Appointments and the booking page

Not every conversation with a client is a full booking. Before the event there is the site visit, the menu tasting, the tour, the consultation call. Appointments are 1pm's light way to handle those: put one on the calendar yourself in a few seconds, or hand clients a link and let them pick a time that suits both of you. They sit alongside your events without ever getting tangled up in them.

The key thing to understand up front is that an appointment is not an event. It carries no BEO, no run of show, no pricing, and it never blocks your diary the way a real booking does. A tasting pencilled in for Tuesday will not stop you confirming a wedding in the same room that night. Appointments are the lighter layer that lives on top.

Adding an appointment yourself

The quickest way is straight from the calendar. Set Clicking adds at the top of the calendar to Appointment, then click the day (or the time slot) you want. The appointment form opens with the date and time already filled in.

Fill in as much or as little as you like:

Title. What the appointment is for, for example "Menu tasting" or "Site visit".
Space. Which room or area it is at. If you only have one Space it is chosen for you.
Type. An optional label like Tasting, Tour, or Consultation. 1pm remembers the ones you use and offers them back as you type, so your labels stay consistent.
Date, start and end. The end time defaults to thirty minutes after the start, which you can change.
Contact. Link it to a client or prospect from your address book. Optional, but it is what lets 1pm email them a confirmation.
Notes. Anything you want to remember about the appointment.

Tick Email a confirmation and calendar invite to the contact to send the client a tidy confirmation with an add-to-calendar file attached. That option is only available when the contact you picked has an email address on file.

If you change the date or time of an appointment a client booked themselves, the form reminds you that the client still has the old time in their calendar. Tick the same box to email them the new one. The calendar file it carries replaces the old entry rather than adding a second one.

Appointments show on the calendar as their own kind of entry, styled differently to your events and with their own legend toggle, so a busy month never confuses a tasting with a booking.

Phone or video

Every appointment is held in one of four ways: on the phone, on WhatsApp, over video, or in person. Pick one under How on the appointment form. When you choose video, the form gives you a Video link field to paste a meeting URL into.

You do not have to leave 1pm to make one. Under the field are three shortcuts that open each provider's meeting page in a new tab:

Google Meet opens the Google Meet home page. Click New meeting, then Create a meeting for later to get a link without starting the call.
Zoom opens Zoom's schedule-a-meeting page.
Teams opens a new Teams meeting.

These are handy deep links, not integrations, so there is nothing to connect and no permissions to grant. Create the meeting in whichever tool you use, copy the link it gives you, and paste it back into the Video link field. Copy link beside the field copies the link, ready to paste into a message, and Copy email address under the Contact picker does the same for the contact's email. Once a link is saved, a Join video call button appears on the appointment and on its calendar chip, and a Join meeting button appears on its row in the Events list, so you are one tap from the call on the day. A video call with no link yet shows a warning and Add video link on its Events row instead, which opens the appointment so you can paste one in.

The confirmation email

When you send a confirmation (or a client books themselves), 1pm emails them a clean note: the title, the date and time, the Space, and a calendar file (.ics) they can add to Google, Outlook, or Apple Calendar in one tap. If the appointment has a video link, the email carries a Join the video call button.

The email reads as coming from your venue's name, and replies go to your own address, so to the client it feels like a note from you, not from software.

When a client books, moves or cancels through your booking page, the email they get does not repeat the name or phone number they typed. Anyone can type any email address into a public form, and a note under your venue's name should never carry someone else's words to a stranger. So it greets them with "Hi there", says (for a phone or WhatsApp appointment) that you will call them on the number they gave, and ends with "If you didn't book this, you can ignore this email." A confirmation you send from the calendar greets the contact by the name on their contact record.

Letting a client move or cancel their own appointment

Every appointment carries its own private link, and the confirmation email and the reminder both point at it with two labelled buttons: Reschedule and Cancel appointment.

This matters more than it sounds. A client who wants a different time and cannot find how to move the one they have will book a second one instead, and you end up with two slots held for one conversation.

