Online double booking allows multiple patients to reserve the same time slot. We frequently see this come up with chiropractors, acupuncturists, and other practitioners who are able to manage simultaneous appointments, so we’ve put together this guide to help you if you’re in a similar boat 🚣🏻♂️.
Heads up! Online double-booking requires one of our advanced scheduling features, Rooms, which is available on the Thrive Plan.
As a Full Access user, let’s make sure you have those advanced scheduling features enabled in your account by heading to Settings > Schedule Settings to ensure Advanced scheduling is checked off, then Save.
If you’re not seeing the option to turn on Advanced Scheduling within the clinic-wide settings, you’ll need to upgrade your subscription to access this feature.
Setting Up Rooms
The first step to getting online double booking ready is to have your Rooms set up and ready to be assigned to Shifts.
Note that a Room in Jane doesn’t need to be a room specifically. A Room can be a treatment bed, a space in the gym, or whatever works for you and your practice!
To create Rooms, head to your Settings > Room Scheduling and select New Room.
You can go ahead and assign a Name and Location to your room then Create Room.
Once you’ve finished setting up a new Room, you’ll be presented with the option to Assign All Appointments & Shifts within a practitioner’s schedule to that Room. Feel free to Skip This Step if you’re unsure or don’t need Jane to take care of that extra step for you.
Assigning Rooms to Shifts
Once Rooms have been created, they can be assigned to Shifts within a practitioner’s schedule. This step is crucial to ensure that Jane knows a practitioner can be double booked online.
Rooms can be assigned to Shifts when using either the Edit Individual Shifts or Manage Shifts option of the Shifts drop down arrow within the schedule.
Edit Individual Shifts Option
If you are creating or editing an existing shift using the Edit Individual Shifts option, within the right hand Shift panel you’ll see a section for Room where you can Select a room… to assign to that Shift and Save.
If you are editing an existing shift within a series, Jane will ask you if you’d like to apply this change to All Shifts or Only This Shift. You’ll likely want to select All Shifts to save yourself some time (unless you don’t want to make changes to future shifts for a particular reason).
Manage Shifts Option
Manage Shifts is a great option if you’re creating a new schedule from scratch and you’re tackling assigning your Rooms at the same time.
In the Manage Shifts panel, for each Shift you can hit te icon menu to pull up additional options including a section for Room where you can Select a Room… before you Apply Shift Schedule.
Checking You’ve Assigned Rooms to Each Shift
Whether you select the Edit Individual Shifts or Manage Shifts option, once you’re done, your schedule should have two (or more, depending on how many patients you can see at once) Shifts side by side with a different Room labelled on each Shift.
Optional - Enabling Stagger Double Bookings
If you’d like Jane to ensure that your double bookings are staggered so that patients don’t start at the same time, we’ve got you covered on that too.
This setting is specific to each staff member so you’d want to pop into that
Staff Profile > Edit / Settings and click the Online Booking tab.
Within Online Booking, there is a setting for Stagger Online Bookings which allows you to set a stagger to your appointments when a patient is booking online. Select your stagger and hit Save.
Testing Your Setup
Once you’ve finished your hard work, we recommend using the Magnifying Glass feature in your schedule to double check everything is good to go.
If you can see appointment slots being displayed side by side, you can rest assured your patients have the option to double book appointments online.
We already know you’re a busy bee 🐝 so we hope this guide was clear and concise but please do contact us if you have any questions or need a helping hand. We’re always happy to chat!