Hi All,
Most of you probably won’t remember me as I sold my company 2 years ago and have been MIA since then…but my non-compete agreement has ended and now I’m back! What’s changed in the industry the past couple years? Did I miss anything?
Now for the questions:
I’m finishing up my website and I am obsessed with having an online booking tool. I promised my family I would not be ‘workaholic Melody’ this time around, so I’m trying to find new ways to make that happen.
One way I’m doing this is by limiting my appointment availability. As a still reforming workaholic, it might just kill me to turn away money, but I can’t work myself (or my back) to death this time…and that goes for both physical labor and office work.
Do any of you currently, (or past-ly) use an online booking program? Ive read a couple of the threads on WCR, but haven’t seen this addressed recently (except for the Housecallpro thread).
I’ve been doing tons of research, but most reasonably priced programs are for service people that book appointments hourly (like hair dressers), which really doesn’t work in our line of work.
I have to say that my goals this time around are very different than last time. No world domination in my future! I plan on having 1 employee at most, and will work with another local company when I get my bigger jobs. I plan on only booking 1-2 jobs a day. So whatever app I use has to be able to limit the calendar in this way. Really I plan on opening up my calendar for 1 job a day to start, and then as I see how it fills out I’ll open up more times. One issue Im worried about:
-If my first client booking is in town#1, my second client that books on that day might be from a town 20 minutes away. That is not efficient. I wish there was a way the program could see that a person had booked a job from town#1, and would only show a 2[SUP]nd[/SUP] appointment as available when another person from town #1 wanted to book a job. If a person was outside a certain mile range, the timeslot would show as busy. Is that confusing? It feels like that should exist in a program when you’re at different locations each day.
I’ve been following the huge thread on WCR about housecallpro. I started looking into it last month, and they have an advantage in that they cater to our line of work. It seems very promising, and the pricing is very good for what they offer…a little too good to be true. I am a little squeamish on paying for a program, investing my time into figuring it out and uploading customers, only to find it doesn’t work for me. I’ve had that happen too many times in the past. I have a large client database, and don’t need to find work through HCP, so I wouldn’t need to utilize the consumer (housecall) side of the program. My concern is, If I am leading customers to HCP from my website, but I haven’t already entered them in the HCP database, does that mean that I have to pay a commission? And what is the commission based on? No window cleaning jobs are ever priced the same. Ill probably call them tomorrow to ask them these questions. I didn’t see that issue addressed in the HCP thread.
The two programs I’m actively testing right now are Square appointments, and You can Book Me. I love how simple and Pretty Square is, but there are a couple huge drawbacks.
As I said before, I only want to book 1 appointment per day to start. To make that possible, Square support suggested I create 8 hour time slots, and then make my workday length 8 hours. After I figure out the time it’ll take to do the job, I can open up another appointment if there is room.
I’ve had a few friends test it, and they found it very confusing. They click on a button for window cleaning (that’s easy), but then everywhere it says the service will take 8 hours. There isn’t a way to remove the service time. People who have small houses are going to freak out if they think Ill be there for 8 hours. My testers found that part very confusing. Now that I think about it, I probably could just create 2 ‘services’ and call them ‘small-medium sized house window cleaning’, and ‘large sized house window cleaning’ (except Ill say it more eloquently). Small-med. could be a 4 hour timeslot, and large would be the full day. Then I can book other jobs around those appointments.
YOU CAN BOOK ME is a lot less fancy than square, but functionally I find it to work better. It is missing some of the features that Square has, but Square is $30 per month, and YCBM is free for basic (but very good) service. If I stick with it I’ll probably move up to premium level, which is only $16 per month.
I have found other booking tools catering to contractors but they are much more expensive.
Sorry this is so wordy, but I’ve been living in the land of appointment software for too long. I need to make a decision, and I would love your input. What have you used? What works? How can I approach this in a different way?
I would love to try this myself. I wanted to set something like this up and I’m bed it into my website. I was wondering if there was a way to use Google Calendar and do this? Let me know what you find out!
So all of these programs easily integrate with Google calendar. I’m using customer factor still so the calendars all work together. It’s pretty seamless. I think I’ve decided square appointments doesn’t have enough capability to work for window cleaners. They actually told me that in so many words. I am very close to settling on -you can book me- because it has good reviews and there is a free version. You guys should check it out. I’m starting with the $16/mo version because I need a couple other capabilities. It’s very cool, and easy to embed on the website.
