Using the Appointment Calendar

The Appointment Calendar in practice

Appointment Calendar in the sidebar (/dashboard/calendar) shows your day as a grid, one column per bookable calendar. This article is the reference for the page: every control, in the order you meet it. If you would rather read a walkthrough first, start with Using the calendar.

The link only appears when appointments, classes, events, or resources are switched on under Settings → Booking Settings → Booking models. Venues that take table bookings alone get Day Sheet in its place.

Day, Week, and Month

The button on the left of the toolbar shows the view you are in. Click it and choose:

• Day: one column per calendar, minute by minute. This is the only view with drag-and-drop and the Compact button.
• Week: a table with one row per calendar under the Team heading and one column per day. Classes and events for that week sit in a strip beneath it. A linked venue's rows carry the same closure chips your own rows do, each naming the reason and the times.
• Month: one cell per day, with a total and a coloured bar for each booking type. Navy is team appointments, amber is events, green is classes, grey is resources, and pale grey is bookings on a linked venue's calendars. Hover a day to read the breakdown and whether you are Open or Closed. Click a day to open it in Day.

The arrows either side of the date step by a day, a week, or a month to match the view. Click the date itself to pick another one. The same panel has From and Until boxes that set which hours the day grid draws.

Compact, in Day view only, shrinks the rows so a whole day fits one screen. It also hides the handle for changing a booking's length, so turn it off when you need to make an appointment longer or shorter. ResNeo remembers the setting.

Columns

Every column is a bookable calendar you created under Calendar Availability. Names and order come from there, not from this page.

If another venue shares its calendars with you, its columns sit alongside your own. The header carries the calendar's name, a Linked chip with the venue name, and that calendar's hours for the day. When the other venue keeps a different clock, a line underneath reads Times in followed by their timezone, and everything in that column is drawn in their local time.

A linked column is a full part of the grid:

• It draws the other venue's closures, non-working hours, leave and amended hours in exactly the same colours your own columns use, worked out from their hours, not yours.
• Its hours widen the grid. A partner working until 20:00 stretches your day to 20:00, even if you shut at 18:00.
• What you can do on it depends on what that venue granted you. At the fullest level you can take a booking, open one, edit it and cancel it. At lower levels the card opens read-only and carries a small padlock. Click an empty slot on a column you cannot book and a note tells you that venue has not granted permission to create bookings on it.
• The slot menu never offers Block time: blocks belong to the venue that owns the calendar.
• Nothing can be dropped inside a linked column's closed hours. Working past your own closing time is your call; working past theirs is not.

Closed time on the grid

Bands cover the minutes outside someone's working time, and each one says why and when. The colour tells you whose time it is:

Band	Colour	Means
Venue closed 18:00 to 20:00	Pink	The business is shut, though that calendar would work
Hannah unavailable 08:00 to 09:00	Blue	The business is open, but that calendar is not working
Hannah closed 18:00 to 20:00	Grey	Both are shut, so the calendar's own closure is named
Closed 09:00 to 13:00	Purple	A closure added for that calendar. The band shows the closure's Label, so it can also read Unavailable, or On leave when the Label is Other
Break	Amber	A recurring break on that calendar
Linked venue closed	Grey	A shared column whose own venue is shut

The grid draws the widest span anything is open, so a calendar working 08:00 to 20:00 inside a venue open 09:00 to 18:00 still shows its whole day, with a stripe on each side. A linked venue's calendar stretches it the same way.

Amended hours get no band of their own. The grid follows whatever hours apply to that date, so a day with amended hours looks like any other working day, with the stripes sitting outside the amended window. That is true of a whole-venue amendment and of amended hours you gave one calendar.

The colour key

The small key button in the toolbar, between the clock and the view switcher, opens What the colours mean. It lists the five tints with a swatch each:

• Venue closed: the business is shut, from its opening hours, a closure or amended hours, while the calendar would otherwise be working.
• Calendar unavailable: the business is open but this calendar is not working.
• Closed, Unavailable or On leave: a closure entered for this calendar, in the words its Label gives it. Nothing can be booked over it.
• Calendar closed: the business is shut and the calendar is not working either.
• Break: a break set in Calendar availability.

Linked venues' calendars use the same five colours, drawn from their own hours and closures.

A paused calendar that still has bookings

Switching a calendar off under Calendar Availability does not hide what is already booked on it. On any day where it still has bookings, the grid keeps its column, with Paused under the name where the hours would be. Week view marks its row the same way, and Filter lists it with (paused) after its name, so you can show or hide it like any other calendar. On days where it has nothing booked it stays hidden.

A paused column shows what is booked and takes nothing new. Click an empty slot there and a note tells you the calendar is paused, and a booking cannot be dropped onto it. You can still open a booking on it, cancel it, or drag it across to another calendar. To change its time on the same calendar, switch the calendar back on first. See Creating and assigning bookable calendars.

Amend hours without leaving the grid

The clock button, at the left of that group, opens Amend hours.

