When setting up online booking, you have a few options on what gets displayed online and how it is displayed. Most of your online booking settings can be managed by going to the Settings tab and clicking on Online Booking in the left sidebar menu.
From there, the settings get a bit granular, so let’s dive in 🤿!
- Location Settings
- Booking, Cancelling & Relationships
- Display Preferences
- Online Booking Start Time Exception
- Additional Notes & FAQ
Location Settings
To view the overall online booking settings for the location, you’ll want to head over to the Settings tab. From there, click on Locations in the left sidebar menu and Edit to the right of the location you’ll be updating:
Scroll down to the bottom of the page to the Online Booking section and toggle on Location Available to be Booked Online:
📍 A hidden location won’t appear on your Jane online booking site, making it unavailable for direct client bookings. However, search engines like Google still index this page, making it discoverable through search results.
Make sure to hit the blue Save button to confirm those changes and you’re all set!
Booking, Cancelling & Relationships
If you scroll down to the Booking, Cancelling & Relationships section of the Online Booking area within the Settings tab, there are a few more settings to consider:
- Allow Same Day Booking
- Do Not Allow Booking Within
- Show Openings as Contact to Book
- Late Cancellation Period
- Allow Cancellations
- Upcoming Appointments Limit
- Allow Patients to add Related Profiles
- Prompt Patients for additional information after booking online
Allow Same Day Booking
This setting gives you control over whether patients can book appointments for the current day through your online booking page. When this setting is enabled, patients can see and book available appointments for today. When it’s disabled, patients will only see availability starting from tomorrow onwards.
This feature is helpful if you’re looking to fill last-minute cancellations, want to accommodate walk-ins, or have a flexible schedule
Do Not Allow Booking Within
This setting determines the minimum advance notice required for online bookings. When you set a time buffer (like 2 hours, 24 hours, or even a week), patients cannot book appointments that fall within that timeframe from the current moment.
When you have Allow Same Day Booking enabled, this setting creates a granular buffer within that day. For example, you can allow same-day bookings but require at least 2 hours’ notice.
Show Openings as Contact to Book
This setting determines what happens to appointment slots that fall within your “Do Not Allow Booking Within” time restriction. Instead of hiding these appointments completely, you can choose to display them as “Contact to Book”.
When you have a “Do Not Allow Booking Within” time buffer set up, this setting gives you two options for handling those restricted time slots:
Option 1: Hide completely (setting unchecked)
- Appointment slots within the restricted timeframe don’t appear at all
- Patients only see bookable appointments outside the buffer period
Option 2: Show as “Contact to Book” (setting checked)
- Appointment slots within the restricted booking period are displayed as “Contact to Book,” prompting patients to reach out to the clinic to schedule an appointment
- Patients can see that time slots exist, but need to call to book them
You can also make your Shifts show up online, but still request that people Contact to Book.
The Contact to Book button will show up like this - with availability displaying but instructing the client to call or email your clinic to reserve a time.
If you want your shifts to be available but have certain treatments that you’d like to approve before they get booked, you can set just that treatment option to Contact to Book.
Check out our guide on Contact to Book for more details on how this setting works.
Late Cancellation Period
This defines the minimum notice period patients must provide when cancelling appointments, without being considered a “late cancellation.” This protects your schedule and gives you time to fill cancelled slots.
For example, if you set a 24-hour late cancellation period, patients can cancel online up until 24 hours before their appointment. After that point, they must call your clinic to cancel.
Appointments outside of the Grace and Late Cancellation periods will display the option to Reschedule and/or Cancel their appointment. Appointments outside of the Grace Period, but within the Late Cancellation period will only display the option to Contact to Cancel.
Before the Late Cancellation Period:
- Patients can cancel or reschedule directly through their patient portal
- Full self-service cancellation and rebooking options are available
Within the Late Cancellation Period:
- The online cancellation option is removed
- Patients see “Contact to Cancel” message instead
- The patient will need to call your clinic directly to make any changes
All reminders and notifications sent out to a patient about their appointments will include a message that lets them know about the late cancellation period. This ensures patients understand your policy from the moment they book.
Allow Cancellations
You can also choose whether patients can cancel their own appointments through their My Account portal, or if they must contact your clinic directly for all cancellations.
When this setting is toggled off, here’s what patient will see when they try to cancel their appointment online:
📍The grace period is a three-minute window that begins immediately after the appointment is booked.During the grace period, patients can cancel appointments without being affected by the Late Cancellation Period. To learn more about this, you can check out our guide: Online Booking Grace Period.
