Moving an appointment

Plans change. There are two ways to move an appointment.

Drag it

On the Calendar, pick the appointment up and drop it on the new time. In day view you can also drag it sideways onto another practitioner, as long as they offer that treatment. The move happens straight away.

A bar appears at the bottom of the screen telling you where it went, whether the patient is being told, and offering Undo. You have thirty seconds to change your mind. If the old slot is still free and the appointment is still eligible, Undo puts it back and stops the queued message. The diary tells you if it cannot undo the move. The message itself leaves a few minutes later.

Or use the drawer

1. Click the appointment. Its drawer opens from the right.
2. Change the Date or Time.
3. Press Save changes.

Use this one when you are changing more than the time, since the same drawer handles the status, the treatment and the notes in a single save.

Changing the treatment, when they change their mind in the chair

Pick a different Treatment in the drawer and the visit is repriced. Anything already paid stays on the visit and comes off the new total.

The appointment keeps the time it already holds. Swapping a 20-minute treatment for one that normally takes 30 does not stretch the booking, and it does not stop you saving. If you judge that the longer treatment fits the time you have, that is your call and the diary does not overrule it.

What the drawer does is tell you. When the new treatment usually runs to a different length you get a line saying so, for example that it usually takes 30 mins while this appointment is 20 mins and will stay that way unless you change it. If a Use 30 mins link is available on that line, tap it to match the treatment's usual length in one go.

Making an appointment longer or shorter

If Appointment length is available on a confirmed patient appointment, you can set a length from five minutes to 24 hours. Type the number of minutes and press Change length. On the diary itself you can also drag the grip on the bottom edge of the appointment for a quicker change.

If the appointment is part of a visit with several treatments, later treatments in that visit move with it. Other patients never move, and payments stay with the visit.

Telling the patient: switch it on first

Move notifications start off. The clinic owner can enable the email under Settings, then Messaging, under Booking. The email and the text are switched on separately: Appointment moved sends the email and Appointment moved (SMS) sends the text. Both start off, and a staff move sends whichever you have switched on. You can change the wording there too.

The bar at the bottom tells you whether a move notification is queued, and whether the patient will be emailed, texted or both. Patient messaging preferences, channel switches and delivery limits can prevent a message from sending.

When enabled, a move notification is queued when:

• it lands on a different day, or
• it moves to a different practitioner, or
• it shifts by more than fifteen minutes on the same day.

The message shows them the old time and the new one, so nothing is ambiguous. Anything smaller, such as nudging a booking five minutes to tidy a column, sends nothing at all. Blocked-out time never sends anything, because there is nobody to tell.

If you are already on the phone to the patient and would rather not send it, the bar at the bottom lets you turn the message off for that one move before it goes. That is per move, not a setting: the next move still sends.

Reminders follow the appointment

If you move an appointment later and a reminder had already gone out for the old date, that reminder is stood down so a fresh one sends ahead of the new date. This happens whether or not you have the move message switched on.

If you move an appointment earlier, be aware the patient still has the old reminder in their inbox and there may not be time for a new one before the new slot. That is the case worth a phone call.

The reservation fee stays put

Anything already paid stays attached to the booking and moves with it. There is nothing to re-take and nothing to refund, and the balance owing is unchanged.

Multi-treatment visits move as one

If the appointment is part of a visit with several treatments booked back to back, dragging any part of it moves the whole visit and keeps the treatments in order, with their gaps intact.

What you cannot drag

Appointments that are completed, cancelled, marked as a no-show, or still awaiting a reservation fee cannot be dragged. For an appointment marked in error, correct its status before moving it. For an unpaid booking, wait for payment or resolve the booking before moving it.

An appointment that has already started can be dragged to a later time, at now or in the future, which is what you want when the morning is running behind and the diary needs to say so. It cannot be dragged earlier, because that would claim the visit happened at a time it did not; if you try, you are told This appointment has already started. Drag it to a later time, or open it to change its time. The drawer can still move it in either direction, since a typed time is a deliberate one. If any treatment in a multi-treatment visit has started, the whole visit follows the same rule.

Dropping an appointment into the past asks you to confirm first, for the same reason.

Moving never double-books

If the new time overlaps another booking for that practitioner, the appointment springs back and you are told That slot clashes with another appointment. This works the same whether you drag it or type it. Moving a booking never authorises an overlap. If Extend and overrun is available when adding a treatment to an existing visit, that is a separate deliberate action. See Adding a treatment to a visit already in the diary. For creating two bookings at once, see Booking two patients at the same time.

When you change the time in the drawer, the message goes further and names the booking that is in the way, with its time, for example that it runs into a named patient at 14:30. That is the one you need to move, so you do not have to go hunting for it with somebody sitting in front of you.

The old slot can go to your waitlist

If you have waitlist auto-fill switched on, an eligible freed slot can be offered to matching patients after the 30-second Undo period. The check runs every five minutes and skips times still occupied by another booking. Patients follow the claim page's steps to book. See Waitlist auto-fill and claim links for how that works.

Turning it off again

Same place, and still the clinic owner: Settings, then Messaging, under Booking. We would leave it on once you have it on. A patient who turns up on the wrong day remembers it for a long time.