What Does This Page Cover?

Availability 

• This feature is available on all paid plans.
• Super admins and admins can create recurring services for appointments.
• Managers can only view the service details, while staff cannot access this information.

Overview

• Reduces time and effort: Recurring appointments eliminate the time and effort for booking individual appointments one by one.
• Better planning: As the future appointments are booked well in advance, you can plan and manage your schedule more efficiently. 
• Never miss follow-ups: Subsequent appointments are scheduled during the initial booking, minimizing the risk of oversight and omission.

Recurring One-on-One Service in Zoho Bookings

Steps to Create a Recurring Service

1. Click Services in the Bookings menu bar. 
   
2. Click the Add icon  in the top-left side of the screen and select One on One from the options. 
   
   
3. Select the Recurring tab in the pop-up that appears. 
   
   
4. Enter the below details to create a new recurring service. 
   

• Workspace: Select a workspace where the service will be added.
• Name of the Service: Enter a name for the recurring service.
• Duration: Enter a time duration for the service.
• Frequency: Choose the interval in which the appointment has to be repeated. It can be Daily,Weekly, or Monthly.
• Repeat Every: Select a further interval to repeat the appointment. This depends on the Frequency option above. For example, if Frequency is weekly and Repeat Every is 3, this means the appointment will be repeated every 3 weeks.
• No.of Recurrences: Specify how many times the appointment has to be repeated. It denotes the number of appointments. 
  Note: You can have a maximum of 31 recurrences.
• Price per occurrence: Enter the cost of a single appointment. While booking, it will show the total cost by multiplying with No.of Recurrences. For example, if $100 is the cost of single appointment and No.of Recurrences is 5, then $500 will be cost for the recurring series. 
  Info: The 'Type Of Payment' can be defined in the Service details section to make the payment 'optional', 'full payment', or 'deposit'. Furthermore, to collect payments online, you have to add one of the payment gateways. 
• Buffer Time: It is the extra time allocated before and after an appointment, which can be used for preparation or winding up. Select the Add buffer time checkbox to enter buffer time. Specify the time for Pre-buffer(buffer time before) and Post-buffer(buffer time after).
• Preferred Meeting Tool: Choose the meeting method for the appointment. This creates a meeting link when an appointment is booked. The options get populated depending on which video conferencing tool is integrated and the in-person locations added in the workspace. 
• Staff Assigned: Choose staff who has to be booked for this service. You can assign more than one staff here.
• Create Assist Session: Enable this toggle to create a Zoho Assist session link to have a screen sharing and remote support session. This toggle appears if Zoho Assist is integrated. 

5. Click Save.
   
   

Things to Know

• Service Details
• Understand Recurrence
• Change Recurrence
• Notifications
• Set Reminders for each appointment
• Booking Page
• Adding a recurring appointment by staff
• Rescheduling or Canceling a recurring appointment
• Examples
• Appointment Summary
• Payment

Service Details

• Service Information: This section lists the basic information of the service and lets you edit those and additionally set the type of payment. 
• Staff Assigned: View and edit the list of staff assigned for the service.
• Service Availability: Set the available date range and days of the week this service will be available for. 
• Service Notifications: Configure when email, SMS notifications, and reminders have to be sent for both staff and customers.
• Service Preferences: Customize various policies and preferences for the service.
• Service Booking Form: Set up the form fields that receive customer information while booking.
• Service Booking URL: Get the booking page link of the specific service. 
• Embed as Widget: Get the code to embed the service booking page in your webpage.

Understand Recurrence

• Frequency
• Repeat Every
• No. of Recurrences

• Frequency denotes the intervals such as daily, weekly, or monthly.
• Repeat Every denotes another level of frequency based on the Frequency option. If weekly is chosen in Frequency, then in Repeat Every, you can choose after how many weeks the next appointment should recur. For example, every 2 weeks, every 3 weeks.
• No. of Recurrences denotes the number of appointments to be repeated for the service. 

Change Recurrence

Notifications

• %repeat_info% returns the frequency and repeat every details.
• %no_of_recurrences% returns the number of appointments of the recurring series.
  

Set Reminders for each appointment

1. Navigate to Services > Service Notifications. 
2. To enable notification for staff, click the For Staff tab. To enable notification to the customer, click the For Customer tab. 
3. Under the section Remind Upcoming Appointments, enter before how many days/hours/minutes the notifications have to be sent. 
4. Select the checkbox to enable the respective reminder. 
5. Click Customize near the reminder and edit the template as required. 
6. Click Save. When a reminder is enabled for a recurring service, it sends the reminder for each appointment in the series.
   
   

Info: We recommend you to set reminders for all the recurring services so that both staff and customers are reminded of their appointment. Considering that recurring appointments are scheduled ahead of time, sending reminders assures that appointments are not missed.

Booking Page

In the booking page, when a recurring appointment is scheduled, it shows the list of recurring dates before the customer enters their details. A staff member will only be available for a recurring appointment if they are available during all the slots of the series. 

A staff member can book an appointment from the Bookings platform by clicking the Add icon in the Bookings menu bar and selecting Appointment.

Rescheduling & Cancelling a recurring appointment

Staff member can view the list of appointments in the Appointment Summary section and click the respective appointment in the Upcoming Appointments section to reschedule or cancel it. Each appointment in the recurring series can be rescheduled/canceled by clicking the respective appointment in the Bookings calendar. 

Appointment Summary

Limitations

• A maximum of 31 recurrences can be configured for a daily and weekly recurring service. 
  
• Monthly recurring service can have a maximum of 6 recurrences. 
  

Related Topics

• Service Availability
  
• Service Notifications
• Service Preferences
• Service Booking Form
• Service Booking URL
• Embed as Widget