Appointments & Scheduling

Configure appointment types, business hours, calendar sync, online booking, group sessions, and the waitlist.

• Calendar feeds: see your schedule in Google, Apple, or OutlookEvery provider can have a private calendar link that any calendar app subscribes to (Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Outlook), showing their next 90 days of FrontDesk appointments with the client's name, service, phone, and status. Set it up from the provider's editor under Settings → Providers or copy it from My Schedule. The link is a secret: anyone who has it can read the schedule. Going the other way, Settings → Integrations can subscribe FrontDesk to an outside iCal feed and import its events every hour.
  2 min
• Use the calendarThe Calendar (Schedule → Calendar) is your live schedule. Switch between Day, Week and Month, use the arrows and Today to move, and pick a date from the mini calendar. New appointment opens a form with Appointment, Group, Event and Out of office tabs. Drag an appointment to a new time or provider column and confirm to reschedule it; click one to edit, cancel or set attendance. Moving or cancelling a visit has a Let the client know box, on by default, that tells the client the change by text (between 8am and 9pm their time), or by email when they can't be texted, and cancelling or deleting a future visit offers its time to the waitlist automatically. All clinicians narrows by provider, More filters by status and service, and the unconfirmed pill highlights appointments not yet confirmed. The ⋯ menu has Export CSV, Import calendar (an .ics file), Print schedule, a Privacy switch to hide patient names, Show availability, and Block color. Right-click an empty slot for Fill from waitlist.
  6 min
• Book and run group sessionsA group session is one appointment with a list of clients instead of a single client. Book it from the Schedule's Group tab. Name it, add up to 15 clients (or a whole household at once), pick a service marked for groups, and save. The roster in Manage clients tracks each client's attendance and fee. Reminders, confirmations, video links, cancellation fees, and charges all work per client. Groups can be booked on any plan; running one as a video visit needs telehealth, on Pro and above.
  3 min
• Set up online bookingEvery location has a public booking page at book.frontdesk.care/<your id>. Open Online Booking → Booking Settings and flip the switch in the header card to make it Live. On the Scheduling tab choose Request mode (the default: bookings wait under Online Booking → Requests for you to confirm) or Instant booking, and set Minimum notice (default 24 hours), Maximum advance (default 60 days), Times patients pick (default 2), Slot interval and the message shown after booking. The Services tab lists what can be booked, the Branding tab sets the logo, photo, welcome text and brand color, and the Form tab picks the details the page asks for. Click Save Settings. Share gives you the link, embed code and a QR code.
  4 min
• Connect Google CalendarOpen Settings → Integrations, open the Google Calendar card and click Connect Google Calendar; sign in with Google, then pick the one Calendar where this location's appointments are written and the Direction: Two-way (the default), To Google only, or From Google only. Appointments booked in FrontDesk appear on that calendar with the client's name as the title and the service in the description; events on the calendar are imported as appointments (from today forward, all-day events skipped) and block the AI from double-booking. Changes arrive at once when Google can notify FrontDesk and otherwise within fifteen minutes; Sync now forces one and Last synced shows the time. The connection is per location, not per provider. Disconnect revokes FrontDesk's access and removes the connection; what is already on either calendar stays.
  2 min
• Set up a multi-location booking pageIf you run more than one location, the organization booking page gives you one link where patients choose a location, then continue on that location's own booking page. Owners and admins find it under Online Booking → Booking Settings → Organization. The Organization booking page switch publishes it and saves right away. Set a Custom slug (lowercase letters, numbers and hyphens, 4–50 characters) and click the green check to save it; the link becomes book.frontdesk.care/o/your-slug. Under Branding set the logo, Display name, Welcome title, Welcome message, Primary color and Accent color. Under Locations to show pick locations, or leave it empty for every location with booking enabled. Click Save changes. A location with booking off, no booking page yet or no services is left off, with the reason shown.
  2 min
• Handle booking requestsWhen your booking page is in Request mode, bookings arrive as requests for you to approve instead of going straight onto the calendar. Web chat bookings and client portal requests land here too. Open Online Booking → Requests. The tabs Pending, Confirmed, Declined and All filter the list, which updates live. Each pending card shows the times the patient picked: choose one and click Confirm (or Confirm with the time) to book it onto the calendar. The patient is told by email when the request has an address, otherwise by text if they ticked the text box, and a message tells you which, or that you need to call them. Decline asks you to confirm, then turns it down and tells the patient the same way. A request with no time picked has a Pick a time button instead. Click a card for Booking Request Details. Pending requests also appear in Tasks, with a badge on Online Booking in the navigation. A request nobody confirms expires after 7 days (or once its days have passed), and the client is told once that it wasn't confirmed in time, with a link to book again.
