Custom booking questions and fields?

[Thomas2]

I'm a bit surprised this doesn't seem to be possible. I just started a small tutoring/academic coaching business and I need to know whether the students are over 18 or not. Ultimately, it's a bit of an honor system thing, but not being able to ask for a parent's name is going to cause problems over the long term for things like processing credit cards and just knowing if the person that I'm scheduling is even legally allowed to enter into a contract or use a credit card.

[#2]

Hey @TrinityTreasure, welcome to the seller community and thanks for bringing this up.

I went to check on this and the ability to add customized fields to the booking flow is not available at this time. I can see how this feature would streamline the check-in process for a wide variety of sellers. For now, you may need to verify additional details outside of the app.

We'll circle back with any other developments or solutions as they become available. Please let us know if you have any other questions in the meantime!

[#3]

Hi @Thomas2

Welcome to the Seller Community!

Custom booking questions or fields when your customers book appointments is definitely one of the more popular feature requests we've seen. 

Our Product Team is currently tracking this, and your personal use case for age limits is one that I haven't seen before, so thanks for sharing your feedback! Hopefully our Product Team can come up with a solution for this in the near future. 

Currently, the best workaround to collect additional information is to request that it be provided in the appointment notes when they book. Here's a screenshot from the customer booking side for reference: 

You can add instructions to indicate if they're 18+, and if not, to provide their parents name in the Service Description field so your clients can see it when they book. Here's another screenshot of the Service Description section: 

Hopefully one of your fellow sellers can chime in with a workaround that they currently use for their business. 

Let me know if you have any other questions 👍🏼

[#4]

Hi there, and welcome to the Seller Community!

I know it's pretty generic, but there currently isn’t a way to add custom fields to your online booking site, but this is a popular feature request the Appointments team is tracking.

What would be the reasoning behind changing the "How do we say hello?" section? Our Product Team would love to hear the feedback. 

[DaoDeJing]

I also want this. In fact, I desperately need this!

I'm rather discouraged that this question was asked 10 weeks ago and hasn't even been acknowledged. 😞

[DaoDeJing]

Since moving my booking system over to Square Appointments about 1 month ago, I've lost an estimated 12% of my revenue. 😞

My customers must prepare in advance of their appointment. If they do not prepare appropriately, then the appointment will need to be rescheduled or cancelled. So I really want a way for a customer to prove at the time of booking that they understand what they need to do in advance (a simple text box would do).

In numerous places all over my website I tell them to give me this info in the "notes" section when they make a booking, but very rarely does anyone do so. And contacting every customer who makes a booking to confirm the info kind of defeats the purpose of having an automated appointments system...

Although most of the time they arrive prepared and it isn't an issue, in an alarming number of cases they are not prepared and the appointment must be rescheduled. This seriously annoys the customer (sometimes they cancel entirely and stomp off in a huff), and it makes me lose the revenue from that time slot which could have gone to another customer!

I was begrudingly putting up with it because I didn't realize just how big a problem it was, but now that I've been using Appointments for a month I decided to crunch the numbers and was shocked at the 12% figure. This is really hurting me!

I hope it wouldn't be difficult to create a custom, required field in the appointment settings. It could even just be a free text box like the notes box that's already there, just with the option to make it required and the ability to change its name.

Someone else already made this request about 10 weeks ago, but no one ever replied to them... 😕

Thanks for your time.

[Helen]

@DaoDeJing and @Pawdicures I've moved both of your posts to this thread so we can continue to track interest in this feature. Apologies for the late reply @Pawdicures! 

I really appreciate the time you took to share your experience @DaoDeJing. I can definitely see how having custom fields and required fields would be useful for many business types. I'll share your feedback about how this is impacting your business with the Product Team.

If this feature becomes available we'll update this thread.  

[monika1]

I am wondering it you are able to allow some clients to book on line and others to request appointments? Or even have some services available to book on line and others for request?

[EJ_]

Hi @monika1

There isn’t a way to add custom fields to your online booking site, and you're currently only able to choose one option in regards to how your services are booked. 

What would be your specific example of having certain services by request only?

You can try switching your Reservation Guarantee preference to " Business must accept or decline all appointment requests. which would give you a bit more control over which services are getting booked. 

[GoodLife]

This reply created from merging an existing thread: "Are changes coming to square appointments where you can add forms and more customization?"

We are trying to switch from Acuity to Square Appointments.  We strongly want to do this so we can share the same platform.  It's very apealing, however, there are still a couple items Acuity offers that we are hoping are going to be a part of Square soon.  OR, hoping they are available now and we are missing something?  

The 2 items we are wanting are:

1. Customizable forms for customers to fill in when making an appointment.
2. Customizable email content per each apointment type.  

Please let us know any information available.  Thank you.  

[puka]

Hey @GoodLife! We've definitely heard similar requests from other Sellers and so I've added your post to this thread. While I don't have an ETA on if or when these features might be implemented, the Appointments team is actively tracking feedback for it here and so your voice has now been added. 👍🏼

[LuckyBird]

I am also inquiring about the ability to create a liability waiver for our clients to sign before receiving services from us.  We currently are trying to go completely paperless as well as keep everything organized.  Is this something Square offers?  Please let me know.  Thanks!

[beaswax]

We can't be the first people to think of this, right?! this would be an awesome feature to add! 

[Redlight2015]

Want want want!