Appointment Report Process for Identifying Double-Bookings

Updated 7/27/2022

Background

As a result of the March 11/12, 2017 release, a number of clients reported that they had lost visibility of some existing appointments. This was occurring both on the appointment grid and when viewing customer appointment history.

No appointment data was lost; it was just invisible in the application. This point has significant relevance for how this issue impacts your account.

What we are doing about it

We identified the issue and it was corrected overnight on March 15/16, 2017.

So your hidden appointment data should now be visible.

What does this mean for you?

Because hidden appointments will now be visible again, if you or your customers had booked appointments into slots that were already taken by one of the hidden appointments, it will appear that the slot is double-booked.

This won’t impact all clients, but for the ones that are impacted, this means you will need to take quick action to reschedule those customers who are double-booked. If you don’t quickly act on this, you may have two customers showing up at the same time.

Also, any double-booked customers will receive appointment reminders per your account configuration. That’s another reason to act quickly on rescheduling these customers – especially the ones with appointments within the next couple days.

How to identify possible double-bookings

If you don’t allow multiple bookings in time slots, you can identify double-booked slots simply by looking at the appointment grid.

You can also identify double-bookings by running an Appointment Report.

Running the Appointment Report

There’s a good chance you’ve already run Appointment Reports in the past, but to ensure you run one in a way that allows you to quickly identify any overbookings, do the following:

STEP 1: Access the report

Click on the Reports tab
Click on the Appointment Reports link on the left

STEP 2: Select filters

In the Filter section of the Appointment Report, select the appropriate filter criteria for date ranges, staff, or other filters you’d like to apply to the report.

Start with a smaller date range. If you have multiple locations, select just one location. For Appointment Statuses, select all statuses, except “cancelled”.

STEP 3: Select fields

In the Include in Report section, select the following (remember, your fields names may be different than the default terms):

Location
Date
Start Time
Staff Member (screen name)
First Name
Last Name
Service
Appointment Status

If you want to include fields for customer contact information, such as phone number or email, please do so.

STEP 4: Select sort criteria

In the Sort By section, select “Date (ascending).”

STEP 5: Select view option

For View Options, if you are skilled in Excel, select Excel. If you are not, select HTML.

STEP 6: Run the report

Click on the Run Report button.

Scan the report for any appointment times that are duplicated for a given staff member. Those represent slots that have been double-booked.

Here is an example of what your report might look like. Note the double-booking.

At this point, you can determine how best to proceed in rescheduling any double-booked customers.