Appointment types are the menu your AI and your booking page work from. Set them up once with accurate durations and you'll get clean schedules for years.
Where to manage them
Settings → Services (or Settings → Appointment Types depending on your business type's terminology).
Add a new type
- Click + New Appointment Type.
- Fill in:
- Name — what callers and patients see ("Cleaning", "New Patient Exam")
- Duration — visit length in minutes (15-min increments)
- Buffer after — optional padding time (defaults to 0)
- Color — for calendar visibility
- Available with — providers who can perform this service (blank = anyone)
- Online bookable — toggle to show on your booking page
- Price — optional, displayed if set
- Intake form — optional, prompts patient to fill it out before confirming
- Click Save.
Pre-loaded templates by business type
When you picked your business type during onboarding, FrontDesk seeded common services from ServiceTemplate. Examples:
| Business type | Default templates |
|---|---|
| Dental | Cleaning, New Patient Exam, Crown, Filling, Whitening, Emergency Exam |
| Veterinary | Wellness Exam, Vaccinations, Dental Cleaning, Sick Visit, Surgery Consult |
| Med Spa | Botox, Filler, Laser Treatment, Consultation, Facial |
| Mental Health | Intake, Individual Therapy, Couples Therapy, Med Management |
You can edit, rename, delete, or reorder any of these — they're just starting points.
Edit or delete an existing type
Click any row to edit. Click the ⋯ menu for delete or duplicate.
Deleting safety: types referenced by existing or future appointments are soft-deleted (active: false) — historical data stays intact, but the type stops appearing in new booking flows. Hard delete is only allowed if there are zero references.
Reorder for online booking
Drag-and-drop the rows to control the order patients see them on your booking page. The first 3–5 typically convert best — put your highest-value or most-common services up top.
What's next
- Set up online booking — your menu, but patient-facing
- Connect Google Calendar so bookings sync to provider calendars