Booking appointments

Before you start

A doctor can only be booked during their working hours. If a doctor has none, or none on the day you want, set them up first: Doctors and schedules.

Booking an appointment

1. Go to Appointments → Book Appointment (or New Appointment on the dashboard, or Book Appointment on a patient's page, which fills in the patient for you).
2. Patient & doctor
   • Patient: search by name, number or phone. New patient? Click Register new patient and fill in the short form without leaving the booking (see Registering patients).
   • Doctor: search by name, registration number or qualification.
3. Schedule
   • Pick a Date. The free slots for that doctor and day appear. Click one to fill in Start time and End time, or type the times yourself.
   • The end time follows the doctor's consultation duration (or your clinic's default slot length). Change it for a longer procedure.
4. Details
   • Appointment type: First Visit, Follow-up, Consultation, Procedure or Emergency.
   • Booking source: how the booking came in, Reception, Phone, WhatsApp, Online or Doctor Follow-up. Used for your reports.
   • Notes: anything the doctor should know, for example "Pain since 3 days, wants extraction discussed".
5. Click Book appointment. You'll see "Appointment booked."

Finding the soonest slot

When the patient says "whenever is earliest":

• Find soonest across all doctors checks every active doctor's free time ("Checking every doctor's availability…") and lists each doctor with their next open slot, or No slots. Click a doctor to fill in that doctor, date and time.
• Book next available fills in the next open slot on the chosen date for the doctor you've already picked (on today's date, only times still ahead of now).

Either way, check the details and click Book appointment. Nothing is booked until you do.

Double bookings are blocked

A doctor can't have two active appointments in the same slot. If you pick a time that's taken, booking stops with an error. Choose another slot. Cancelled appointments free up their slot straight away.

Automatic reminders

If appointment reminders are switched on in Clinic Settings → Preferences, the patient gets a WhatsApp reminder ahead of the appointment (for example 24 hours before, depending on your Reminder lead time). You don't need to do anything. See Automatic messages.

The reminder is only sent if the patient hasn't withdrawn consent for messages and your clinic's WhatsApp switch is on.

Booking from other places