Appointments are typically used for 1:1 services or for small groups.

If you're a small to large group business, consider using classes as this can make scheduling, booking and check-ins more streamlined. If you typically offer 1:1 services, appointments are a great fit for this.

You can always split your offerings between appointments and classes depending on size.

Appointments allow your customers to book services, staff and venues on their own. Or you can do the booking for them if you prefer. To get an appointment schedule up and running we use something called an appointment board.

An appointment board allows us to assign staff, services and venues to be bookable at the availability times we choose.

To create one, click Appointments > Board > Create Board. Boards have many customizable settings. Use this guide to help you choose which settings are right for you.

After creating a board, we'll assign services, staff and venues, then set their availability.

Boards are where you customize your Appointment schedule. Here's an explanation of each major setting.

This determines:

Private (not public) boards allow you to hide the schedule from customers and do all of the scheduling yourself. You can change a board's public setting any time.

Your board settings will, by default, mirror your 'general appointment settings'.

Below, to illustrate how each setting affects your schedule, I've opened a separate tab with a customer facing schedule page.

You can do this by clicking Appointments > Schedule > Checkout (using command + click or control + click).

Note: settings must be saved from your 'edit board' page before they will show in the adjacent schedule.

This controls how often appointments can start (e.g., every 15, 30, or 60 minutes). How granular do you want your available start times to show to your customers?

Only allow customers to book appointments at specific times within the hour. For example, this host has appointments only available to start every quarter past the hour. You can choose more than one of these options.

Buffer times allow you to add time on the beginning or end of appointments for things like prep or cleanup.

Buffer times can be viewed from your staff facing schedule by clicking 'options' in top right.

Note that:

Allow overlap allows you to control if other appointments can be booked over the beginning or end of existing appointments. This can also be controlled at the individual service level.

This setting allows you to give customers the option to book more than one service in a single checkout.

It comes with some restrictions (like requiring random staff selection) which you can learn more about here.

Choose whether to display available times in a weekly or daily format for customers.

Here's a week view.

And a day view.

How far out would you like your customers to be able to book? This only affects when they are doing the booking. You can override this when you are booking for them. For infinite days shown in advance, put 0.

The order for customers to choose staff, venue, and time. If your customers tend to prefer individual staff members, lead with staff.

Enable random staff selection to distribute bookings evenly. Options are "no," "yes (optional)," or "yes (required)."

This also distributes bookings evenly, but across venues.

This is basically a courtesy setting for your staff. If you opt for the 60 minute default shown above, then this means your staff will have at least 60 minutes to make into the studio before the appointment starts.

Note that teachers receivelick Studio Setup > Transactional Templates > SMS > sent to teachers > search for Appointment reservation.

Decide if multiple staff can be booked at the same time in the same venue.

(ie. if you have a venue assigned to this board called room 1 and its too small for more than one appointment to be booked at once, you probably don't want overlapping appointments enabled.

If you have a large room where many appointments can be taking place at once, then overlapping appointments by venue is probably just fine).

Click Appointments > Boards > select your board > select staff > Assign Staff.

(If staff need to be added, click Settings > Staff Accounts. Assign them a role as needed, then follow the steps above.

All staff will by default have their availability set to Monday to Friday from 9am to 5pm. You can change this with this dropdown menu > availability times.

Next, choose venue > Assign venue. (A venue is a location).

If you need to add a new venue, click 'Manage Venues' or, in the left hand nav, click Studio set-up > Locations > Add location.

Once created, the new location will be available for assignment to appointment boards and when scheduling classes.

Select services > Assign Service > select your services.

If services need to be created click 'Manage services'.

Services have many customizable settings. Here's an explanation of each one and screenshots of where it affects your staff or your customers.

First to see a service's settings, click Appointments > Services > edit a service using its dropdown menu.

Here's where the name description will show to customers on mobile (middle) and desktop (right).

If you're using an AI agent it will also be able to read these descriptions to use in its answers to customers. Without descriptions it may not be able to answer questions about a service.

This is the color you see in your staff facing schedule. If you're color relationship looks the opposite of whats shown below you can control this from board settings.

Note: if your appointments are fully red with your service color populating the top left corner of the appointment, you can change this from your schedule page.

Click Appointments > Schedule > Options > uncheck 'Swap colors of background & status').

While we're here, this also where you can view your prep and finish times, or buffer times which we'll cover later.

You can assign a service to a board right from the service's 'edit/create' page. If a service is assigned to a board, its bookable by customers.

Note that, while on the right there are no check marks, these services are still assigned to this board.

Pricing will show next to the service (see two screenshots up). Tax will show at checkout if the customer has not chosen to use a membership.

Appointment settings control ALL boards at once.

So, if you have multiple boards and realize you have a change that needs to be made to all of them, click this back arrow first.

Then, from the board list page, click Actions > Appointment settings.

The Appointment settings page mostly has all the same settings as an individual board settings page. For an explanation of how each one works, reference the 'board settings explained' section.

Remember, the changes you make here will be applied to all boards. You can always override these changes at the individual board level later.

What's different about this page at the bottom -- the General settings section, which we'll cover below.

When you click Appointments > Schedule, which schedule would you like to see?Note: You'll still have access to the others board's schedules using this dropdown menu.

This is the color your appointments will show on your staff facing schedules -- unless you've changed the color of a specific service (just edit the service to change this).

We've edited the first 7 individual services here. The rest get the default color.

This allows you to control what your customers see when they're running through a checkout.

Off to the right we have a screenshot of what customers see when you choose 'show both, price in currency as primary'.
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Toggle this on if you'd like an email sent to your studio email. You can update this email from Settings > General Setup.