• Admins choose Amend calendar hours (one calendar's weekly availability, breaks, and closures or amended hours) or Amend business hours (the whole venue's opening hours, closures and amended hours).
• Everyone else goes straight to calendar hours, and sees only the calendars they are allocated.

Either way it opens on the closures tab with the day you are looking at already picked, and the grid reloads when you close it. Amend business hours has two tabs, Weekly opening hours and Closures & amended hours. Amend calendar hours is the whole Calendar Availability screen in a window, so Plan your hours ahead, where a rota lives, is in there too. See Working hours, breaks, and closures for what each control does.

The Filter panel

Filter opens one panel with four parts. While anything is set, the button counts it: Filter (1), Filter (2), and so on. Your choices are remembered for that venue between visits.

• Calendars: tick All calendars, or just the ones you want. A calendar you personally manage is listed as Mine: followed by its name. A paused calendar is listed, with (paused) after its name, while it has bookings in the dates you are viewing.
• Only calendars working on the selected day hides columns with no working hours on the date you are viewing. Day view only.
• Linked venues: tick All linked calendars, or pick columns venue by venue. This part only appears when your venue can link.
• Status: All statuses, Pending, Booked, Confirmed, Started, Completed, or No Show.

Reset filters, at the bottom, clears all four at once.

Beside the toolbar, four counters describe what is on the grid for the range you are viewing: On grid, Booked, Confirmed, and Completed. Cancellations and no-shows are left out of On grid.

Search, refresh, and undo

• The magnifier searches every client you have by name, phone number, or email, not just the day on screen. Each result offers Book and View.
• The circular arrow is Refresh. Beside it, a green dot means live updates are running and a yellow one means updates may be delayed while ResNeo reconnects. Nothing is lost either way: press Refresh if you want the grid now.
• Undo reverses your most recent time or duration change on the grid. It is greyed out when there is nothing to undo.
• New and Walk-in open the staff booking form. On a phone they shrink to a plus and a person icon.

Book, block, and move from the grid

Click an empty slot and a short menu opens:

• New appointment and Walk-in, with that calendar, date, and time already filled in.
• Resources, when a room or a chair sits on that column, listing Book and the resource's name. That opens the Book resource dialog.
• Block time, which opens a dialog with Calendar, Date, Start time, End time, a Duration that updates as you go, and Reason (optional). Click a block later and the same dialog reopens as Edit block, where you can also move it to another calendar or day.

Block in the toolbar opens the same dialog from any view, for any day. Admins can block any calendar. Everyone else can block the calendars assigned to them, so the slot menu leaves Block time out on anyone else's column.

Squeezing someone in

The staff booking form has a tick box at the top of its first step, Override availability. Tick it and you can book any service with anyone, on any date from today and at any time, even over other bookings. It ignores the calendar's working hours, a day off, a break, a closure and leave, and it lets you book a service that calendar does not usually offer. It does not let you book into the past.

Nothing is hidden from you: before you save you are shown a line for each rule you are stepping over, such as "outside working hours" or "Staff on leave this day", with the service named when the visit has more than one. The booking's Timeline records afterwards that it was squeezed in and what it overrode.

Processing time (a wait where the client stays but you are free, such as colour developing) is free space on the grid. A wait in the middle of an appointment shows as a pale band on its card, and a wait at the end of a service, or after it, is not drawn at all: the card stops where you stop. Click either and the same menu opens, so you can book someone else into that time. The card's details never sit on the wait, and clicking it does not open the appointment it belongs to. A booking taken in that time looks like any other booking. In a visit with more than one service, each service is its own card, so a wait after the first service simply shows as space before the next card.

Buffer time is the opposite: turnover after a service that nobody can be booked into. It is drawn as a grey hatched band marked Buffer directly under the card (after any processing that runs on past the service), so you can see why those slots will not take a booking.

Press and hold a card to move it, or its bottom edge to change its length. Whether a card can be dragged depends on the booking, not on your role: Pending, Booked, Confirmed, and Started bookings move, while Completed, Cancelled, No Show, and resource bookings stay put. In a visit with several services, each service is its own card, marked 1/2, 2/2 and so on: move or resize one and the others stay where they are, even onto another calendar or day. If a service lands on another service of the same visit you see a note, and both are kept. To move the whole visit at once, use Modify in the booking panel. Every move and every length change offers to tell the client afterwards, so read the follow-up steps in Using the calendar before you rearrange a busy day.

What a drop is allowed and refused for

The outline under the card tells you before you let go: green lands, amber lands with a note, red will not drop.

These are allowed. They save, with a note rather than a refusal:

• Past your opening or closing time, or onto a pink Venue closed stripe. You see Moved outside opening hours.
• Onto a blue Calendar unavailable stripe, or a grey Calendar closed one, so a calendar's day off takes a booking.
• Over an amber Break. You see Moved over a break.
• On top of another booking. This is how you double book on purpose: the two sit side by side in the column.

