Booking & Appointments: Let Customers Book You From Your vCard

Booking turns your digital card from a *contact page* into a *bookable business*. Instead of a customer screenshotting your number and hoping you reply, they tap a Book button right on your public profile, pick a time, fill a short form, and you receive the request instantly — by email, in your dashboard, and (if you have WhatsApp on your card) as a WhatsApp message. Nothing is double-booked, every request keeps the customer's name, email and phone, and you stay in full control of accepting or declining.

ScaanMe has two separate booking systems, and choosing the right one is the most important decision. An Appointment is for a single fixed slot — a 30-minute consultation, a haircut, a dentist visit. The customer picks one date and one time slot (like "14:00 – 14:30") from the slots you opened, and optionally pays a per-slot fee. A Service booking is for a *span of time* — a hotel stay, an equipment rental, a multi-day job — where the customer chooses a start date/time and an end date/time plus the number of people. Pick Appointments for "book me at this hour" businesses and Service bookings for "reserve me from this day to that day" businesses.

Both systems are opt-in per card and gated by your plan. The booking section only appears in your card editor if your plan includes it (you'll see an Appointment step for time-slots and a Service Booking step for date-ranges). If the section is missing, the feature isn't on your current plan — upgrade and it appears. You can enable Appointments, Service bookings, both, or neither on each card independently, so a clinic card and a rental card can behave completely differently.

What this does / why: the Appointment setup screen is where you define exactly when customers can book you and what it costs. Everything here drives the public widget: the days you leave empty simply won't offer any times, and the slot length you choose is the granularity the system generates. Open it from your card editor's Appointment step (or Edit an existing card and go to Appointment).

Start with Slot duration. Type how many minutes each appointment lasts — the field accepts 10 to 60 minutes and steps in 5-minute increments, with 30 as the sensible default. This single number controls the whole time grid: the system slices a 24-hour day into back-to-back blocks of this length, so a duration of 30 produces "00:00 – 00:30", "00:30 – 01:00" and so on. Change it and every day's slot menu instantly regenerates, so set this before you pick times.

Now open up your week under Days of the week. Each of the seven days (Monday through Sunday) has its own multi-select box — click it and tick every slot you want to offer that day, choosing as many as you like ("09:00 – 09:30", "09:30 – 10:00", "14:00 – 14:30"…). Leave a day's box empty to stay closed that day; when a customer picks that weekday the widget will simply say no slots are available. This per-day design is deliberate: you can open Saturday mornings only, skip Sundays entirely, and run a different rhythm on each weekday.

Set your Fee (the Price field, marked required). This is the amount per single slot. Enter 0 to make appointments free — that's the most common choice for consultations — or a real number for paid bookings; the field accepts decimals (down to thousandths, e.g. 9.990) to match low-denomination currencies. The price is shown to the customer in the booking widget as a read-only figure and stored with their request, so they know the cost up front and you have it on record.

Finally, fill "Want to receive email" under *Appointment Email Configuration* — the address where you want new-booking alerts delivered. This can differ from your login email, so a receptionist or a shared bookings inbox can get the notifications. Click Save to write everything. Important edge case: saving replaces your entire schedule for this card — the system clears the old slots and stores exactly what's on the form — so always review every day before saving, and re-tick any times you still want.

What this does / why: the Service Booking setup is the date-range alternative to Appointments — built for stays, rentals and multi-day jobs where a customer reserves a *period*, not a slot. Open the Service Booking step in your card editor. The very first control is the Service Booking: On / Off toggle; flip it On to expose the rest of the fields, or Off to hide service booking from this card entirely (your public form will return "Service booking is not enabled for this vCard" if it's off).

Under Basic Configuration, choose your Available days — a multi-select of weekdays (Sunday, Monday, etc.) telling customers which days your service operates. Then set the daily window with Start time (defaults to 08:00) and End time (defaults to 17:00). These two times are enforced on the public form: a customer's chosen start time must fall between your Start and End time, otherwise the booking is rejected with a message telling them the allowed hours. Set these to your real operating window so you never get a 3 a.m. reservation.

In Service Booking Email Configuration, enter the email address to receive booking notifications. Just like Appointments, this is independent of your login address, so reservations can route to whoever manages the calendar. Click Save. One key validation runs on every customer submission: if their start and end fall on the same day, the start time must be earlier than the end time, and the checkout date can never be before the check-in date — invalid ranges are bounced back with a clear message, so you only ever receive logically valid reservations.

What it shows / why: once a booking section is enabled, a Book Appointment (or service booking) button appears on your published card. Tapping it opens a clean modal form right on the page — no app, no account, no leaving your profile. This is the moment of conversion, so the form is deliberately short and the flow guides the customer step by step.

For an Appointment, the customer fills Name, Email and Phone (all required), an optional Notes box, then picks a date. The instant they choose a date, the widget calls the system to fetch only the slots that are still free for that weekday — any time already booked is filtered out automatically, so two people can never grab the same slot. They select one slot, see the Price you set, and tap Book Appointment. If a slot was taken a second earlier, they get a friendly "already booked" message instead of a clash.

For a Service booking, the form asks a little more because it's reserving a span: Name, Email, Phone (digits only), No. of Person(s), an Address, optional Notes, then a Service Start date + time and a Service End date + time. When they submit, the system checks the start time sits inside your configured hours and the dates make sense, then records the reservation. Both forms can be protected by reCAPTCHA if your site has it enabled, which quietly blocks spam bots without bothering real customers.