The link opens a small page showing their appointment, with the same two buttons. Reschedule drops them straight into your booking form to pick a new slot; cancelling asks them to confirm first, and says so plainly that it cannot be undone. Both tell you, through the "moved" and "cancelled" emails and notifications described further down. The calendar file sent for a new time replaces the old entry in the client's calendar and yours, rather than sitting beside it.

From your side, an appointment the client booked, or one whose confirmation you emailed them, shows Cancel appointment instead of Delete. Cancelling emails the client and takes the entry out of their calendar. An appointment you added for yourself and never emailed is simply deleted.

Two things worth knowing:

Every appointment has one, including the ones you enter yourself in the calendar, so a client can move or cancel any appointment you confirm to them.
Rescheduling depends on the Space still taking online bookings. If you have since switched that off, the page says so rather than dropping them into a booking form with nothing in it. Cancelling still works.

Both offers stop the moment the appointment starts, and the page reads that clock from your account time zone rather than from wherever the client happens to be. Set your zone on Profile if you have not: without one, an appointment that finished this morning can still look changeable to the person who booked it.

Letting clients book themselves

Rather than trading emails to find a time, you can publish a booking page for a Space and let clients pick from the slots you are happy to offer. This is opt-in per Space and off until you turn it on.

Open the Space (under Spaces) and find the Appointments panel:

Turn on bookings with the master toggle. Nothing is public until you do.
Appointment length sets how long each slot is: 15, 30, 45, 60, 90, or 120 minutes.
Buffer between appointments keeps time free either side of each booking, so clients cannot book back to back. Set 15 minutes against a 30-minute appointment and each one effectively takes 45: your 10:00 viewing is followed by an offer of 10:45, not 10:30. It works both ways, closing the slot before a booking as well as the one after, and it applies to appointments you add yourself just as much as to ones clients book. It never stops you putting something in your own calendar. There is more on it in buffer time between appointments.
Notice needed is how much warning you want. It hides every time between now and the notice you set, so nobody books a slot you have no chance of preparing for. Choose from an hour up to a few days, or leave it at no notice needed. It is an absolute cutoff rather than a rule about today: with fifteen hours' notice set, a client looking at nine in the evening is not offered tomorrow morning either.
Offer video appointments lets clients choose a video call instead of coming in.
Offer WhatsApp appointments lets clients choose WhatsApp and give you the number they use there. See WhatsApp appointments below.
Show times in the client's own time zone converts every time on this Space's booking page to the zone the client's own browser is in, and names it. Off by default. Turn it on for phone, WhatsApp and video appointments, where the client's clock is the only one they can act on, and leave it off for in-person bookings, where the time at the venue is the time that matters. It changes what the client is shown, nothing else: your availability, the slot lengths, the clash checks and everything on your side stay in your account's zone, so you keep seeing venue time everywhere.
Availability windows are the times you are open to appointments, set as a simple weekly grid. Add a window per day, for example Tuesday 10:00 to 16:00 and Thursday 13:00 to 17:00. 1pm slices each window into slots of the length you chose. Windows on the same day can sit back to back but can't overlap. To run a window until midnight, enter 12am as its end time: the list shows it as "to midnight", and the last slot offered is the one that finishes at midnight (its end reads 11:59pm on the booking page and in the confirmation).

That weekly grid is deliberately plain. It is not a recurrence engine: it is the shape of a normal week, and 1pm handles the rest, only ever offering a slot that is genuinely free.

Your public booking page

Turning bookings on gives the Space a booking link ending in /book/. Copy it from the Appointments panel and share it however you like: in an email, on your website, in your email signature.

The page works like the scheduling tools clients already know. They see:

A month calendar with only the days that have free slots selectable, so there is no way to pick a time you are not open.
The times for the day they choose.
Phone, WhatsApp or video, when you offer more than phone, as a required choice ("How would you like to meet?").
Their name and email, plus a phone number and a note. The number is required for a phone or WhatsApp appointment and optional otherwise.

When they pick a slot and submit, 1pm books it, creates or links their contact record, and shows a "You're booked in" screen. A client whose email is already in your contacts is linked to that contact, and nothing they typed changes it: the phone number they gave stays on the appointment, and your contact's own mobile is shown instead wherever the contact has one. If two people try for the same slot at once, only one gets it: the other is told the time just went and asked to pick another. The page is protected against spam and abuse, so the link is safe to put anywhere public.

