Booking two patients at the same time

Sometimes two patients need the same practitioner at the same time, and that is a decision you take at the desk rather than something the diary should overrule. You can book the second patient over the first, deliberately, and both appointments stay in the diary.

When a clinic does this

Two people who arrive together, sisters or a couple, both having the same quick treatment and both happy to be seen in the one half hour. Or an experienced practitioner who knows that a particular half hour holds two of these comfortably. It is the exception a member of staff makes with two names in front of them, not a change to how the day is sold.

How to do it

Book the second patient exactly as you would book anybody: open the diary, choose the practitioner, the date, the time and the treatment.
If that time is already taken, the message names who is already there, for example Ashleigh Smith at 15:30 is already booked with Jennie Wallace. Book Joanne Smith at 15:30 as well? It appears beside the button at the bottom of the panel, so you still see it on a phone.
Press Book anyway, double booking to go ahead, or Pick another time to back out and choose something else.

Nothing is written to the diary until you press the button. Up to two appointments are named; if there are more than two in that time you are told how many instead, because at that point the column tells you more than a sentence can.

The offer belongs to the booking you were making. Change the practitioner, the date, the time, the treatment or the duration and it disappears and the button goes back to Create appointment, so a double booking is never something that happens on a later click.

What the diary shows

Both appointments sit side by side, each taking a share of the practitioner's column for its whole length. The one booked first is on the left.
In day view each one is wide enough to read the names. In week view the column is narrow, so a shared slot reads as two appointments at about that time rather than as two names. Use day view when you need to see who is who.
A visit where a second treatment was fitted inside the visit's own time is still one appointment in the column, listing both treatments. It is not split in two.

What does not change

Online booking still shows that time as taken. A double booking is a choice made in clinic. It never puts the slot back on your public booking page, and no patient can ever book on top of another.
Each patient gets their own confirmation and their own reminders, exactly as they would for any other appointment. Nothing is sent that ordinary bookings would not send.
Each one is its own visit: its own payment, its own forms, its own record. Nothing is merged.
The waitlist is not offered a time somebody still holds. If one of the two cancels, the other is still in that window, so nobody is told the slot is free until it really is.

What it will not do

It is never offered over a lunch or an admin block. A block is time you have taken out of the day, so a booking on top of it is a mistake rather than a choice, and you are told the time clashes.
It is never offered on your public booking page. Only a member of staff, working the diary, sees the choice at all.
You cannot make one by dragging. Moving an existing appointment onto a taken time still refuses, as it always has; a double booking is made when the appointment is created.
If the diary changed while the message was on screen, perhaps a colleague moved or cancelled the appointment you were booking over, nothing is booked and you are told: The diary changed while you were looking. Check the time and try again.

One note for reports

An hour holding two appointments counts both, so utilisation for that hour can read over 100 per cent. That figure is left as it is, because it is true.