Fake-It-Filter, What's the deal here?

[djhspawn]

Researching what Square can do and came across this:

Fake-It-Filter  

The Fake-It-Filter allows you to manage how busy you’d like to appear on your client facing bookable calendar.

• Off: Does not apply any filters to your calendar.
• Slightly Busy: Removes about 10% of your total open time.
• Moderately Busy: Removes about 30% of your open time.
• Extremely Busy: Removes about 70% of your open time.  

How exactly is this applied to the schedule?

[djhspawn · Accepted solution]

From my testing it literaly just cuts the apointments available by the percentage. If half the day is filled with real apointments it still cuts the amount of apointments by 50% if you have that setting. Could someone confirm this?

If this is the case the feature could be a little smarter by taking that percentage down as the day fills with apointments.

[EJ_]

Hello.

You're correct in regards to the fake-it filter removing the percentage of available appointments.

I can see how an auto-filter that changes depending on appointments booked can be helpful. Great request!

I'll send this over to our Product Team as a feature request. If we can get this implemented for you we'll definitely announce it!

[Devon]

Hey there @djhspawn - that sounds like it'd be pretty nifty. I think I understand why that'd help, but can you explain what you think the value would be if we had a feature like that on Appointments?

[djhspawn]

@Devon, I would be happy to explain as I lack the extensive programming knowlege required and the time to take this idea to market myself =).

So here is the scenario. My signifgant other (we will call her Trina) is an etiticitan that does her own scheduling. This means when a customer calls/text to schedule an apointment Trina generaly tries to schedule this customer so that it works best for Trina's schedule. One example is if Trina is already booked from 1P-5P and gets a call for a customer for a 15min apointment. Trina is NOT going to schedule that customer at 10AM and leave a learge gap between the 10AM apointment and the next 1PM apointment, so Trina will try to schedule that customer for another day or closer to her 1PM apointments as possible for that particular day. This ensures as little gaps between apointments as possible.

Now, that same scenario, if the customer had wanted a 10AM apointment for an hour long service, Trina would be more inclined to book that customer as a 1hr service carries much more weight than a 15min apointment.

Having a smart scheduling feature like this would allow for indivudals (not folks working for a salon/spa) to more inclined to accept online booking rather than to just try to manage customer scheduling themselves. Trina has found that this single type of feature is missing from all client management systems that are geared toward her.

Let me know if you would like some more clarification, I am also available for phone contact.

[hsanto]

I'm totally with ya here, unfortunately being our own boss also includes accomodating to clients and their schedule and availability, not what is always best for us.

[tippy808]

Same here!  Iʻm a hairstylist and book my own appointments.  So I would absolutely want them to book as close to my other appointments to avoid a big gap in my schedule.  I know some hairstylist apps allow you, the user of the account to manually choose where to block yourself off and open it as your schedule is booked up.  Maybe they can put in a manual option for that setting instead of just random?

[Chiot]

Thank you for the Trina example.

I orginally had the Fake-It Filter on at 50% and started getting calls from customers, complaining I was booked for the entire month. Now that is removed, it is booking on the half-hour, leaving 15 minute gaps throughout my day.

How exactly can this be avoided? If I have an opening in my schedule, let's say, 10:15 through 3:15. It books at 10:30 or 2 (finishing at 3). It's a huge waste of my work hours.

Should it be 25%? 40%? Today, in a 12 hour work day, I have 5 gaps of 15 minutes (75 minutes). Incredibly frustrating as I had to call and shift customers around.

[Fireweed0301]

Hello there, 

I work as a massage therapist and have just switched over from my old online scheduling system to square appointments. I have yet to make online booking available to clients just yet because I am unable to see an option in settings to cluster appointments together. This was available to me with my old software (fullslate), and now realize just how valuable that setting was.

It allowed me to leave the scheduling up to my clients, whereas now I find that I will have to take the time to go in and manually schedule sessions in order to avoid any gaps... Unfortunately, this will more than likely me a make-it-or-break-it situation moving forward, so fingers crossed there is a way to make it work!