Video bookings and the held confirmation

A phone, WhatsApp or in-person booking is confirmed straight away. A video booking is slightly different, because the meeting link usually does not exist yet when the client books.

So 1pm holds the client's confirmation. Instead of sending a bare "you're booked" email with no way to join, it waits. The booking lands on your calendar flagged as needing a link, and you get a notification. Open the appointment, paste in a meeting link (or use one of the Meet, Zoom, or Teams shortcuts), and save. That single confirmation then goes to the client with the join link inside, and the Save button says Save and email link so you know it will. They get one clear email, not two confusing ones. Until a link is in, the Email a confirmation tick is switched off on that appointment, so a confirmation can't go out without the link.

WhatsApp appointments

Plenty of clients would rather be reached on WhatsApp than on an ordinary call. Turn on Offer WhatsApp appointments in the Space's Appointments panel and WhatsApp joins the "How would you like to meet?" choice on the booking page.

A client who picks it is asked for their WhatsApp number, with its country code, for example +61 412 345 678. The country code is required: WhatsApp can only open a chat with a full international number, so the page will not accept one without it.

The booking is confirmed straight away, the same as a phone call. The client's confirmation says you will call them on WhatsApp on the number they gave.

On your side, the appointment is marked as WhatsApp on the calendar, on the Bookings list and on the appointment itself, and the client's number is a link. Click it and WhatsApp opens a chat with that number, on your phone or in WhatsApp on your computer, ready for you to message or call at the appointment time.

Three things worth knowing:

1pm does not send anything over WhatsApp. The confirmation, the reminders and any reschedule or cancellation notice still go by email. WhatsApp is how you and the client talk at the appointment time, from your own WhatsApp.
The number the client typed is the one used. For a WhatsApp appointment 1pm shows the number given at booking, even when the contact already has a different mobile on file, because that is the number they said they use on WhatsApp. It is kept on the appointment and never changes the contact record.
You can choose WhatsApp on an appointment you add yourself. It uses the contact's mobile. If that number has no country code, the link dials it as an ordinary call and the form tells you to add one.

Branding the booking page

The booking page wears your colors. Your logo sits at the top, and your brand accent color tints the selected date, the chosen time, and the book button. With nothing set it falls back to 1pm's default, but a couple of minutes on your branding makes the page feel like part of your own site rather than a generic form.

Embedding it on your website

If you would rather the booking page live inside your own site than behind a link, the Appointments panel also gives you a Copy embed code button. Paste that snippet into any web page and the booking page appears inline, sized to fit. It works the same way as the lead form embed: a small block of code, no technical setup.

Booking a chat from a quote or confirmation

A client reading your quote often has one question standing between them and accepting it. Rather than pasting your booking link into every covering email, you can have 1pm put a booking button on the documents themselves: quotes, invoices and confirmations.

Turn it on in Account, then Tax & invoicing, under Client bookings: tick Let clients book a chat from a document. It is off by default, deliberately, because switching it on adds a button to documents already sitting in clients' inboxes.

A few things worth knowing about how it behaves:

The button reads whatever your booking page heading says, so the client sees the same words on the button as on the page it opens.
It points at the Space the document is about. If that Space is not taking bookings, 1pm falls back to your only bookable Space, then to your default Space. If you have several bookable Spaces and none of them relates to the document, no button appears at all: pointing a client at a room they were never quoted for is worse than no button, and you can always paste the right link into the covering email.
Their name and email are prefilled from the document, so booking is a couple of taps rather than a form.
It sits in the top row beside Download PDF, out of the way of the accept, sign, and pay steps, and it never appears on the printed copy or the PDF.

Nothing shows until at least one Space is taking bookings, and the setting says so if none is yet.