Im gonna talk to housecallpro tomorrow to see what they are capable of…I’ll keep you updated.
i signed up for a free trial with you can book me and I really like it especially the automation with job reminders, follow ups and next service reminders as well.
Its priced well imo and one step to a more automated system.
Wow, you move quick. I need to just bite the bullet and stop testing it and just use it. My spring marketing campaign is waiting on this one thing.
Even though it’s simple, it’s a really powerful program. I’ve been most impressed by them, out of all the companies I researched. Moving forward, how are you gonna set up bookings? By the job size? how will your customers know how long to book for? That’s where detailed, but simple instructions come in handy.
I’m with you on that one.
I think that maybe if you had some way to (like responsibid) to get an idea of how long it will take (20 windows=2 hours etc…) so the calendar can adjust?
Thr booking length can be tricky but for me I would have just two appoints a day. One at 8:00 and 1:00. This will take care of the majority of clients and if we run short or long we can call the afternoon customer and adjust.
and for those houses that are just to big then I can call and then adjust as needed when I see that they have booked
THats what I plan on doing this year as well. Its the simplest solution to the problem of time. Im gonna put my site up today (hopefully). Lets keep in touch on how it goes.
Are you upgrading to the premium level of service?
i need to work with it a little bit more. Fortunately, I will be upgrading my website but I won’t do it until fall so I have some time to see how it works in the long run.
Ive also asked Steve of The Customer Factor to take a look at it, to look at implementing something like it with TCF - he was very interested in the idea, so hopefully it will come sooner rather than later.
thanks for the suggestion. it looks like another good option. I definitely need google cal integration, but I think on any program I’m gonna be paying.
Do you book 2 set times a day? How have you made it work for you?
Hi again Garrett!
Congrats on the baby. That’s awesome!!
I am doing Wordpress and I think I looked at bookly, but I don’t remember why I didn’t like it. Probably the same reason for all of them. The hours are hard to configure for service people. But whatever I end up with I’ll Micky mouse it. I’ll take a look again.
you people need to stop giving me more options!!! I was finally about to narrow it down
So if I quote for outsides only I tell them it takes approx 2-4 hours? So they choose the 2-4 hour service option i set up and give myself “wrap up time” in the settings - so the next appointment doesn’t overlap… there is always at least a 1 hour window. I can set my own working times, time off etc… so customers cant book times when im away, working half day or start at 10am on particular days etc.
Each customer is advised of the service time requirement to book on their quote. If they choose the wrong option I will have to ask them to reschedule or if anyone books without a valid quote the booking will get cancelled by me.
I find it really easy to use - will take time to set it up and get it right…
I guess most of my customers would have to at least email to get in touch, but I’m trying to make it so returning customers can just book without having to talk to me. I will tell them in my voiceamail to check out my website to instantly book online. That might not be possible.
How do you manage customers from different towns booking on the same day? I always Try to book jobs within 20 minutes of each other…
So I wanted to update you all on the software I ended up using. I went with youcanbook.me and even though its not the prettiest one, It has been fantastic! I spent a couple days really fine tuning and testing it out so i could also make sure it works with customer factor. there have been bumps but Im working it out. I sent 100 of my old customers an email last night telling them Im coming back, and within minutes I was getting bookings. I booked over 30 jobs between 7pm and 8am this morning. It has been fantastic! I did run in to a couple problems. I didn’t realize that some of the jobs I had booked into the calendar through google I hadn’t clicked the ‘show as busy’ button so those days appeared to be available. I also didn’t think about all the buffer time I needed in the schedule for family stuff. But for the first time in years, I am almost going full steam starting next week! (which is scary because Im not ready!!!) Usually my busy time starts 2nd week of April, no matter how many customer reminders I send out. I think people saw how many days were available and felt the pressure to book. Next Monday Im sending out the email to the rest of my customer list.
As for the program, you can use it for free, but I ended up paying for the $9 a month level of service. It is well worth it!
yes, but I ended up going with youcanbook.me because book fresh is now square appointments, and square cannot do what I need it to do. I did sign up for it and try to make it work but It was not as flexible as the youcanbook.me . Square came right out and told me it probably wouldn’t work the way I wanted it to.
Also, the pricing is $30/month square vs free or $10 for youcanbook.me
Im sure I could’ve found another program but I had to get moving, and this has so much flexibility. My customers book themselves, I get an email saying what they booked and when. the job gets transferred to my google calendar and my customer factor calendar. No joke, I wish I had done this years ago. I am booked into June starting next week!!
its been unbelievable
