Increase your earnings by quickly filling in last-minute cancellations. Take complete control over how you set your waitlist rules and maximize your appointment schedule with Vagaro's expanded and automated Waitlist feature.
You have four waitlist options to choose from:
- You Pick: Select a customer from the waitlist and book them into an open slot
- Money Maker: Automatically notify the customer who has the highest-paid appointment
- First in Line: Automatically notify the first customer on the waitlist
- Instant Book: Automatically notify all customers on the waitlist. The first to book gets the appointment
This article will cover the following:
- Create a Waitlist of the following types:
- Add customers to a waitlist from the calendar
- View waitlisted customers in the Notifications panel
- Book a Customer into an open slot from the Waitlist
- Restrict employee use of the Waitlist feature
Related Article: Create a Waitlist - Vagaro Pro app
1-Create a Waitlist
- Navigate to Settings > Booking > Online Appointment Rules.
- Scroll down to the Waitlist section.
You'll be able to choose from four Waitlist types:
- You Pick: Manually select a customer 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 that customer does not respond within the period you set, the opening is offered to the next highest paid appointment.
- First in Line: An automatic notification is sent to the first customer on the waitlist. If that customer doesn't respond within the period you set, a notification goes to the customer who is next in line.
- Instant Book: An automatic notification is sent to all customers on the waitlist. The first to book gets the appointment.
You Pick
Manually select a customer from the waitlist and add them to an open 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.
Sara would manually add the customer by selecting the Add Now button from the Notification Panel. This prompts the system to send a notification to the customer, confirming they got the appointment.
To set You Pick as your waitlist type, click it in the Waitlist section and then click Save.
Money Maker
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 period you set (Time to Respond), the opening is offered to the next highest paid appointment.
You can set the response period in the fields under Time to Respond for days, hours, and minutes.
Example: Let's say we have these 5 waitlisted appointments for a 60 minute opening in the calendar:
- 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
The earliest available time goes to Gretchen because she has the highest-paid appointment that fits into the time slot.
Although Doris has the highest-paid appointment, the duration of her service is too long and does not fit within the available time.
To set up Money Maker as your waitlist type:
- Select Money Maker.
- In Time to Respond set how long the customer has to respond before the appointment is offered to the next customer in the list.
- Click Save.
First in Line
With First in Line, an automatic notification is sent to the first customer on the waitlist. If a customer does not respond within the period you set (Time to Respond), the opening is offered to the next customer in line.
You can set the response period in the fields under Time to Respond for days, hours, and minutes.
Example: Let's say Wendy was the first one to get added to the waitlist. She receives the first notification. If Wendy does not respond within the period you set, the appointment will be offered to the next customer in line. At this point, both Wendy and the second customer can book the appointment.
To set up First in Line as your waitlist type:
- Click First in Line.
- In Time to Respond set how long the customer has to respond before the appointment is offered to the next customer in the list.
- Click Save.
Instant Book
A notification is sent to all customers on the waitlist. The first customer who books the appointment gets it. The customer will receive a push, email, and text notification with a link to the online booking page.
To set Instant Book:
- Click Instant Book.
- Click Save.
2-Add Customers to a Waitlist from the Calendar
- Navigate to your Calendar page.
- Click any empty spot on the day you want, and then click Add to Waitlist.
On the Add to Waitlist screen fill in the following as needed:
- Select the Service.
You can add up to 3 services here. Once you've added the first, click +Add Service to add more.
- Select Employee.
The default is the employee whose calendar you are showing, but you can select additional employees or use Select All to include all employees who offer the selected service.
Note: If you have multiple services selected, you will have to make individual employee selections for each. - Add an Appointment Note, if wanted.
- Select up to 5 dates.
Select a date from the pop-up calendar, and then a time range (Anytime, Morning, Afternoon, or Evening).
Click +Add Waitlist Date & Time to add more. - Select the Customer to add to the waitlist.
- Select the Service.
- You can remove additional services and date/time entries by clicking the X next to an entry.
- Click Add to Waitlist when you've configured the entries as needed.
