Table of Contents
Overview
Save time scheduling by offering your customers the ability to self-serve their appointments, including both assessments and jobs. With online booking, clients and leads can select the services they want online through your booking page and their selections will create, schedule, and assign an appointment into your calendar automatically.
Online booking is available on select plans. View our current pricing plans.
To check what plan you're on, navigate to the Gear Icon > Account and Billing. If you have any questions about your plan's features or pricing, our support team is here to help!
Online booking settings are managed from the Gear Icon > Settings > Online Booking. You must be an admin user to access this page.
To turn online booking on, from the online bookings settings page, select More actions > Turn on bookings. At least one bookable service must be added for bookings to be turned on.
To preview what your client will see when online booking, select Preview either from the More Actions button or from the Share booking link menu at the bottom of the page.
To turn online booking off, select More actions > Turn off bookings.
Online booking settings break down into three categories:
Set up bookable services for online booking
The bookable services section of your online booking settings, is where you can find the services that are available for your clients to book online. Your bookable services can also be managed from Settings > Products & Services as existing services can be edited to make them bookable or new services can be added.
To add a new bookable service, select the Add Service button. You will then be prompted to select from your products and services list, or create a new one.
On your selected service, there is a section for online booking that includes:
- If this product/service is bookable as an assessment or job
- the service duration
- a checkbox to allow your clients to select a quantity for this item
Note: If your client increases the quantity of the item, the service duration and unit price will scale for the quantity they've selected.
Services can be booked for an assessment or a job. These are different options as you may wish to have different item descriptions, pricing, or durations for each kind of appointment. If your client selects a mix of services for both jobs and assessments, the appointment will be booked into your schedule as an assessment.
To add a duration for the service, select a length of time from the drop down. There are options from 15 minutes to 12 hours in increments of 30 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, 3 hours, or 4 hours. The service duration selected here is the duration that shows to your customers for the service and is used to calculate the duration of the appointment.
To give your clients the ability to add a quantity of this item, check the box for Allow customers to select quantity. This will expand options for the minimum and maximum quantities that your client can select.
Durations and quantities can also be added to services from Settings > Products and Services when adding or editing a product or service. Learn more about products and services.
Note: Product and service images are not supported for online booking.
To edit a bookable service, from the bookable services section of your online booking settings, select the pencil icon in the same row as the service edit it. If you need to remove a bookable service so that it's no longer offered for your clients to book, select the pencil icon, then select Remove.
Note: There is a maximum of 100 services that will be displayed when your clients are booking online. This keeps the online booking experience for your clients streamlined and easy to navigate.
Set up your booking availability
From the booking availability section you can manage your availability including:
- Efficient scheduling
- Service area
- Bookable team members
- Advanced settings:
Efficient scheduling
The efficient schedule setting is where you can customize the buffer time between appointments. Buffer times can be added between appointments to ensure you have enough time for anything you need to do between bookings. There are different options available:
-
Set a maximum drive time: This setting factors in the client’s location and estimated drive time so you can minimize the time spent driving between appointments. Enter the number of minutes away you're willing to drive to only show appointments that are geographically close to existing appointments.
Some notes about drive time:- Drive time between appointments is calculated by a service called TravelTime which is available in select countries including the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and Australia. View the full list of supported countries.
- Drive time is calculated using historical traffic data. That being said, things happen and traffic conditions may be different in reality than predicted.
- Team members assigned to online bookings are random, however with drive time the team members assigned to bookings will be folks who are within the maximum drive time
- Drive time works with the service area feature. Your service area limits all of the appointments to within your selected radius, while selecting a maximum drive time ensures you aren’t driving all over the place within that service area.
- If your client is within your service area but you don't have any appointments scheduled yet for the day of their booking, they will see all available time slots when on the day of their booking regardless of where they are. Once their booking is complete, their appointment will be used to calculate drive time from their location on that day.
- The drive time resets at midnight (in your local time zone), so if you have overnight appointments that go past midnight (and your team members are bookable after midnight), your schedule from the previous day won't be taken into consideration for bookings.
- Fixed buffer time: With this option, you can set a 30 or 60 minute window between appointments. These buffer times are fixed and do not account for the client’s location.
- No time restrictions: If you’re not concerned about time between appointments, select this option to allow your clients to book back-to-back appointments.
Service area
From the booking availability section, you can also choose to limit bookings to a service area.
From the Gear Icon > Settings> Online Booking, navigate to the Availability section and locate service area from within that section. Click the pencil icon to customize your service area.
From the pop-up, if you wish to to limit the area or region from which you'll accept work, set the Limit bookings to service area to On. When this is enabled, your customers will be prompted to enter their zip code as the first step in the online booking process to ensure they are within your service area. By default, limiting your bookings to a service area is turned off.
Next, set the radius that you serve. The central point will be your company's zip code (this is set in your Company Settings) however if you'd rather use a different point, enter a zip code or address that’s central to the area you serve, then use the slider to expand the radius from that point.
Note: If you do not have an address in your Company Settings, the service area will default to the center of North America, which you will need to adjust.
The areas highlighted on the map in red will be your service area. Once you’re happy with the selected service area, select Save.
Bookable team members
This is where you'll select which team members can be booked for appointments. Open spaces between visits and tasks on team member's schedules will be used to determine available time slots and they will be automatically assigned. If more than one team member is available at a given time slot, the appointment will be assigned randomly.
Select the + icon to add a bookable team member or X to remove a bookable employee.
Employee availability is set from the user's profile in Settings > Manage Team. Select Edit to change the time for each day of the week the employee is available.
If a team member will be on vacation, a task can be added to the schedule for their time away and assigned to them to block that team member from being booked during that time through online booking. This must be a task (or visit) with scheduled start and end times. A calendar event won't block the team member from being assigned with online booking.