What it shows / why: every appointment request lands on your Appointments screen for that card (the bookings inbox). It's a table listing each request with Created date, Customer Name, Email, Phone, Appointment Date, Appointment Time, Notes, and a colour-coded Status. This is your single source of truth for who's coming and when — open it from the card's Appointments link in your dashboard.

Read the Status badge to know each request's stage. A new request is Pending (yellow) — it needs your decision. Accepting moves it to Confirmed (blue), marking it done moves it to Completed (green), and declining moves it to Canceled (red). The status isn't just colour: it drives which email the customer receives and which actions are still available, so keeping it current keeps everyone informed automatically.

Open the row's Actions dropdown to act. Update status opens an *Are you sure?* dialog with two buttons — Accept (confirms the booking and emails the customer a confirmation) or Reject (cancels it and emails the customer the cancellation). Reschedule opens a small form to set a new Date and Time; saving moves the appointment and sends the customer a rescheduled notice with a fresh calendar link. Complete marks the visit finished after it has happened and notifies the customer.

Service bookings have their own inbox — the Service Booking list for that card — because they carry different data (check-in, check-out, number of guests, address). Each row shows the customer details, the check-in and check-out, guest count and notes, with a status of pending, confirmed or rejected. From here you Accept (status becomes confirmed and the customer gets a confirmation email with a calendar link) or Reject (status becomes rejected and the customer is emailed). Keep the two inboxes in mind: appointments and service bookings never mix.

What it does / why: ScaanMe handles all the follow-up messaging for you. The moment a customer books, two emails go out — one to the customer confirming their request is received (status *Pending*), and one to you (or your configured notification address) alerting you to the new booking. Every later status change (accepted, rescheduled, completed, canceled, rejected) triggers its own email to the customer, so they're never left wondering. These are template-driven, so the wording is consistent and branded.

If your card has a WhatsApp contact field, new appointment requests also generate a ready-to-send WhatsApp message containing the customer's name, email, phone, the date, the time and any notes — pre-addressed to your WhatsApp number. This is a fast, mobile-friendly alert that lands where you actually look, on top of the email. It only kicks in when a WhatsApp field exists on the card, so add one if you want this channel.

For Google Calendar, each confirmed or rescheduled appointment includes a calendar link in the customer's email so *they* can add the visit to their own Google Calendar in one tap. On your side, the appointment row has an Add My Google Calendar action that opens a pre-filled Google Calendar event (titled with your business name, dated and timed to the booking) for *you* to save. Note this is a one-tap "add to calendar" link, not a continuous two-way sync — adding the event is a deliberate click each time, which keeps your calendar free of clutter you didn't choose.

Set slot duration first, always. Because the time grid regenerates from the duration, choosing or changing it *after* you've ticked slots will reshape the whole menu. Decide on 30, 45 or 60 minutes up front, then open your days. If you offer two service lengths (say a 30-min consult and a 60-min session), run them on two separate cards rather than trying to mix durations on one.

Use a dedicated notification email. Point the receive-email field at an address you (or your front desk) actually monitor through the day — not a rarely-checked inbox. Pair it with the WhatsApp field if you live on your phone, so a missed email never means a missed booking. Test it once after setup by booking yourself a slot and confirming the alert arrives.

Keep statuses current — they do the talking. Accept promptly so the customer gets their confirmation, mark visits Complete when they're done, and Reject the ones you can't take so the slot frees up and the customer is told. An always-Pending inbox sends no confirmations and erodes trust; a tidy inbox emails everyone the right thing automatically.

Match the right system to your business. If customers ask "what time can you see me?", use Appointments. If they ask "can I have it from Thursday to Sunday?", use Service bookings. Setting both on a card that only needs one just clutters your public widget and your inboxes — enable only what you'll actually use, and disable a service booking with its On/Off toggle if you pause that offering.

Can two customers book the same time slot? No. The moment a slot is booked, it's removed from the available list for that date, and a final check at submission rejects any clash with a friendly "already booked" message. The grid you see as the owner shows every theoretical slot, but the public widget only ever offers the genuinely free ones.

Why don't I see the Appointment or Service Booking section in my editor? Booking is gated by your plan. If the section is missing, your current plan doesn't include it — upgrading reveals the step. Each card also enables booking independently, so check you're editing the right card.

Do customers need an account to book me? No. Booking happens entirely in a modal on your public card — they just enter their name, email and phone, pick a time (or date range) and submit. No login, no app, no signup. That low friction is exactly why a tappable Book button converts so much better than "DM me to schedule".

What happens if I edit my schedule after people have already booked? Existing bookings stay safe in your inbox — editing only changes the *future* slots offered. Be aware, though, that saving the Appointment form replaces your whole slot schedule for that card, so re-tick every time you still want to offer before clicking Save, or you'll accidentally close days.

Does ScaanMe sync with my Google Calendar automatically? Not as a live two-way sync. Instead, confirmation emails carry an "add to calendar" link for the customer, and your Appointments screen has an Add My Google Calendar action that opens a pre-filled event for you to save with one tap. You stay in control of what actually lands on your calendar.

Can I receive booking alerts somewhere other than my login email? Yes. Both the Appointment and Service Booking setup screens have their own notification-email field, separate from your account email. Point it at a receptionist, a shared bookings inbox or a team alias — and combine it with a WhatsApp field on the card for an instant mobile ping on every new appointment.