Increase your earnings by quickly filling last-minute cancellations. Take complete control over how you set your waitlist rules and maximize your appointment schedule with Vagaro's automated Waitlist feature.
You specifically have four options to choose from:
- You Pick: This allows you to manually select a client from a waitlist and add them to an opening slot on the calendar from your Notifications Panel when your schedule is full and a customer cancels.
- Money Maker: An automatic notification is sent to the customer with the highest-paid appointment on the waitlist. If a customer does not respond within the time frame you set, the opening is offered to the next highest paid appointment.
- First in Line: An automatic notification is sent to the first client on the waitlist. If the customer does not respond within the time frame you set, a notification is sent to the client who is next in line.
- Instant Book: An automatic notification is sent to all clients on the waitlist. The first to book gets the appointment.
To create a waitlist, follow the steps below when using the Vagaro Pro app.
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Let's get started!
Creating a Waitlist
1. Tap More at the bottom of the screen.
2. Select Settings.
3. Select Online Appointment Rules.
4. You can choose from four Waitlist Types:
- You Pick: This allows you to manually select a client from a waitlist and add them to an opening slot on the calendar from your Notification Panel when your schedule is full and a customer cancels.
- Money Maker: An automatic notification is sent to the customer with the highest-paid appointment on the waitlist. If a customer does not respond within the time frame (Time to Respond) you set, the opening is offered to the next highest paid appointment.
- First in Line: An automatic notification is sent to the first client on the waitlist. If the customer does not respond within the time frame you set, a notification is sent to the client who is next in line.
- Instant Book: An automatic notification is sent to all clients on the waitlist. The first to book gets the appointment.
Let's take a closer look at all the Waitlist options.
You Pick
This option allows you to manually select the client from the waitlist and add them to an opening slot on the calendar.
Example: Let's say, Sara, one of your employees, gets an account notification that there are five waitlist appointments that can fill a 120-minute slot.
In this case, Sara would manually add the customer by selecting the Add Now button in the Notifications panel. This prompts the system to send a notification to the customer, confirming they got the appointment. Let's look at this option in more detail.
Manually Adding a Customer to a Waitlist on the Calendar
1. Go to your Calendar. Go to the preferred day and employee calendar. Then tap on the white space next to a time slot that is taken.
2. Tap Add to Waitlist.
3. Select the Customer. Select the Service (you can add up to three services). Select the Multiple Dates option to select other available dates for the customer.
4. Tap Select Date Time to select a potential available date.
5. Select a date on the calendar. Then tap Done at the bottom of the screen.
6. Select the available time frames for the customers. Tap Done when you're ready.
7. Tap Select Date Time to select additional times for the customer. Tap Done at the bottom of the screen when you're ready.
8. Tap Book Waitlist to confirm. You'll be able to view the appointment on your Notifications Panel.
Viewing Waitlisted Customers in the Notifications Panel
View all your waitlisted customers in the Notifications Panel.
1. Tap the Notifications option at the bottom of the screen.
2. Tap the Waitlist option.
3. There are two types of Waitlisted appointments.
- Ready Appointments - these are appointments that are booked by the business when a time slot is not available or has been taken by another customer.
- Customers on Waitlist - these are appointments that are waiting to be approved by the business.
The blue bell under the customer name and Available status means a notification has been sent to the client. The entry also displays the date and time the notification was sent to the customer.
4. There are 3 options for each waitlist entry:
- Tap Remove to remove the customer from the Waitlist.
- Tap the customer's phone number to contact them directly.
- Tap Browse Availability to check for any openings in your schedule and to add a waitlisted customer to an appointment.
5. If you selected Remove in the previous step, you can confirm the deletion by tapping Remove.
6. If you tapped Browse Availability, select a Service, Service Provider, and Date. Add additional services and then tap Search to find an available appointment.
7. Select a Time.
8. Enter a comment as needed, and then tap Book.
You're all set! You can see that the waitlisted customer has been added to the Calendar!
Money Maker
In this instance, the customer with the highest-paid appointment on the waitlist is automatically offered the opening slot first. If a customer does not respond within the time frame you set (Time to Respond), the opening is offered to the next highest paid appointment.
You can set the time frame in the fields under Time to Respond. This allows you to set a time in which the customer must respond before the slot is offered to the next highest paid appointment. You can set it by day, hour and/or minute.
Example: Let's say we have these 5 waitlisted appointments:
- Wendy- $30 haircut / 30 minutes
- Helen- $40 haircut / 30 minutes
- Doris- $285 haircut / 150 minutes
- Jodi- $40 haircut / 30 minutes
- Gretchen- $85 haircut / 60 minutes
In this case, the earliest available time would go to Gretchen because she has the highest-paid appointment and fits within the time slot.
Even though Doris has the highest-paid appointment, the duration of her service is too long and does not fit within the available time slot.
First in Line
In this case, an automatic notification is sent to the first client on the waitlist. If the customer does not respond within the time frame you set, a notification is sent to the client who is next in line.
You can set the time frame in the fields under Time to Respond. This allows you to set a time in which the customer must respond before the slot is offered to the next person in line. You can set it by day, hour and/or minute.
Example: Let's say Wendy is the first one to get added to the waitlist. A notification will be sent to this client first. If Wendy does not respond within the time frame you set, the appointment will be offered to the second client in line. At this point, both Wendy and the second customer can book the appointment.
Instant Book
In this case, an automatic notification is sent to all clients on the waitlist. The first client who books the appointment gets it. The customer will receive a push, email, and text notification with a link to your booking page.
Tap Save when you're finished.
Select Customers Can Add to Waitlist to allow customers to add themselves to the waitlist when they book online. Tap Save when you're finished.
How to Restrict Employees from Using the Waitlist Feature
1. To restrict an employee's access to the waitlist feature, follow these steps:
- Tap More at the bottom of the screen.
- Tap Settings.
- Select Access Levels under Employees.
Once you get to the Access Levels page and get to the specific access level, tap Modify for these options:
- Ability to accept their own appointment requests and waitlists.
- Ability to accept other's appointment requests and waitlists.
A green color means that the option has been turned on for the employee and they have access to the feature. To learn more about access levels, click this link: Setting Access Levels in Vagaro.
2. Tap Save at the bottom of the screen when you're finished.
Comments
8 comments
How can you tell if there are any customers who booked online wanting to be waitlisted? And how do you tell them to wait list themselves for online booking?
Jaymie - The wait list can only be setup internally by someone at the business. Customers don't have an option to be wait listed online.
How do you access the wait list if you just wanted to look if there is anyone on the wait list?
All Wait List appointments are colored Pink on the calendar screen. When you hover over the appointment it will also display a pop-up "On Waiting List".
Is there a way to put a customer on the wait list when I am pre-booking them after checkout? Or when they ask to move an appointment?
Is there a report that can be generated in order to visualize which clients are on the waiting list?
Hello Annie & Rachel,
The system will not track pre-booking with the wait list function. This can only be done by clicking on the previous appointment and selecting "Rebook" or it is done from the checkout screen.
There are no reports that can be generated in order visualize how many or which clients are on the waiting list at this time either.
We have been looking over our functions in Vagaro and reassessing our feature requests recently and I felt this link to another forum would be a good place to address some of the things you are looking for - https://support.vagaro.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/202408540
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