Upcoming Appointments Limit
This setting creates a maximum number of upcoming appointments that patients can have booked at any given time through online booking. Once a patient reaches this limit, they won’t be able to book additional appointments online until some of their existing appointments are completed or cancelled.
For example, if you set the limit to 5 appointments, once a patient has 5 future appointments booked, they won’t see any available time slots on your online booking page until one of their appointments passes.
If a patient tries to book an appointment, they will receive this error message: Sorry, you have exceeded the maximum number of appointments you can book
The upcoming appointments limit includes appointments booked administratively and appointments booked online. However, staff members have the ability to override this setting when booking appointments on behlaf of patients.
Prompt Patients for additional information after booking online
Jane provides several ways to automatically collect additional information from patients after they book appointments online. One quick way of asking for some details is after the online booking is complete. After a booking is completed, Jane will ask patients, “What is the reason for your visit?” by default if this setting is toggled on.
To customize the language, you can head over to the Settings tab, click on Language and look for the Additional Booking Information section.
Display Preferences
You can also update your Display Preferences a bit further down within the Online Booking area of the Settings tab.
Book by Treatment or Staff Member
From here, you can choose whether patients book online by treatment or by a staff member. By default, Jane lets patients book using both options, but you can adjust this to show only your treatments or only your staff members if you prefer.
Browse by Month
This setting determines if patients are able to browse through your clinic’s available month-to-month, as opposed to week-by-week.
To help your patients have the best booking experience, please note that when they select ‘View Availability by Month’ online, only the first shared treatment listed for each practitioner on the Schedule will appear initially. This keeps the monthly view clear and easy to navigate
Display Phone Number or Email Address
You can also choose to display your clinic Phone Number & Email Address on your online booking page. If you choose to do so, this will be found at the bottom of your online booking page:
📍 Disabling your clinic phone number and/or clinic email from displaying on your Online Booking page will also ensure that that information is not displayed on receipts and other financial documents.
If you need to update the phone number or email that appears on the online booking site, you can update this information within the location settings. A Full Access user can head over to the Settings tab and Locations within the left sidebar menu. Next, they’ll want to click on Edit to the right of the location and update the Contact Info fields.*
Clinic Timezone
This area is also where you’re able to display your clinic’s Time Zone for patients, in case your patients may be booking from outside your clinic’s physical location & timezone.
Check out our guide on Working with Patients Across Time Zones for more details on this.
Online Booking Start Time: Same Day Booking Exception
Depending on what you have set for the ‘Do Not Allow Booking Within’ time in Settings> Online Booking, same-day appointments may ignore the Online Booking Start Time setting based on the time the patient is booking.
When you have a ‘Do Not Allow Booking Within’ time selected, it dictates the earliest possible time an appointment can be booked from the present moment, effectively creating a new shift start time. Let’s go over an example to see this in action with the following rules:
- The ‘Do not allow booking within’ time is 3 hours
- The practitioner works 9 AM - 6 PM and only offers 30-minute sessions
- The practitioner also has their online booking start times set to start on the 30 minutes mark
Scenario
Say our patient logs on at 2:13 PM to look for an appointment. If they are looking at any dates in the future, they’ll see openings on the hour and half hour, so 9 AM, 9:30 AM, 10 AM, etc.
If they are looking to book for the same day, the first time offered will be the earliest spot 3 hours from the current time, rounded up to the nearest grid line.
In this case, it would be 2:13 PM plus 3 hours, taking us to 5:13 PM, which Jane would round up to 5:15 PM, 5:45 PM, 6:15 PM, etc. This means that same-day appointments can allow patients to book at potentially unexpected times, as Jane is using the current time on a rolling basis which will change depending on when the patient accesses the online booking site. Jane is simply trying to offer as much availability as possible.
Additional Notes & FAQ
How can I change the order of practitioners on the online booking site?
A staff member with Full Access can head over to the Settings tab and click on Online Booking within the left sidebar menu. From there, scroll down to Display Preferences and use the dropdown arrow to the right of Practitioner Order. Currently, the options here are hardcoded to sort staff by Alphabetical Order, Most Available or Random.
You also have the option of choosing which staff are added to the online booking site through their individual staff settings. This is a great option for clinics that have some staff who offer online booking and some who don’t. Check out our guide on Online Booking: Individual Staff Preferences for more detailed information on individual staff settings and shifts!
Depending on the nuances of your schedule, you may want to use Tags to manage the availability of rooms or equipment necessary for your treatments.
Be sure to contact us to let us know how we can help! :)