Getting started with Book Visit Now takes only a few steps. Before you create your first appointment, you’ll set up the basic information Book Visit Now needs to build your schedule: your business, at least one provider, one location, and one service.
This guide walks through the complete initial setup and shows you how to add your first client appointment to the calendar. Initial setup should take less than 5 minutes even with optional settings. It may take longer to read about it.
Prefer to watch instead? Watch setup on our YouTube channel www.youtube.com/@BookVisitNow
When you first open Book Visit Now, the Home screen prompts you to connect your contacts.
Tap Continue, then choose the contacts you want to make available in Book Visit Now. You can select individual contacts or select all. If you do choose them all, they don't immediately move into Book Visit Now. You have just authorized them to be used in the future if you manually pick them.
Book Visit Now uses your Apple Contacts so you can select existing clients without having to enter their contact information again.
You can continue managing your business setup from Settings.
Open Settings to see the Business Configuration section.
Before Book Visit Now can create an appointment, four items must be configured:
Book Visit Now uses colored status indicators to make setups easy to follow.
Red means an item is required and still needs to be configured.
Green means a required item is complete.
Orange identifies an optional setting you may want to review.
Blue means an optional setting has been reviewed, even if you chose not to change it.
Once all four required items are green, you are ready to schedule appointments.
Tap Company Info.
Enter your business name. This is the only required field in this section.
You can also add optional information such as a mission statement or slogan and a logo. The logo will appear on invoices.
Save your changes. The Company Information indicator will turn from red to green.
A provider is the person who performs the service for the client.
Open Providers and add your first provider.
Enter the provider's information, including their name and phone number, then save.
The phone number is included in your appointment reminders and confirmations by default. If it's not set up, it's not sent to the client. Including it makes it much easier for your client to contact you.
Once at least one provider has been configured, the Providers indicator turns green.
If you operate the business by yourself, you can simply create yourself as the provider.
Open Locations and create the location where appointments are performed.
Only a location name is required, so a location could be something simple such as:
Main Studio
You can also enter the complete street address when appropriate.
The address is included in your appointment reminders and confirmations by default. If it's not set up, it's not included. Including it makes it much easier for your client to find you.
This makes Book Visit Now flexible enough for businesses with a traditional storefront as well as businesses that operate from multiple locations.
Save the location to complete this step.
Open Services Menu and add the first service your business offers. (The services will sort in alphabetical order when making appointments).
Enter a service name and, if desired, a description. The service description is for your reference within the Services Menu.
Next, configure the service:
Duration
Enter the amount of time normally required to perform the service.
Retail Price
Enter the amount you normally charge.
Price Override
Enable price override if you want the ability to change the service price while creating an individual appointment.
Service Cost - Basic or Detailed
Enter your total cost for providing the service. Cost has two ways you can use it. On the main Cost of Service line, you can simply add a flat cost.
Book Visit Now can also track individual items that contribute to the cost of a service. You can get very specific and use the Add Product / supply to enter a cost for as many individual items as you use. For example, if you provide waxing services, you can itemize the cost of the:
wax
strips
tongue depressors
gloves
clean up supplies.
Listing each item separately and accounting for their individual cost, makes your reporting even more accurate.
Once your first service has been saved, all four required setup items should display green indicators.
Your required Book Visit Now setup is now complete. - You may now make appointments, but wait.
You do not have to configure every optional setting before scheduling your first client, but it is useful to understand what is available. You should set up taxes if you're required to collect taxes for your services or products.
Use Products for items you sell separately from your services.
Products can be added to appointments along with services.
Use Taxes & Fees to configure taxes or fees that apply to your business.
Book Visit Now lets you maintain separate tax settings for services and products.
Calendar Hours determines the hours displayed on your scheduling calendar. Actually, all hours still display, but there is a subtle color difference in the background to visually see the open hours.
These display hours do not prevent you from creating appointments outside the visible range.
Calendar Hours also controls the thresholds used by Book Visit Now's calendar capacity indicator. On the calendar views, you can instantly see your day's capacity with green, yellow and red indicators. By default, the indicator will show green with less than 3 hours booked. Between 3 and 6 hours, the indicator will show as yellow. Over 6 hours will show a red indicator. You can change the number of hours that trigger these colors in Calendar Hours.
Booking Rules include options that affect how your schedule is presented.
For example, Smart Availability can be used to make a calendar appear fuller when someone is viewing your screen without changing your actual appointment data. You can choose a percentage of your open slots to fill automatically. Smart Availability will never get in the way of you making an appointments. Note that there is no customer-facing appointment schedule, so this one is merely cosmetic.
There is an option for appointment padding. This is not yet implemented.
Booking Rules
Booking Rules
Booking Rules
Booking Rules
Booking Rules
Tap Schedule to open the Book Visit Now calendar. This view is different on an iPhone versus an iPad or Mac. The reason is simply screen space. Each has it's own way of displaying Day, Week and Month calendars.
Day
Most of the screen is the day view, but the week and month are within view.
Week / Month
At the bottom of the day view, there is a Week / Month toggle.
Week - When this is set to Week, there is a horizontal date picker tag that shows 6-7 days at a time. This view shows the capacity color capsules under the date, so you know in an instant how full a particular date is. Tap any date, and the Day view changes to that date. Tap and hold on any date gives you a total of booked hours and dollars booked for that day without switching to it.
Month - When the toggle is changed to month, a small Month calendar will open. There are colored capacity capsules on each date here as well. The same tap or tap and hold features work here as well.
There's more - More? Yes,
Hide - There is a small
A colored bar beneath each calendar date provides a quick indication of booking capacity.
The green, yellow, and red thresholds can be configured under Calendar Hours.
Touch and hold a date to see additional information, including booked hours and booked revenue.
This provides a quick way to evaluate how busy a particular day is without opening each appointment individually.
Tap the plus (+) button in the upper-right corner of the Schedule screen.
This opens a new appointment.
Tap Select Client and choose the client from your Apple Contacts.
Book Visit Now brings the client's available contact information into the app so you can use it when managing appointments and client records.
Choose the appointment date and starting time.
If the client has a repeating schedule, you can also create recurring appointments.
Book Visit Now supports repeats including:
Select one or more services for the appointment.
You can also add products when appropriate.
Once everything looks correct, tap Save.
Your first Book Visit Now appointment now appears on the calendar.
Tap an appointment on the calendar to open it.
From the appointment details, you can review or modify its information, cancel the appointment, or update its status.
Appointment statuses make it easier to see where each client is in the visit process.
For example, select Checked In when the client arrives.
The appointment changes appearance and displays the Checked In status, making it easy to identify directly from the schedule.
When the appointment is finished, open it again and change its status to Completed.
Marking an appointment Completed does more than update the calendar. It also allows Book Visit Now's business reports to reflect the completed appointment and its revenue.
You have now completed the entire Book Visit Now workflow:
Set up your business → select a client → schedule services → manage the appointment → complete the visit.
Your basic Book Visit Now setup is complete, but there are many additional tools you can configure as you become familiar with the app. If you must charge taxes for your services, then Taxes should be the next item.
Next, you may want to explore:
You do not need to configure everything at once. Book Visit Now is designed so you can complete the required setup first and add optional business settings as you need them.