show days we met our daily goal. The grey ones show days we didn’t hit it but we still had jobs. This tells our booking manager Joe when he should try and fill up spots.
When a client calls and asks what’s available, how can you tell?
To see days you should book appointments for, it is always best to check the calendar and see which days have fewer appointments or haven’t hit your daily goal (you can set your daily goal under Admin -> Settings -> General).
Every shop or mobile operation is different. Some shops book multiple jobs at the same time and need the cars all day. Other shops book appointments staggered throughout the day allotting travel time. Other shops book 2 jobs a day one at 9am and one at noon only.
Every situation is different so accommodating each scenario means offering the most flexibility and showing a birds-eye view of the month allows you to see the # of jobs per day, # of mobile jobs too (for example our shop does both) and the total daily time and daily $ all at once so you can make the best decision of where to book jobs.
Do prices for each service auto–populate when making an appointment?
They can, if you select the services & packages and then click the Magic Wand button that will auto-calculate your pricing for you and set it in the price field. Because prices tend to vary significantly for each job it is faster to put in a price rather than have to delete a value that auto-populates and then type in the value. The price for each appointment can be quickly typed into the box and you can always change it if you upsell the customer as well.
Is it required to put the customer's address field when booking?
The data you enter is up to you. This is done on purpose because sometimes customers are providing the address later or aren’t sure etc. and there still needs to be a way to block in their time to hold it for them.
The entire system is designed to give users control over the information that goes in the system as much as possible to allow for the maximum flexibility to operate your business. It’s much better to remove limitations which can cause headaches in software and instead put you in the driver’s seat and allow you to enter the data you need.