These refuse, and the outline turns red:

• A purple closure you entered for that calendar on the Closures & amended hours tab. That is true whatever Label you gave it, so a band reading Closed, Unavailable or On leave all refuse alike. Remove or shorten the closure first.
• A Block time you made by hand.
• A class session or a ticketed event.
• Any closed time on a linked venue's column.

Resizing follows the same rules. Drag a card's bottom edge past closing and it saves with Extended outside opening hours.

Dragging onto another venue's column

What happens depends on whether the two venues are in a live venue collective together.

In a collective. Drop the card on the other venue's calendar and ResNeo asks Move this booking to (venue)?, explaining that the calendar there will have it at that time, at the same price, that it comes off your diary, and that the client gets one message with the new details. Click Move to (venue) and it is done in one step. Some bookings cannot move: one with a deposit, card hold or payment, or one whose client has completed forms. ResNeo says which of those is in the way and leaves the booking where it is.

One service of a visit moves to another venue in the collective on its own and stays part of the visit. The window is headed Move and the service's name: the other venue adds it to its part of the visit, or starts one, and the client gets one message with their whole visit. The other venue must be at the same address as the businesses still in the visit. If the service now overlaps another of the visit, ResNeo tells you the client would be in two places, and each business involved gets a notice in its bell.

One person of a group never moves to another venue, and outside a collective neither does a service of a visit. The calendar refuses it while you drag, before any window opens.

Outside a collective. A booking cannot be transferred between two separate ResNeo accounts. A window opens saying so, with Book on (calendar)'s calendar. That opens the booking form for the other calendar with the client already filled in: choose the service and confirm, and ResNeo then asks Cancel the original booking?, offering Keep both or Cancel the original. Cancelling runs the normal route, so the client is told and any deposit follows that venue's cancellation rules.

In a live collective

Every column on your diary, your own and every partner venue's, opens the collective's booking form. New, Walk-in and a click on an empty slot all book that calendar through it, so a partner column has no separate New booking button of its own. Your calendars, hours, closures and clients stay yours.

Detail sheets

What opens when you click depends on what you clicked.

• An appointment opens the booking panel. It holds the client's name with Call, Email, and an icon that opens them in Contacts; the visit summary at the top (the time, each service with its price, the status, and what is owed); the status buttons; Modify; Cancel and No-Show; and the sections Notes, SMS / email guest, Compliance, Treatment records (when they are switched on), Payments, Documents and photos, and Timeline.
• A class session opens Class session, with Bookings & guests: each guest, their contact details, deposit, and whether they are Checked in.
• An event opens the event sheet, with Ticket types and Bookings.
• A resource booking opens Resource booking, with Payment and Message guest.

A booking on a linked venue's column opens read-only.

When to use the list instead

The Appointments (or Bookings) list is the better tool when you want to sort, filter by Type, Calendar or Service, or tag and message several clients at once. See Managing the appointments list. The calendar is the better tool whenever the shape of the day matters: gaps, overlaps, and who is free at three o'clock.

Neither page exports anything. Every CSV lives under Settings → Reports.

Roles

Anyone who can sign in to the dashboard can open the calendar and work on it. There is no view-only mode and no separate permission for dragging.

A staff member who manages exactly one calendar starts with the grid filtered to it, and can tick All calendars in Filter to see the rest. Admins start on all calendars. Who manages what is set under Settings → Staff.

Common problems & fixes

Problem	Likely cause	Fix
There is no Appointment Calendar in the sidebar	Every schedule booking type is off	Turn one on under Settings → Booking Settings → Booking models
The grid says No calendars yet	No bookable calendars exist	Add them under Calendar Availability
A column I expect is missing	It is unticked in Calendars, or Only calendars working on the selected day is hiding it	Open Filter and click Reset filters
A linked venue's columns are missing	Linked venues is set to individual columns, or the link is not active	Tick All linked calendars in Filter, then check the link under Settings → Linked Accounts
I cannot drag a card	The booking is Completed, Cancelled, No Show, or it is a resource booking	Reopen a completed booking first. Resource bookings are changed from their detail sheet
A card will not drop where I want it	Something that cannot be worked through is there: a closure you entered for that calendar, a hand-made block, a class, an event, or closed time on a linked venue's column	Move or remove that first. Your own opening hours, a calendar's own non-working hours, a break and another booking never refuse a drop
Two of my closed bands behave differently	The purple band is a closure you entered for that calendar and refuses a drop. The pink, blue and grey bands are hours, and a staff move goes through them with a note	Open What the colours mean from the toolbar to tell them apart
Nothing has updated for a while	The live dot is yellow, so the connection dropped	Press Refresh. It reconnects on its own too
The month cells look empty	Nothing is booked, or a status filter is hiding it	Hover a cell to read the day, then clear Status in Filter

Next steps

• Managing the appointments list
• Using the calendar
• Creating and assigning bookable calendars
• Working hours, breaks, and closures