What is the 'Ready to book' booking status?
💡 Top tip: Receptionists can check this article to see how 'Ready to book' appointments will appear in the 'Appointments' tab for booking.
The booking status dictates whether or not an unbooked appointment is bookable in the 'Appointments' tab. Once a clinician has reviewed and added all the details needed for an unbooked appointment, they can move the service appointment to 'Ready to book', making it visible to the admin team for booking.
This status is set to "Not ready to book" by default, to ensure receptionists can be certain that any appointments appearing as ready have been clinically approved and are definitely suitable for booking. It also improves reporting accuracy for practice managers.
When viewing a treatment plan in the 'Chart' tab, all unbooked appointments will show a booking status on the left side, labelled 'Ready to book'. By default, this will be set to draft.
Not ready to book - The unbooked appointment won't show as bookable in the 'Appointments' tab, and it cannot be added to the clipboard or booked in by the admin team. This toggle is turned off for all unbooked appointments by default when they are created.
Ready to book - This allows the appointment to be booked by the admin team, and it can be added to the clipboard. We recommend reviewing the appointment and ensuring you have added any relevant information (such as duration, booking interval and notes) before setting the status.
Once the appointment has been booked, the booking status will be replaced with the booking details.
💡 Top tip: It is possible to set 'Ready to book' status by default. This is not recommended, as having the status as "Not ready to book" by default consistently leads to improved booking conversion - however Level 4 users can customise this in practitioner settings if needed.
What is the 'Update appointment information' window?
When you complete and charge an entire service appointment - if none of the subsequent appointments in the treatment plan are marked as ready to book - a window will appear prompting you to confirm whether the next appointment is ready to book, and to update any details needed.
It will identify which is the next appointment chronologically in the treatment plan, and will ask you to verify the following details:
Turn on the 'Ready to book' toggle.
Add or update the duration of the appointment.
Add or edit the booking interval.
Add any booking notes to help the admin team when booking.
You can also click 'Show X more appointments' to do the same for any future appointments in this treatment plan. They'll display in chronological order, and you can choose which ones (if any) you wish to edit, while leaving any that aren't ready for editing.
When you're ready, click 'Update appointment information' - this will update the appointment details and make it available for booking in the 'Appointments' tab.
If you don't have time, you can click 'Not right now', but ensure you come back to it later and ready the appointment for booking, to ensure the admin team have the info they need.
This ensures that unbooked appointments are regularly reviewed and updated, to make booking appointments smooth and efficient.
