I have a 2-person team and am researching scheduling software. What do all of you use and like or have you used and hated?
I don’t want a ton of bells and whistles, like the ability to take payments or communicate via the calendar. I just want a simple program that will allow clients to book with either of us on a schedule we set via a link we send them.
We aren’t a drive through, and I can’t cope with a free-for all. We need to be able to control the flow. So I guess we would need some sort of password or yearly invite system to actually book year-to-year. Right now, they get their documents to us either by TF or drop-off, and then, we call them when we are ready to book an appointment. Nobody can book before we’re ready. My concern with an online booking calendar is, once they have the booking link, in year 2 they will just book whether we’re ready for them or not.
I use the free portion of Calendly (so only the booking portion). I get to set the hours that I am available to meet with clients. Because I am a one-person shop, clients have learned that they need to book an appointment to be sure that I will be in the office. If they reach out by phone, I enter the appointment into the app myself. Clients also know to not book an appointment for picking up paperwork until they hear from me. My email to them indicates that their return is done and they can use the link below (my Calendly link is in my email signature) to book their appointment. The free portion only allows for one person schedule so you might want to have 2 different accesses to the app and booking (you could then both deal with only your own appointments and schedules). My clients like Calendly as it is simple to use.
I use the free Google calendar, which I link to my website. I’m sure there’s a way to send a link via email, but I usually send clients a link to my website and tell them to book from there.
Google calendar (at least the free version) doesn’t give you as many options/settings as some other software, but you can set up your availability, default appointment length, and how far in advance you require customers to book. When someone books an appointment, you get an email about it, and you can reject the booking if you want.
I’ve only been using it for a couple years now, but it works well enough for my purposes, and avoids me having to hire a secretary.
I use Microsoft bookings it allows me to control the hours, client to chose in person or teams meeting and they can select which person they want the appointment with. it sends out a confirmation email and a reminder the day before. I also have it set up that you can’t book an appointment the same day. you can even have it show to anyone, just your organization of no self serve page. Not sure if it has the ability to accept payments
I use Google calendar. I share it with my staff. Outside of tax season, I normally make my own appointments. I’m not really in favour of clients making their own appointments. I can normally talk to a client on the phone or by email and clear up an issue they think they need an appointment to deal with. I setup appointments when I want to review something face to face with a client. I might someday get there but I like to control my own time.
I would definitely only use this during tax season for finalization appointments. There ends up being so much wasted phone tag time for this. I’d send out a quick email that we’re ready to book with the link and phone number. Our older clients will still call in to make appointments and we’ll do it for them, but most of our younger clients would use a scheduler if we had one available.
The rest of the year, I would set appointments by phone or email conversation. There are so few that need to come in that a scheduler would be silly. It’s my hope we don’t have to hire an admin just to answer the phone for appointments during the 3 busy months.
I am using the paid version of RECLAIM.AI. Reclaim runs on top of the Google Calendar system.
My team is set up so each of us can access anyone’s calendar. This means that we can look at each other’s schedule and book multiple appointments and tasks for each of us.
For appointment scheduling, the system is set up for self-serve by clients, permitting them to select location (office or virtual) and the length of the meeting. They choose the date and time, and if later they need to reschedule, they can. We can provide a meeting link which will permit us to get more than one of our staff into the meeting. And we have a round robin link for clients to drop off or pick up records, which assigns a random staff member to handle the client walking in the door.
Reclaim also offers task scheduling, which means that as clients drop off records, my staff can process, then add a task within the next responsible party to have the task within their calendar, in an appropriate priority.