Managing Appointments

All Plans

The appointment system in CloudBridal helps you manage your bridal shop's schedule while providing a professional booking experience for your customers. This guide covers how to effectively use the system in your daily operations.

Contents

• Initial Setup
• Calendar Overview
  • Key Appointment Stages
  • Business Hours and Scheduling
• Creating Appointments
  • Appointment Types and Rules
  • Smart Time Slot Selection
• Payment Integration
• Waitlist Management
• Blocking Time Off

Initial Setup

To configure your appointment system, refer to the Appointments documentation.

Calendar Overview

The appointment calendar serves as your central hub for managing customer appointments. You can view your schedule in day, week, or month format, with each view optimized for different planning needs.

Key Appointment Stages

Each appointment status serves a specific purpose and may trigger different system behaviors:

• Pending Appointments: Require confirmation before being finalized. These appointments are requested by the customer through the booking system. This stage can optionally be skipped if you enable the Auto Confirm Appointments setting for the related appointment schedule.
• Confirmed Appointments: These appointments are confirmed by the staff member, either through a pending appointment request or if a staff member manually books in a customer.
• Declined Appointments: Occurs when a staff member declines a pending appointment request.
• Cancelled Appointments: Occurs when a customer cancels an appointment, or if a staff member cancels a confirmed appointment.
• Incomplete Appointments: Occurs when a confirmed appointment could not be completed, such as a no-show.

Business Hours and Scheduling

The calendar automatically enforces your configured business hours and scheduling rules. When scheduling appointments, the system actively helps prevent common issues:

• Automatically detects and warns about double-booking situations
• Enforces buffer times between appointments to ensure smooth transitions
• Highlights scheduling conflicts and resource availability issues
• Shows real-time room and staff availability
• Clearly marks store closure days and blocked times

The system is designed to guide users toward proper scheduling while still allowing manual overrides when necessary. This flexibility ensures you can handle special circumstances while maintaining efficient operations.

Creating Appointments

Creating appointments in CloudBridal is designed to be intuitive while ensuring all necessary information is captured. The system guides you through the process while enforcing your shop's scheduling rules and policies.

Appointment Types and Rules

CloudBridal handles different types of appointments with specific rules and requirements for each:

First-Time Appointments The system enforces stricter information collection for new customers, including required contact details and event information. These appointments often have specific duration requirements and may need particular resources or staff expertise.

Follow-Up Appointments The system allows you to look up customers by name to schedule a follow-up appointment.

Smart Time Slot Selection

The time slot selection process is intelligent and context-aware. When selecting a time, the system considers:

• Room and resource requirements
• Appointment type duration needs
• Required buffer times
• Existing appointments and blocks

💡 Tip: While you can override suggested slots, the system will warn you about potential conflicts. This helps prevent scheduling mistakes while maintaining flexibility for special circumstances.

Payment Integration

If enabled, the payment system integrates directly with appointment creation and management. All payment processing is handled securely through Stripe. For more information, see Stripe Integration.

Waitlist Management

If a slot is fully booked, the customer can add themselves to the waitlist. If the slot becomes available, the appointment will surface in the Pending Appointments section, where a staff member can confirm the appointment after ensuring the customer is still interested.

Blocking Time Off

You can block time off for things like store closures, holidays, and even create partial schedule blocks if you just need to block a specific time range during a day. For more information, see the Blocking Time Off FAQ.