Appointment Book

How it works

1. Tap the kind of place you run — a salon, a beauty parlour, a doctor's clinic, a dental clinic, physiotherapy, a spa, a repair or service centre, a photo studio, an office, a tutor or something else. It fills in the usual hours and a list of services with their usual length; switch off what you do not do.
2. Type your place's name, and how many people take bookings. Each person — a doctor, a stylist, a chair, a room — gets a column of their own, so two can be booked at the same time.
3. Tap Book. Type the name and phone, tap what it is for, and pick one of the free times the app offers. WhatsApp opens with a confirmation typed in; you press send.
4. On the day, tap Here when they arrive and Done when they leave. Someone who walks in without booking is a Walk-in: the app gives them to whoever is free first.

The app has four parts, in the bar at the foot: Day (the day's bookings, with the free times between them), Calendar (the month, with how many are booked on each day), People (everyone who has booked, with their visits — it is called Customers, Patients, Clients, Students or Guests to suit your place) and More (hours, staff, services, holidays, messages and moving to another device).

The free times are worked out for you

A time is free when the whole booking — start to end — fits inside the opening hours and does not overlap anything already booked with that person. Start times are offered on the grid of your day (every 15 minutes, say), counted from the time you open. Say you are open 9:00 am to 1:00 pm and 5:00 to 8:00 pm, with a 15-minute grid. That is 16 places in the morning and 12 in the evening — 28 a day for each person. With a 30-minute booking at 9:00 and a 45-minute one at 10:00, the day looks like this:

A new 30-minute booking can then start at 9:30, at any quarter hour from 10:45 to 12:30, or from 5:00 to 7:30 in the evening — 20 starting times in all, and the booking sheet shows exactly those. Make the booking longer and the list gets shorter; pick another person or another day and it changes with them. Tap a free stretch on the Day and the sheet opens at that time.

Nothing is ever refused. To squeeze someone in, or open early for one person, type the time under Another time. The sheet says what it overlaps or that it is outside the hours, and books it anyway.

On the day

List or Grid at the top switches how the day is shown. The list is easiest on a phone. The grid puts each person in a column with the hours down the side, the closed times shaded, a red line at the present time and a red edge on anything that overlaps — useful on a tablet or computer at the front desk. Tap an empty place in the grid to book that person at that time.

Tap Print for the day's list on paper — time, token, name, phone, what for, with whom — or Copy list to paste it into a message for your staff.

Confirmations and reminders on WhatsApp

After a booking, WhatsApp opens with a confirmation typed in to that person's chat: who, when, with whom, what for and, if you use them, their token number, followed by your place's name, phone and any line you add (directions, “please come 10 minutes early”). The evening before, the Day shows how many of tomorrow's bookings have not been reminded; tap it and send each one from the reminders sheet, one tap each. The app remembers which went. Moving a booking offers to send the new time; cancelling offers to say so.

Messages can be written in English, Malayalam or Hindi (More → Write messages in). Nothing is sent by this page. It opens WhatsApp with the words in place, and you press send there. A browser cannot send messages by itself or in a batch, and the app has no server to send them from.

Repeat visits, tokens and people

• Repeat (under “Note, amount and repeat”) books the same time every week, every two weeks or every month — physiotherapy sessions, a weekly class, a monthly review. A repeat that lands on a closed day or a busy time is still booked, and the message says how many did.
• Token numbers go 1, 2, 3… in the order bookings are made, starting again each day. They are on by default for clinics and can be switched on for any place under More.
• People. The first time a name and phone are booked, that person is added to People. Next time, typing the first letters of the name or a few digits of the phone finds them, and the booking fills in what they had last time. Their page shows every visit, no-shows, cancellations, the next booking and a note only you see.

Hours, breaks, holidays and staff away

Each day of the week has its own hours, with an optional break — a clinic's morning and evening, or a lunch hour. Close a holiday or a week away under More → Holidays, or tap Close this day on the Day. With more than one person, Who is in marks someone away for one day, so their column takes no free times or walk-ins.

An app on your phone or front-desk computer

Tap Install app to put the Appointment Book on your home screen or desktop. It then opens full screen like any other app, starts at once and works with no internet. When a new version is published, a bar says so and Update restarts on it — no booking is touched. Nothing comes from an app store, and there is no account to make.

Everything is kept in this browser on this device and never uploaded. That also means it is not on your other phone. Use More → Export everything to save one file, and Import from a file on the other device to carry on there; importing replaces what is on that device. Bookings as a spreadsheet saves a CSV that opens in Excel or Google Sheets.

What it does not do

It is a book kept on one device. Customers cannot book themselves online, and two phones do not share one book — there is no server. It sends no SMS and no message by itself, takes no payments and keeps no accounts: an amount typed on a booking is a note of what was charged. A clinic's note on a patient is a reminder for the front desk, not a medical record.