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Does your company book appointments? Do your days seem filled with too many administrative tasks of booking, tracking, reminders, reschedules, etc.? You are not alone. According to the McKinsley Global Institute, over 40% of workers surveyed spend at least a quarter of their work week on manual, repetitive tasks of email, data entry, and data collection. That equates to 1.25 DAYS a week that are wasted.

Do you want to get back to doing what you love and stop the administrative work? One of the easiest ways to free up your time and money is with automated scheduling.

In this blog, we will go over the pros and cons of scheduling software, the scheduling options and cost, and how to determine your return on investment (ROI) for scheduling software.

If you are not using automated scheduling, let’s review how you book appointments. Imagine your client wants to make an appointment:

OPTION #1: APPOINTMENTS BY PHONE

A client *MUST call during open hours* to make an appointment. If you are closed, they
could go to a competitor that IS open or who uses online scheduling
could go days forgetting to call during your open hours, reducing the number of appointments they book per year.
According to Zippia, 40% of appointments are booked after business hours. That means close to half of your clients try to book during hours you are closed, increasing their frustration and inconvenience.

Multiple Clients? Someone could call while you are with another client, forcing you to ignore the client in front of you or the new client trying to book. Either way, this is a distraction from the service you are providing, and it wastes your time and your client's time.

OPTION #2: APPOINTMENTS BY EMAIL

Rarely does an appointment get booked with the first email.

First, you have to look at your schedule and reply with your availability
Second, your client has to respond to confirm the time or a few more emails are exchanged until a time and date align.
Not only does the emailing take time out of your and your client's days, but booking the appointment *usually takes at least one day* of back-and-forth emails.

MANUAL SCHEDULING SUMMARY: Both of these examples are only for one appointment, so if you book multiple appointments a day, appointment reminders, reschedules, and cancellations–ALL of these repetitive, time-consuming tasks can be easily automated. Not only that but now Clients are getting frustrated with companies that refuse to update and automate their scheduling systems.

Clients want the easiest, most efficient way to book appointments during their free time. According to Zippia’s survey, 67% of clients prefer booking online.

BENEFITS OF AUTOMATED SCHEDULING

In order to stay competitive and profitable as a small business, you must find ways to **improve efficiency** within your daily tasks and **provide superior customer service**.
Automated Scheduling has been around long enough that it is trusted and one of the easiest, most reliable ways to free up time in your day.

Reduction in Errors: We’ve all input an appointment day or time wrong at least once in our life. Automation vastly reduces scheduling errors.

Reduce Double Bookings: if you use shared spaces, rooms, or resources with others, automated scheduling prevents double bookings.
Better Communication: auto-responses remove the need to respond to every appointment confirmation manually, send reminders, and/or reschedule client requests. Plus, your clients also enjoy the reminders and superior customer service of confirmations and reminders.
Save time with Calendar Management (plus, block off vacation/personal days/etc to protect your time, too). Clients can automatically know your availability and book an appointment when it’s most convenient for THEM by looking at your online calendar.
Save money, yes, really! Think about the amount of time you spend on the phone or replying to emails about appointments. MOST of that time can be better spent doing money-making activities while booking and reminders happen automatically in the background of your day.
Automatic Alerts = Reduction in no-shows. According to Financesonline.com, automated scheduling reminder emails/texts help reduce no-shows by 29%
Tracking Information: one of my favorite parts! The scheduling software keeps track of usage, trends, hours, sales, subscriptions, gift cards, and more. If you want to take off a day, you can see which day is consistently the slowest so you don’t lose as many sales. If you want to sell gift cards or number-of-visit cards, the system automatically tracks those, so you won’t need to keep track manually.
Make more money by allowing online payment or deposits at the time of booking with Square or Paypal payments.

AUTOMATED SCHEDULING COMPANIES & OPTIONS

Acuity (Squarespace): several calendar and resource options, appointment types, blocked times, confirmations, reminders, and reschedule buttons. Online payments, deposits, tips, etc accepted at the time of booking (or within so many days of appointment) with Square, Stripe, and Paypal. Book in real time, allow coupons, gift cards, add-ons (can charge for) to appointments, tips, accounting/tracking, invoicing, client intake forms, and client management features/notes. Customized reminders and confirmations through email and/or SMS, plus several integration partners, too. Pricing varies based on features but ranges from $16-$30 (a $50 plan is HIPAA compliant). Most plans are $25/month. Contact Propel to figure out what plan works best with your company’s needs and receive 20% off.

Contact Propel Today

Calendy: similar to Acuity, but better for larger groups with team booking pages. Different appointment types, blocked times, confirmation pages, reminders, reschedule button, etc start at $12/month and increase with added features. Average cost per month $30. https://calendly.com/pricing

Square Appointments (the credit card processing company; different than Squarespace): can use multiple calendars, accept payments, send invoices, including cancellation fees, and the Square Assistant for auto reminders via email and SMS. The average price per month is $30. https://squareup.com/us/en/appointments/pricing

Google Workspace: a very basic version that has very limited features. It’s good for basic one-on-one appointments but has limited features and integrations, no online payments, and no ability to share resources or rooms. This is good for a one person company that needs basic scheduling assistance and averages $15-$20 per month. https://workspace.google.com/pricing.html

SimplyBook.me: between $10 - $25 for the main features listed above, including credit card payments with Stripe and Paypal, coupons, and add-ons.