The actions described in this lesson require a Manager permission on your clinic.
Who can book
Go to your Online booking page by clicking on Online booking under My clinic > Scheduling settings in the top bar and then scroll to the Online booking settings section.
By default, no one can book online. Clients can view the services that you provide and browse your practitioners' schedules, but they must call or submit an online booking request (if enabled, more on this later in this course) to book an appointment.
Alternatively, you can only allow existing patients to book directly, or allow new and existing patients to book directly. New patients will be asked to sign up for an Embodia account to complete the booking.
You can also add a minimum age restriction; if added, the patient will be asked to enter their date of birth before being able to proceed.
You can also specify who, besides the treating practitioner, to notify when a patient schedules an appointment.
Sign up form
If you allow new patients to book online, the patient must first create an account to finalize the booking. By default, they will be asked for their email address, first name, and last name. If you want the patient to provide more information (such as their phone number), you can make use of your patient properties.
You must first have your patient property created on Embodia - learn how in this article.
Then, go to My clinic > Scheduling settings > Online booking. Scroll down the page to the section Online booking settings:
To add more fields to the sign-up form, click on Add a field and select one of your patient properties. You can also mark if you want this field to be required in order to be able to create a new account.
While there are no restrictions on the number of fields you can add, we recommend only adding the necessary fields on sign up and relying on questionnaires and intake forms to collect more elaborate information.
Booking request forms
Go to your Online booking page by clicking on Online booking under My clinic > Scheduling settings in the top bar and then scroll to the Online booking settings section.
A booking request is a simple contact form on your online booking portal that clients can fill out to request an appointment.
You can customize your booking requests:
- You can override the default call to action (CTA) displayed to the patients at the top of the booking request
- You can override the default labels used on the default fields
- You can ask for additional information from the patient by using patient properties. To learn more about patient properties, please visit this help article.
Once a booking request is submitted, you will receive an email notifying you of the request.
Viewing the booking request
If you are the clinic manager, sign in to your practitioner account and then click on My consults > Booking requests.
Allowing Clinic Admins to view booking requests
To allow a clinic admin to view a booking request, you first need to add a clinic admin account to your clinic (you can learn how to create a free clinic admin account here). Once added, the clinic admin can sign in by clicking on Clinic admin sign in in the Embodia home page and then entering their credentials.
After signing in, simply click on the Booking requests tab to view all the submitted booking requests:
Pooled availabilities
Go to your Online booking page by clicking on Online booking under My clinic > Scheduling settings in the top bar and then scroll to the Online booking settings section.
By default, when a client selects a service, they need to select a practitioner to view their schedule availability. If you would like to give the client the option to see the pooled availabilities of all practitioners who provide the selected service, you can enable the pooled availabilities.
Collecting payment information on booking
Go to your Online booking page by clicking on Online booking under My clinic > Scheduling settings in the top bar and then scroll to the Online booking settings section.
By default, when a client books an appointment, they are not asked for their payment information. You can override this behaviour by:
- Requiring clients to enter their payment information: if this option is selected, when trying to schedule a consult using online booking, the client will be asked to provide their payment information if they have not previously done so. They will not get charged on booking.
- Require clients to pay for the appointment upfront: if this option is selected, when trying to schedule a consult using online booking, the client will be asked to pay the full amount.
- Require clients to partially pay for the appointment upfront: if this option is selected, when trying to schedule a consult using online booking, the client will be asked to pay a percentage of the full amount (specified by you).
Please note that you must select a payment method connected to Stripe for this setting to fully take effect.
This will set the default behaviour for collecting payment information on booking for your clinic. You will also be able to override this default behaviour on a per service basis.