Appointments Settings: Confirm, Cancel, Reschedule

Healthie's Calendar makes it easier to manage your business schedule, offer sessions, enable clients to book with you, automate confirmations and reminders, and more.

There are over 25 different Appointments Settings that can be configured for your account. Learn more here.

Providers maintain the ability to cancel, confirm, and reschedule appointments directly, but you may want to set limits as to what actions your clients can take. These settings are helpful if you want to prevent last-minute changes in your schedule and require your clients to reach out to you to make last minute changes and/or enforce appointment cancellation policies. 

This article walks through the set up and management of Healthie appointment management settings. 

Accessing Appointments Settings

Account admins can locate Appointment Settings via: 

• Settings (gear icon on top-right of account) > Settings
• Calendar > Appointments > Confirmation and Cancellation 
• Click "Edit" (pencil icon) 
• Review the available settings, toggle on/off any that you wish > Save 

Appointment Cancellation Settings

You can enable or disable Clients can Cancel Appointments.

• If this setting is turned ON, clients are able to cancel appointments that are scheduled with you, regardless of who booked the session.  
• If this setting is turned OFF, clients are unable to cancel appointments that are scheduled with you. If they attempt to cancel, they will be prompted to contact you directly to make changes to their appointment. 

Note: You can set a Cancellation Limit that sets a time duration prior to the start of an appointment/session within which a client is able to cancel their appointment independently. For example, if you have a limit of "24 hours before" established, then if a client attempts to cancel an appointment within 24 hours of the start time, they will be prompted to reach out to you, and will be unable to cancel independently. 

If you cancel an appointment, your client will receive an e-mail notification that their appointment has been cancelled. They will see an option to reschedule their appointment, which they can do when logged into Healthie from the desktop or mobile app.

Appointment Reschedule Settings

You can enable or disable Clients can Reschedule Appointments.

• If this setting is turned ON, clients are able to reschedule appointments that are scheduled with you, regardless of who booked the session.  
• If this setting is turned OFF, clients are unable to reschedule appointments that are scheduled with you. If they attempt to reschedule, they will be prompted to contact you directly (e.g. via Chat) to make changes to their appointment. 

Note: You can set a Reschedule Limit that sets a time from session start within which a client is able to reschedule their appointment. For example, if you have a limit of 48 hours before established, then if a client attempts to reschedule an appointment within 48 hours of the start time, they will be prompted to reach out to you, and will be unable to reschedule the appointment independently.

Appointment Confirmation Settings

You can have appointments that are either booked by you or your client and automatically confirmed, or appointments that require a manual confirmation on your end and/or your client's end.

The following are your Appointment Confirming Settings options and how to set these up: 

• Require Clients to Confirm your Appointments: If this setting is turned ON, clients will be prompted to confirm sessions that you book on their behalf. Until they click "Yes" on their end confirming the appointment, Appointment Status will show as "Pending." If this setting is enabled, and clients have NOT confirmed the appointment, they will not receive appointment confirmation and reminder e-mails according to your provider settings. 
• Automatically Confirm Appointments: If this setting is enabled, appointments that are booked by your clients are automatically set as confirmed, and no further action is needed on your end to approve and initiate appointment confirmation and reminder e-mails. If this setting is turned OFF, you will see appointments as "Pending" until you manually confirm these sessions

Scheduling Best Practices

Here are some Healthie best practices for optimizing your appointment booking process:

• Enable the Notification Setting "Receive notification when client cancels an appointment" so that you are made aware when clients make updates to their appointments with you. Learn more about how to adjust your Notification Settings here. For example, if you have this personal setting enabled, even if you aren't assigned to a client but still have an Appointment with the client, you will still receive Appointment Notifications (i.e. if the Appointment is rescheduled).
• In your Appointment Confirmation and Reminder emails, add text that outlines and reminds your clients what your cancellation policies are, and whether you require them to e-mail, chat, or otherwise communicate with you to cancel or reschedule an appointment. Learn more here.
• Require that clients keep a card on file as part of your intake flow. Learn more how to collect client billing information here.
• Have clients e-sign your cancellation policies prior to a session. Learn how to build an e-signature form here.