[Alex_]

Hi @Fireweed0301,

Thank you for posting in the Seller Community. 

I would be happy to look into this as a potential feature or see what we have available. To make sure I am understanding, what do you mean by "clustering appointments together?" Could you provide an example? Thank you. 

Please let me know by replying in this thread. I'll keep an eye out for your response.

[tippy808]

Hi @Fireweed0301,

itʻs the same issue as djhspawn  from ‎12-14-2016 05:02 PM  itʻs been an issue for almost 4 years now.  i hope they are able to add this feature on soon!  that would be awesome, thatʻs the only reason i donʻt do online booking!

from djhspawnʻs post:

So here is the scenario. My signifgant other (we will call her Trina) is an etiticitan that does her own scheduling. This means when a customer calls/text to schedule an apointment Trina generaly tries to schedule this customer so that it works best for Trina's schedule. One example is if Trina is already booked from 1P-5P and gets a call for a customer for a 15min apointment. Trina is NOT going to schedule that customer at 10AM and leave a learge gap between the 10AM apointment and the next 1PM apointment, so Trina will try to schedule that customer for another day or closer to her 1PM apointments as possible for that particular day. This ensures as little gaps between apointments as possible.

Now, that same scenario, if the customer had wanted a 10AM apointment for an hour long service, Trina would be more inclined to book that customer as a 1hr service carries much more weight than a 15min apointment.

Having a smart scheduling feature like this would allow for indivudals (not folks working for a salon/spa) to more inclined to accept online booking rather than to just try to manage customer scheduling themselves. Trina has found that this single type of feature is missing from all client management systems that are geared toward her.

[Fireweed0301]

@tippy808 Thank you for your prompt response! Essentially, what I would like to do is have online booking set up so that when a client goes online to book they are only shown available appointment times directly before or after appointments that have already been booked. This will eliminate any gaps in my schedule throughout the day, and save me a lot of hassle!

Because this is such an important peice of the online booking process, I’m afraid I won’t be able to make online booking available without it. 

Thanks again for all of your help! 

[Katiedd6]

Cluster booking would allow a schedule to be more productive. Let's say a service takes 1 hour, if someone schedules a 3:00pm appointment, my availability would show only times around that such as 2:00pm or 4:00pm. Clustering all appointment times together to obtain maximum productivity.

I like Square but this is a huge flaw for me. Surely there is a way this could be incorporated into the system.

[Joe]

This is a good call-out, @Katiedd6 - I agree, this would be so beneficial to many Sellers, and I'm grateful that you suggested it here.

I am going to pass this along to our our Product Teams as a Feature Request. Should any changes come down the pipeline, you will be the first to know here. 

Thanks, again!

[SAM9]

I have not switched from my current scheduling system to Square Appointments for this very reason. When I have a day with no clients I like all availability to show, but once a client books the first appointment for that day I only want the available options for the next client to be before and/or after the first appointment. This groups my client appointments back to back with no large gaps in my day, a much more efficient way to run a one person business.

I check back every so often to see if I can switch yet, once this happens I will be able to do so.
Thank you. 

[Kelleysmith]

The advantage is you still have the opportunity to fill your day if clients need to book on that day online vs automatically having a percentage of your day that can't be filled. This would be extremely helpful, because I have days or weeks that are completely booked by real people and days and weeks that are completely blank

[Bronze_Palms]

Was this ever answered? Curious to see if there was an update here. Showing available appointments as it fills up makes more sense that closing them off entirely. @Joe 

[esscom]

When a client goes to book an appointment it won’t let them book in the evening. My hours of availability are till 6pm, it won’t let me book after 4:30pm. It says I’m booked all evening and I am not. How do I change this? 

[puka]

Hey @esscom - I've merged your thread here as it sounds like you might have the Fake-It Filter on which is described above. You can disable it within your Appointments settings. Hope that helps!

[esscom]

No unfortunately I don’t have it on I’ve checked that already 

[Chad]

@esscom that's weird. On the calendar on your dashboard are there any messages about the calendar being in a different timezone than your business hours?