  4 min
• Troubleshoot calendar syncMost sync problems are one of five things. Open Settings → Integrations → Google Calendar and look at the card: Connected with your Google email and Last synced means the link is alive; Not Connected means connect again. Check the Calendar chosen (appointments are written to that one calendar only) and the Direction (Two-way, To Google only, From Google only): a direction of From Google only explains bookings never reaching Google. Sync runs at once when Google notifies FrontDesk and otherwise every fifteen minutes; Sync now forces one and reports what it imported and exported. Wrong times usually mean the location's Timezone under Settings → Locations is wrong. Some things are not synced by design: all-day events, past events, deletions made in Google, and events FrontDesk did not create are never deleted. There is one calendar per location, not per provider.
  2 min
• Manage appointment typesYour services (appointment types) live under Settings → Services, one list per location. Type a name in the Add a service row, pick a length and click Add service, or tap one under Common Services. Click a service to open it: Delivery (In person, Virtual or Either), Group sessions, Client booking (Internal only hides it from clients), Length, Performed by, Booking window (Earliest and Latest), Recall, billing code where your specialty uses one, Spoken name, Price quoted, Caller phrases and Calendar color. The x on a row removes it. Click Save Changes. The AI works from this list. Your booking page has its own list on the Services tab of Online Booking → Booking Settings, where Import services brings these in and a switch hides one from the page.
  3 min
• Manage your waitlistThe waitlist lives under Schedule → Waitlist. Add a client with the dates, times of day, service, and provider they will accept (the AI can add callers too). When a matching future visit is cancelled (by the client, the AI or your team) or deleted, FrontDesk texts up to three waiting clients an offer with a two-hour window; the first to reply YES gets the slot booked and confirmed, and the other offers for that time close (anyone who replies YES afterwards is told it was just taken). Staff can also offer an opening from a row or from Find matches (texted the same way, or recorded only for an offer made by phone), book an accepted client, and see each client's offer history.
  4 min
• Set holiday closures & special hoursHoliday closures mark whole dates as closed so the phone AI, web chat and your booking page stop offering times on them. Open Settings → Locations and scroll to the Holiday closures card. Common US holidays for the next twelve months are listed with a switch that reads Closed or Open as usual; New Year's Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas Day start closed. To add another date, type a name and pick the date in the bottom row, then click Add closure. With several locations, each row has a scope menu: All locations or one location. Changes save as you make them. A closed date also counts as after hours for call routing all day.
  2 min
• Set up web chatWeb chat is an embeddable assistant that answers questions and books appointments on your website, using the same services, availability, and rules as your phone AI and booking page. Tune how human it feels, decide what happens after hours, watch live sessions and take a chat over yourself, and let it learn from the questions it couldn't answer. Configure it under Assistants → Web Chat, then paste one script tag into your site. Preview chat lets you try it first as a dry run: nothing is booked or sent, and it isn't billed or saved as a conversation. Real visitors' bookings arrive as booking requests like the booking page's. It's a paid feature (Pro and above); past the monthly sessions, extra conversations are billed ($0.10 on Pro, $0.08 on Elite).
  8 min
• Live chat takeover, after hours and the daily digestWeb Chat (Assistants → Web Chat) is not only a setup page. Its Live sessions tab shows every chat the AI is handling right now, with a sentiment chip and the topic, and Take over pauses the AI instantly so your replies go out as you; Hand back to AI when you are done. On the Behavior tab you choose what happens after hours (keep answering, offer a callback for the next business day, or take a message), and whether frustrated visitors or anyone who asks for a person gets flagged and who is notified. Each staff member can opt into a Daily transcript digest, one email each morning with yesterday's counts and topics and never the message content. Questions the assistant could not answer are captured for review; answering one adds it to the knowledge both the chat and your phone AI use.
  4 min
• Confirm upcoming appointmentsSchedule → Confirmations lists upcoming appointments with their confirmation status. The tabs All, Unconfirmed, Pending, Confirmed, Declined and No response filter the table; a date menu (All upcoming, Today only, Tomorrow only, Next 7 days, Past 7 days) and a search box narrow it. Reminders go out by text, email or call on the timing you set under ⋯ → Settings, and a patient's reply with one of your confirm words marks the visit Confirmed when Auto-confirm is on. Each row's actions: Mark confirmed, Mark declined, Reset to pending, Call with AI, Send reminder, Reschedule and Add to waitlist. Run now processes reminders that are due; Export CSV downloads the current view.
  4 min
• Your provider scheduleProviders get a My Schedule screen near the top of the left navigation that shows only their own appointments, not the whole practice calendar. Three counters sit at the top: Today, This Week and Pending Confirm (this week's appointments from today on that are still marked pending). Below, the selected day's appointments are grouped into Morning, Afternoon and Evening, each with the time, length, patient, service, any notes and a status tag. Use the arrows to change day and Today to jump back. Under Quick Actions, View Full Schedule opens the Calendar, Manage Availability opens the Providers page where your hours and time off are set, and Email me my calendar link sends your private calendar-subscribe link, with steps for Google Calendar, Apple Calendar and Outlook. Once you have a link, it also shows under Calendar Sync to click and copy.
  1 min