x

Room Bookng with Appointments

Hi

I have set up a small online store for a small sports club. This is working fine.

 

I've added Appointments to try to provide a room booking facility but am having trouble fudging it to make it work.

 

We have four rooms of differing capacities. Room #1 (4), Room #2 (7), Room #3 (6), and Room #4 (12). There is a single duty officer that opens and runs the club during each session.

 

I thought I could name the services as the rooms but each service needs a staff resource equal to the capacity of the room as Appointments automatically assigns a member of staff to each booking. While I can create fake staff members to provide that resource it means a total of 29 non-existent staff. This, in turn, means we'd be paying the top wack for the use of Appointments.

 

Has anyone else tried successfully to set up a room booking service or am I just banging my head against a brick wall?

525 Views
Message 1 of 6
Report Inappropriate Content
1 Best Answer
Admin

Best Answer

Just jumping in for Arie here, @MikeEGTSC!

 

I did some further testing on my end and it looks like in order for variations and services to be book simultaneously, you would need more than one staff at at time, even if we're using resources. 

 

About the Book tab still being visible - you can remove it by going to Edit Site > Header > Navigation > Navigation Links and remove it from there. 

 

Screenshot 2021-10-18 at 15.15.02.png

 

 

We do work with a number of booking and scheduling softwares like Acuity, Bookeo or Appointedd who may be better suited for what you are looking to set up here as well. You can find more information about them in our App Marketplace here

Tra
Community Manager, Square
Have a burning question to ask in our Question of the Week? Share it with us!

View Best Answer >

504 Views
Message 4 of 6
Report Inappropriate Content
5 REPLIES 5
Square Community Moderator

Hey @MikeEGTSC,

 

Thanks for writing back in to the community 👋 This is a great question! 

 

It sounds like you came to 29 staff members by adding the capacity of each room. You don't actually need to assign staff members matching the capacity of the rooms to the service. At the most, you'd need four staff, if you're expecting that all four rooms could be booked at the same time. I did some testing on my account, and here's how you can set this up without having to add 28 additional staff members 🙂

 

1. Create a resource for each of your rooms e.g Room 1, Room 2, and so on. 

2. Next, create a service for each room- you can name them in the same way, if you like.

3. Assign the corresponding resource to each service, so the Resource Room 1, to the Service Room 1, and so on. Use the service description to let your customers know about the capacity of each room. 

4. Click save once you're done. 

 

If you're expecting several rooms to be booked at the same time, it might be a good idea to add extra team members. To have all four services booked simultaneously, you'd need four staff members, but you could always start with one, and see how you go before making the decision to upgrade. 

 

Please let us know how you go, and if you have any other questions around Appointments! 

514 Views
Message 2 of 6
Report Inappropriate Content

I have set up Room #1 Service with 4 variations starting at 9:15am in 45 minute chunks.

I have added Room #1 Resource to each of the 4 variations.

I still cannot book the room more than once before it disappears off the set of buttons provided on the booking page. Even if I'm logged out and it doesn't yet know who is making the second booking.

I have found a Daily Appointment Limit in the Appointments > Settings > Calender & Bookings but this is per staff or per location. I really need per service or per resource. Or am I looking in the wrong place?

509 Views
Message 3 of 6
Report Inappropriate Content
Admin

Best Answer

Just jumping in for Arie here, @MikeEGTSC!

 

I did some further testing on my end and it looks like in order for variations and services to be book simultaneously, you would need more than one staff at at time, even if we're using resources. 

 

About the Book tab still being visible - you can remove it by going to Edit Site > Header > Navigation > Navigation Links and remove it from there. 

 

Screenshot 2021-10-18 at 15.15.02.png

 

 

We do work with a number of booking and scheduling softwares like Acuity, Bookeo or Appointedd who may be better suited for what you are looking to set up here as well. You can find more information about them in our App Marketplace here

Tra
Community Manager, Square
Have a burning question to ask in our Question of the Week? Share it with us!
505 Views
Message 4 of 6
Report Inappropriate Content

Also, having disabled online booking of appoinments the Book item is still on the main site's navigation but when I click on it I get a generic 404 Not Found rather than a more useful Sorry, online booking is not currently available. Please come back later.

508 Views
Message 5 of 6
Report Inappropriate Content

@tranguyenThanks for your comment.

Which takes me back to the start. Ah well it was worth a try.

 

I appreciate you comment regarding other software. The reason I came to the Square online shop was our previous shop collapsed with a fatal error which I couldn't resolve. Coming to square meant it was your problem whether it's the shop software, the payment system, or the web server software. I will, none the less, have a look at them to see if they can be useful to us.

 

TBH it looks like Square have a large part of what is needed to book classes, sessions, etc. Just needs some logic to hook it all up.

 

My comment regarding 404 not found was because the Book navigation link was added automatically by Square when I published the Appointments. It only seems right that you have a automatic removal or at least a simple failure page such as I suggested above. That way when Appointments are turned on again the user doesn't have to reinstate the navigation link manually. Luckily I copied it so I had the URL available to reinstate it.

 

Many thanks for your help. Looks like I have further investigations to do.

502 Views
Message 6 of 6
Report Inappropriate Content