3-View Waitlisted Customers in the Notifications Panel
- Click the bell icon at the top of the screen.
- Find the Waitlist notification option. Then click View.
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 requests made for days when there is no employee/service availability.
The blue bell icon with a customer's name shows that a notification has been sent to the customer and the date and time sent.
4-Book a Customer into an open slot from the Waitlist
There are 3 options for each waitlist entry: Remove, Call the customer, and Browse Availability.
- Click Remove to remove the customer from the Waitlist.
Confirm in the dialog that displays.
- Click the customer's phone number to contact them directly.
- Click Browse Availability to check for any openings in your schedule and add the waitlisted customer to an appointment.
You can make changes to the service (or add more services), employee, and date. - Click Search to view available appointments for the selected day.
-
Select a Time.
- Make any changes to the Book an Appointment... screen, and then click Book.
You can see that the waitlisted customer has been added to the Calendar.
5-Restrict Employee use of the Waitlist feature
To restrict an employee's access to the waitlist feature on the notification panel, follow these steps:
- Navigate to Settings > Employees > Access Levels.
- Select an employee type, click the More (3 vertical dots) menu, and click Edit.
- Scroll down to the following settings:
- Accept Appointment Requests and Waitlists
- Accept Other Employee Appointment Requests and Waitlist
Each has a button marked Modify. Toggle it on or off. Green means that the option has been enabled for the employee.
To learn more about access levels see Setting Access Levels - Web Version. - Click Save.
Comments
9 comments
This is AWESOME!!! The video does make it so easy to start using.
I really liked being able to Wait-list them "on the schedule" where they wanted their appointment to be and see it there. I just tried to Wait-list Judy for a brow wax at noon on January 28th. She wants Noon on the 28th. Not anytime in a 3 hour block.
And being able to see it on the day and at the time she wants is more helpful than hidden in notifications. There is a higher likeliness that the Wait-list clients will be forgotten. Unless I allow automated. But automated will offer Judy the 10 AM and 10:15 AM slots she has already turned down....
Is there no way to Wait-list her for a specific time? And an option to see it on the schedule, like before?
Thank you Jennifer!
Hi Tonya. I will send your request to our management team. At this point, once you create the waitlist from the calendar, it gets added to the Notifications Panel as you already know, but the system does consistently display all your account notifications making it easy to remember and see all the waitlist appointments.
New question regarding the waitlist. Can I see who was on the waitlist last week? We were not able to get them in then, but maybe we could now. Who are those people?
Hi Tonya. If the appointment date passes, the system will automatically remove the customer from the waitlist so there isn't a way to track waitlist appointments once the date passes. Feel free to send a feature request to our development team to add this to the list of projects to work on. To get started, click this link: https://feedback.vagaro.com/forums/915991-feature-requests.
I think this is an awesome feature. If it worked. A waitlist shouldn't have any booking parameters. If someone cancels and there is a waitlist created the waitlist people should automatically be notified. I have my normal booking parameters set at 24 hours, because I dont want a surprise client where I didnt know I had one. But have not been able to use the waitlist when someone cancels day of or day before. That's when you need those spots filled. Please fix that.
Hi Shyne. Customers are notified about waitlisted appointments when cancellations happen. Are you still having issues? I see that you emailed our support team and one of our agents replied. Please review the email when you get a chance. Thanks.
I love the waitlist feature but I wish it gave clients an option to waitlist in general not only for specific dates. I only allow online booking 6 weeks in advance and when those weeks are booked clients want to waitlist for new openings but currently an only waitlist for 5 days. Clients often choose dates that I'm not in the salon limiting their chance of being alerted.
Hi Stephanie... I see what you mean. Are you aware that the "Sorry, they're booked" message can now include the business's phone number to encourage clients to call in if they can't book the appointment they want online? Set this switch on the Online Appointment Rules page to enable this new feature:
I understand that this doesn't match what you're talking about. If you want to have our dev team consider your request, please add it as a feature request: https://feedback.vagaro.com/forums/915991-feature-requests
Hope that helps!
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