Where appointments show up, and what you are told

Everything lands in three places you already watch:

The calendar, as appointment chips you can toggle on or off independently of your events.
The Bookings list, interleaved with your bookings by date and time, so the list answers "what is on that day" rather than "what bookings are on that day". A Show appointments tickbox sits with the filters, ticked by default, and appears only once you have appointments to show. An appointment row is deliberately lighter than a booking: no pipeline status, no money, no run of show, because a half-hour phone call and a wedding should not read as the same size of thing. Clicking one opens the appointment right there, so you can read or change it without leaving the list. Cancelled appointments are left out, and the dateless views (templates and portals) never show them.
The bell, when a client books themselves. You get a "New appointment" notification, and for a video booking a second nudge to add the meeting link.
Your inbox. A client booking, moving or cancelling a slot also emails you, with the appointment attached as a calendar file, so it lands in your own diary straight away instead of waiting for a calendar feed to catch up. These are three automations ("When a client books an appointment", and the same for moved and cancelled), switched on by default and addressed to the account owner. They are yours to edit: change the wording, send them to the Space contact instead, or switch them off. The client keeps getting their own confirmation either way.

Appointments you create by hand do not fire notifications or emails, since you already know about them.

Opening an appointment a client booked shows when they booked it, on the form, in your own time zone. It is the difference between a slot taken three weeks ago and one taken twenty minutes ago, which is usually what you want to know before you ring them.

One consequence worth knowing on the Bookings list: filtering by status hides appointments, because an appointment has no pipeline status to match. If yours have disappeared, that filter is usually why.

Reminding people before the appointment

To cut no-shows, you can have 1pm email a reminder a set time before each appointment: to the client who booked, to the Space contact, or both. This is set up once as an automation rather than per appointment. Pick the X minutes before an appointment trigger, choose how far ahead it goes (say a day, or a couple of hours), and write the reminder. It then runs for every booked appointment automatically, once per appointment time: if you move an appointment in Calendar, the reminder goes out again ahead of the new time. An appointment booked after its reminder time gets no reminder (with a reminder set for a day before, a client who books this afternoon for tomorrow morning gets the confirmation only). Because it needs to know exactly when each appointment starts, it only works once you have set your calendar time zone.

New reminders start with the [video link] field already at the end of the email. It prints Link to join: followed by the meeting link. On an appointment with no video link it prints nothing, and because it sits on a line of its own that line is left out, so one reminder works for in-person, phone, WhatsApp and video appointments alike.

The [appointment type] field prints the appointment's Type. A client who books through your booking page does not choose a type, so when none is set it prints how the appointment is held instead: phone call, WhatsApp call, video call or visit.

A few things worth knowing

Appointments never block your events. They hold their slot against other appointments, so two clients cannot book the same tasting time, and an event that occupies the room will close appointment slots there. But an appointment itself will never stop you booking a real event, on the calendar or anywhere else. If you are working out event clashes, that is a separate feature: see preventing a double-booked Space.
Blocked time closes slots. Time you block out on the calendar closes appointment slots. Blocked time on a Space closes that Space's slots; blocked time with no Space, such as a team meeting, closes slots in every Space. A repeating block closes the slots on every repeat.
A connected calendar can close slots too. If the Space has an outside calendar connected, such as your Google calendar, and you turn on Close appointment slots when this calendar is busy for it, clients cannot book at times that calendar is busy. Google and Outlook can take up to 24 hours to publish a change, so a commitment added for later today may not close its slot in time. See connecting an outside calendar to a Space.
Times are your venue's local time, unless you say otherwise. 1pm shows and books slots in the time the venue runs on, which is exactly right for a local, in-person appointment. For a Space you use for phone, WhatsApp and video calls, switch on Show times in the client's own time zone in that Space's Appointments panel: the booking page, the confirmation, the reschedule and cancel page and the reminders then all say the time where the client is, and name the zone, so a client in New York booking a Brisbane consultant is not left working out the date themselves. The Space contact's own reminder still comes in your time.
There are sensible limits. Clients can book up to 180 days (about six months) ahead, and the Notice needed setting above holds back anything too soon. On a very fine grid, such as 15-minute slots from 9am to 5pm every day, the page stops at 3,000 open slots so it stays quick, which is still about three months ahead.
Turning bookings off stops the link working immediately. Existing appointments already on your calendar stay put.