Identify two types of appointment systems

How much time do you spend every day organising your work calendar? What about sending or replying to meeting invitations? Managing client bookings, scheduling team meetings, handling last-minute cancellations and rescheduling appointments—and remembering whether they are in person or virtual—often ends up demanding far too much of your time.

There are many useful online calendars, but they cannot usually combine so many different types of appointments with different booking methods into a single calendar. You need a solution built for your needs.

The answer is TIMIFY’s online calendar, customised for your business. You can schedule appointments according to their requirements, regardless of whether it is an individual or group appointment, in person or virtual, or if specific rooms or equipment need to be reserved. No matter the type of appointment, TIMIFY keeps track of everything, allowing you to reclaim your day.

When most people think of online booking, the first thing that comes to mind is 1-1 appointment scheduling, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

From yoga studios to transportation companies, there are many uses for online booking that perhaps you may not have heard about. For example, banks use TIMIFY’s online booking to reserve conference rooms and other items that they may use in their financial appointments.

Online booking helps your business become more appealing to customers who value digitalization and easy access 24/7, for all appointment needs they may have.

1. Time-slot scheduling

TIMIFY was developed to offer an easy way to implement an online booking system. We’ve come a long way since then, adding a huge range of features and transforming the software into one of the world’s leading appointment management systems.

For example, do you need buffer times between appointments for sanitising or processing paperwork? Or would you like to divide appointments into segments to assign different staff or rooms required at different times? No problem!

Your customers always have full control over their appointment. They can easily change or cancel it at any time if necessary. All changes are synchronised in real time, which means there are no double bookings, cancelled slots become instantly available again, and your staff are always up-to-date.

Learn about all the features TIMIFY provides for optimising your appointment management:

10 features and tips to optimise how you plan and manage your appointments online with TIMIFY

10 features and tips to optimise how you plan and manage your appointments online with TIMIFY

2. Team meetings

Although TIMIFY provides an easy online appointment system, many companies also use TIMIFY to manage their internal calendars and team organisation.

Finding common availability between team members with different working hours, holidays and time off can be difficult, especially when trying to coordinate multiple regions or time zones. With TIMIFY, you get a central view of everyone’s availabilities, with changes shown in real time. 

If you want to create an appointment with several colleagues for a specific duration, enter your search parameters and the system will show you all available meeting times. You no longer need to send emails requesting availabilities because TIMIFY ensures everyone’s schedule is up-to-date.

Discover how our team uses TIMIFY for internal scheduling and organisation:

Working together as a remote team – TIMIFY shows how it’s done

Working together as a remote team – TIMIFY shows how it’s done

3. Custom bookings

In addition to customer appointments, businesses also have to schedule external meetings with suppliers, vendors and other service providers. TIMIFY’s Booking Links App makes it possible to schedule pre-set online booking options with only a single click.

For example, if you work regularly with a partner or agency, you can use the Booking Links App to create individual booking links that only they can access and that only show time slots you pre-selected. They can schedule individual meetings or recurring appointments. They can even book a series of meetings, scheduled over multiple days—whatever suits your needs.

Maybe you need to meet with a vendor in person once a month at the office or you have a client you need to speak to online every Thursday or Friday afternoon. You can create personalised booking links, setting your meeting parameters, so that the other party only needs to select their availability within those parameters. All other details are set in advance and automatically applied to each instance of that meeting.

Use the Booking Links App to simplify scheduling your external—or even internal—meetings:

Accelerate your booking process with the Booking Links app

Accelerate your booking process with the Booking Links app

4. Group appointments

No matter whether you want to organise a yoga course, a seminar on personal finance or a team meeting to plan your office party, TIMIFY’s group function helps you manage group events, providing various online booking options. 

You can specify the maximum number of participants or limit the number of spaces a single person can reserve. You can also create recurring events by selecting this option ahead of time or by simply copying the event in your calendar.

Another great feature is that you can allow your customers to make optional or mandatory online payments in advance.

Learn everything you need to know about planning courses and events with several participants.

5.  Walk-in appointments

While booking appointments online has several advantages, some companies or organisations rely mainly on walk-in or spontaneous appointments. TIMIFY has created a unique solution to make this process easier and integrate it with your calendar.

TIMIFY’s Queuing App provides drop-in clients the option of being added to the existing appointment calendar. When they arrive at your location, clients can interact with a display to see the next available appointment for the service they require, and book it instantly.

If your schedule does not rely upon fixed appointments, such as at a public office or in shops with limited visitor numbers, you can use the Queuing App to let visitors draw a waiting number by scanning a QR code, which gives them all further information directly on their mobile device. 

Not only does the QR code notify them of their place in the queue, but it also provides an estimated waiting time and a notification when their turn is near. This allows them to repurpose their waiting time to run other errands or grab a coffee, which makes visitors happier and reduces the number of people in waiting rooms.

Learn more about the possibilities with the TIMIFY Queuing app:

Safe, convenient in-person services with TIMIFY virtual queue management

Safe, convenient in-person services with TIMIFY virtual queue management

6. Virtual appointments

Meetings, training sessions, classes and consultations can happen in person or virtually online. That’s why TIMIFY has several features specifically for virtual appointments, ensuring they integrate with your office calendar.

The entire process – from booking the virtual meeting space to hosting the actual event via interactive video connection – can be easily organised with TIMIFY.

TIMIFY integrates with Zoom, Microsoft Teams, GoToMeeting or you can use our in-house video service MeetMe. When you book an appointment, joining details are created automatically and sent with the appointment confirmation. You don’t have to worry about anything.

Learn more about the possibilities of virtual appointments with TIMIFY:

Turn your group sessions and bookings into video conferencing with TIMIFY

Turn your group sessions and bookings into video conferencing with TIMIFY

What kind of appointments do you need for your business? If you have any questions about how to implement appointment scheduling for your company, please contact our team in the chat on our website. We will be happy to advise you.

What are 2 methods used to schedule patient appointments?

Examples of common methods used for scheduling doctor appointments include time-specified scheduling, top of hour scheduling, wave scheduling, modified wave scheduling, integrated scheduling, double-booking scheduling, and clustering scheduling.

What are the different types of appointments?

What Are the 8 Different Types of Appointment Scheduling?.
Time-slot scheduling..
Wave scheduling..
Wave and walk-in appointment scheduling..
Open appointment scheduling..
Double scheduling..
Cluster scheduling..
Matrix scheduling..
40/20 scheduling..

What is an appointment system?

An appointment scheduling system, also known as appointment booking system or appointment management software, is a solution that makes it easy for service providers to manage appointments. The tools within an appointment management solution can include: Internet booking. Mobile app booking.

What are the two types of scheduling software?

Scheduling software may be divided into two broad groups: cloud-based software and local programs. Cloud-based scheduling software are on-demand services or applications provided through a shared cloud computing infrastructure.