Online appointment scheduling

[Michael Harmon]

Is anyone using an online appointment scheduling software/service for the studio or does anyone have any suggestions? -Thanks.

[brad]

I handle all my own scheduling and use Google Calendar to track it all.. its free, and you can publish portions of it to the public if you want... we use it to track each other's activities in the family as well.

[ndsimm]

Thanks for the tip Brad....I've been looking for something like this!

[Michael Harmon]

Thanks Brad!

Anyone else?

[dreemes]

Missed this post and this may be a little late but I have been looking at this company.
http://www.appointment-plus.com/index.php

[KyleC]

http://www.brownbookit.com is a hosted service I have played with at SWPPA.


You can enter your schedule, and customers can book you and pay the sitting fee online. You can also add phone appointments by hand. Its pretty slick.

[Howard Barlow]

Originally Posted by KyleC

You can enter your schedule, and customers can book you and pay the sitting fee online.

I would never, in effect, hand my appointment book to a client and say, "Pick something." Scheduling, to me, is predicated on two considerations, the schedule I want to keep, and what they are looking for in their portraits. Even though you may pick available days and hours, maybe Mrs. Jones wants to come in for an outdoor portrait at noon. Not. Tell me what you have in mind, I will tell you the best time, and in some cases, the only time I will consider, for you to schedule.

OTOH, why let people scatter your appointments around? If I am doing similar work, I will schedule them near each other, when possible. I do not set up, tear down, set up, tear down all day long.

Once again, to me, it is a matter of who is controlling my business.