Bookable hours are populated from your business hours set up in company settings.
Earliest availability
The earliest availability setting is located in your advanced settings in the availability section of the online bookings settings page. Earliest availability is where you can enter the number of days away that you'll accept appointments.
Enter the earliest date your clients can select an appointment when booking online. Enter the number of business days away that you would accept an appointment. This setting is to prevent clients from booking with too short notice.
Booking interval
The booking interval setting is located in your advanced settings in the availability section of the online bookings settings page. Available time slots will be bookable in increments from the start time in your business hours. For example, appointments will be scheduled on the half hour at 9:00 AM, 9:30 AM, 10:00 AM, etc.
The interval options are:
- 30 minutes
- 1 hour
- 2 hours
- 3 hours
- 4 hours
Terms and conditions
Add a link to terms and conditions. This appears on the review & confirm page alongside the appointment details. The terms and conditions setting is located in your advanced settings in the availability section of the online bookings settings page.
Message
Add a message that is viewable on the review & confirm page when online booking. This message shows alongside the appointment details. The message setting is located in your advanced settings in the availability section of the online bookings settings page.
Share booking link
Along the bottom of the online bookings settings page is the "share booking link" menu. This is where you can preview your online booking form, copy the URL of your online booking form, and connect your online booking in Jobber to your Google Business Profile to gain organic bookings through Google.
Preview
The Preview button will show you what your customer's experience will be with online booking, which may be helpful to check as you set up your online booking settings.
Learn more about What do your clients see when booking online?
When your online bookings are disabled, clients will see that the form is unavailable if they access the link.
Copy link
To share your online booking form, select Copy link. This link can be added to your website and social media, converted to a QR code, or shared with clients directly. Learn more about sharing your online booking form.
Connect to Google
Your online booking form in Jobber can be connected to your Google Business Profile so that your clients can book in with you directly from Google. Learn more about how to Connect Online Booking to your Google Business Profile.
Note: Google takes up to 1 week to add a booking link to your Google Business Profile.
What do online bookings look like in Jobber?
When a new online booking comes in, admin users will see an activity feed notification and receive an email letting them know there is a new online booking. The email will contain details including:
- Scheduled date and time
- Assigned team members
- Booking summary including services and costs
From the email, tap the View Booking button to see the appointment in your Jobber account. The appointment will match the details submitted by your client with a scheduled visit already on your calendar.
Any appointments that were booked through online booking will be indicated with this icon:
This icon is visible on jobber.com from the schedule and jobs page as well as in the Jobber mobile app from the schedule.
When a client enters notes into the Enter additional details field, they will be added to the Instructions field on their appointment.
If your client uploaded any files, they will be added to the booking as an internal note.
Reporting
If online booking is enabled, the one-off jobs beta report will display whether your customer made their booking through online booking allowing insights into which customers booked services online.
What do your clients see when booking online?
You can view your online booking form by navigating to your online booking link or by selecting Preview from Settings > Online Booking. Online booking (including the preview) is available when Enable Online Booking is toggled ON in your settings.
If you have a service area enabled, when clients and leads navigate to your online booking page they will first be prompted to enter their zip code to verify that they are located within the area that you serve. If they are outside of your service area, they will see a message that states online booking is unavailable for this area and to reach out by phone or email for assistance.
If your client or lead is located within your service area, upon selecting Continue they will land on a list of the services you're offering including the service description, estimated price and duration. If a service has a long description, selecting Show more will expand the full description.
To add a service to their booking, they will select + Add. If this is an item where the quantity can be selected, they will be able to select the quantity of the service up to the maximum quantity.
If they select multiple services that include both assessment and job services, the appointment will be booked into your schedule as an assessment.
Note: When selecting products or services, if any of these items have an image added in your Products and Services List it will not appear to your client when online booking.
Once they have made all their selections, Continue will bring them to the contact details portion of the online booking form.
The required contact fields they will have to provide are:
- Name (first and last name, or company name)
- Phone number
- Property address
- Street address
- State
- Zip code
- Country
There is an optional field for Enter additional details. Any notes entered in this field will be added as instructions for the appointment.
There is another optional field for your clients to upload files. This may include images of their property where work needs to be done or documents. Supported file types include:
- JPEG
- PNG
- HEIC
A maximum of 4 files can be uploaded per booking. Each file must be under 10MB and the collective file size cannot exceed 40MB. Any files uploaded will be added to the booking as an internal note.
In the footer of the contact information page are your company details. If you have added any social media links in your branding settings, the app icons will appear below as a shortcut. Your company contact information from company settings will also appear below so that your customers can reach out if needed.
Select Continue to move onto the appointment booking section.
This is where the customer will select a date and time for the appointment from the calendar. Available days will be highlighted in light green with their selected date highlighted in dark green. Your settings for booking availability (set up from Settings > Online Booking) are what determines the earliest available day that customers can book into your schedule. The approximate duration of the appointment is calculated based on the selected services.
Below are the available appointment times. If you are using arrival windows your arrival window settings will determine the arrival time displayed for the appointment times. The times displayed are in the timezone that the client is in based on their device settings. Once an appointment has been selected, your client will click Confirm Appointment Time to give their selections one last look over before locking their booking in.
If all the displayed information is correct, selecting Confirm Booking will create an appointment and add this appointment to your schedule. If they need to go back and make any changes, the Back button will bring them back to a previous screen.
Now that everything is booked in, your client will see a confirmation screen with the booking details and they will also receive an email confirmation about the appointment with a button to view the appointment details in client hub. Client hub is where they will see appointment details including:
- Appointment date
- Arrival time
- Estimated duration
- Property address
- Services + cost
- Who's coming (assigned team members)