Resource Booking - Working With Limited Resources

📣 Please note that Resources are a part of our Thrive Plan. For more info on the different plan options in Jane, check out our Pricing Page.

Do you have an appointment that requires a certain type of resource which you have a limited quantity of? This may be something physical, such as a single x-ray machine or three laser machines you share among multiple practitioners in the clinic. Perhaps you have a limited amount of treatment rooms in the clinic which are booked by practitioners on a first come first serve basis. Your resource may even be a bit more conceptual, such as a practitioner who can overlap their appointments most of the time but not for certain appointment types.

Jane’s Resource feature helps to manage this by ensuring that you don’t double book your resources. Jane will consider the resource availability when booking appointments requiring those resources, both administratively and on your Online Booking Site.

When should Resources be used?

It’s important to note that Resources work by limiting appointment availability, so you want to be sure you actually need Resources before implementing them in your account or you could be restricting your availability unintentionally.

A good question to ask yourself if you’re considering whether you need to create a Resource is “Is there a shared pool of resources that other practitioners and I will be using during our shifts?”. If the answer is no, you likely don’t need to use Resources.

Here are a couple of example scenarios to help you better understand when Resources are or are not needed:

Scenarios where Resources are NOT needed

• Let’s say that you always work out of the same treatment room. This wouldn’t require a Resource because they are NOT required if no one else can use that room for the duration of your shift anyway. You can either assign your shift to that Room, or manage room assignment outside of Jane.
• Let’s say that you are a practitioner working in a clinic and you require an x-ray machine for your appointments but you’re the only one in the clinic who uses the x-ray machine. This wouldn’t require a Resource because Resources are NOT required if you’re the only one who can use that piece of equipment.

Scenarios where Resources ARE needed

• Let’s say that you have multiple rooms in your clinic which are shared among practitioners on a first come first serve basis. In this case, resources ARE required because we can only have one appointment in the room at a time. So, we need a way for Jane to know that once an appointment is booked in a room, other appointments cannot be booked in it at the same time.
• Let’s say that you and another practitioner work at the same time, and you both offer laser therapy. However, there’s only 1 laser in your clinic. In this case, Resources ARE required because you’re both working at the same time and you BOTH might need that Resource during your shift.
• ⭐️ Special Mention ⭐️ Another scenario is if you can double-book certain types of treatments but not others. For example, a chiropractor may be able to overlap subsequent visits, but not initial visits. We cover this set up in our Putting Resources to work guide.

Still not sure if you need to use Resources? Reach out to our Support Team for help!

Set up Resource booking

To use Resources, a Full Access user will need to enable advanced scheduling features. Head to Settings > Schedule Settings to check on Advanced Scheduling and Save.

Feel free to jump to a specific step below:

• Creating Resources

• Assigning Resources to treatments

• Viewing Resource availability

Creating Resources

Once Advanced Scheduling is enabled, you’ll stay in Settings and head to the Resources tab under the Advanced Scheduling heading. Hit that blue New Resource button to get started.

You can name your Resource and assign it to a location. The Resource Pool is the category it will belong to. So for example, you might have a Resource Pool for CO2 laser machines, and then each Resource in the pool will be named “CO2 Laser 1”, “CO2 Laser 2”, and so on. When an appointment is booked that requires a laser machine, Jane will look in that Resource Pool and assign one of the machines to the appointment.

❓What is the difference between a Resource and a Resource Pool?

Ah, excellent question! A Resource always belongs to a Resource Pool. You can think of a Resource Pool as a category of resources.

For example, let’s say you have two CO2 lasers in your clinic. Each CO2 laser would be a Resource, let’s call them “CO2 Laser 1” and “CO2 Laser 2”. Those two lasers are in a Resource Pool, let’s call that “CO2 Lasers”, which can be drawn from when booking an appointment that requires it.

If you only have one resource, your Resource and Resource Pool will likely have the same name.

For example, if you only have one x-ray machine in your clinic, you can create a Resource named “X-Ray” which is assigned to a Resource Pool also named “X-Ray”.

Alrighty, now that you’ve created your Resources, it’s time to assign those to your treatments.

Assigning Resources to treatments

Once you have created your Resources, you’ll want to let Jane know what appointment types require those resources.

To do so, pop into your Settings > Treatments, Classes & Group Appointments to Edit any appointments that require a resource (or multiple resources!) or create a New Treatment if needed.

At the bottom of the Edit Treatment page you will find a section for Advanced Scheduling Settings. Using the drop down menu on the required Resource(s), you can let Jane know what is required for an appointment to be available. An appointment can require more than one Resource – Jane will make sure they are all available.

Viewing Resource availability

When Resources are in play, the handy Magnifying Glass feature will become your best friend.

When viewing your schedule, in the left-hand menu under each staff member there is a list of their offered appointments - each with their own magnifying glass. Hitting that magnifying glass will display all available time slots for that appointment in orange. Jane does the work for you and ensures that those orange slots have the required resources available for the treatment to be chosen. Simply click the orange slot that you would like and complete the booking process.

In our example screenshot, we can see that Jane is only offering a 10:30 AM appointment in Rohan’s schedule even though he has the time available at 10:00 AM, 12:00 PM, and 12:30 PM. This is because both of our CO2 lasers are in use at those times by Zoey and Dr. Fiona. 10:30 AM is the only time slot available in Rohan’s schedule that also has the required CO2 laser available.

Clicking the Resources button in the upper-right of your schedule will show you which of them are in use throughout the day.

Awesome possum, that’s a wrap for this overview guide on all things Resources.

As mentioned above, Resources are one of the more complex features in Jane so we’ve also put together a Putting Resources to work guide to walk you through common scenarios where Resources are used. We highly recommend checking this guide out 👀.

We also put together a Resource FAQ & Troubleshooting guide as a resource (Ha! Get it?) for you to use.

Don’t forget that we’re right here with you if you’d like a helping hand with Resources. Feel free to check out our Contact Us page.