Question

How do I configure my HotDoc appointment types so that I can charge different fees for appointments booked on weekends, in comparison to weekdays? 

Solution

If your practice currently charges different fees for appointments booked on the weekends as opposed to week-days, you can configure this in your Dashboard by:

• Setting up seperate appointment types for weekends and week-days
• Limit the availability for these by creating a custom session so that patients can only book the appointment types on the specified days
• Use HotDoc Payments to set the appropriate fee for each appointment type 

To do this, please follow the guide below: 

• Create separate appointment types
• Customise practitioners sessions

Create separate appointment types

Begin by creating separate appointment types for weekdays and weekends, so that you can set the fee for the appointment to the appropriate value.

1. To do this, follow the instructions in this article: How to add, edit or remove an appointment type and ensure you name the appointment types accordingly like below.
   
   

Customise practitioners sessions

Once you've created your seperate weekend and weekday appointment types, you will need to limit the practitioners availability, so that they're only available for the times specified in their appointment type name. 

EG: If the appointment type is listed as 'Standard consult - Week day', we don't want this appointment type to be bookable during the weekend.

1. Login to your HotDoc Dashboard and select Bookings > Practitioner Setup and Edit next to the practitioner you would like to add a custom session for:
   
   
   
   
2. Scroll down to the Appointment Types section and select Edit next to the appointment type you would like to customise:
   
   
   
3. Next, scroll to Appointment Type Sessions and select 'Limit availability with a custom session': 
   
   
   
4. From here, you can add in the sessions that you'd like to be bookable for the practitioners appointment type. Enter the details for your custom session then select Confirm.

   Here you can set the:

   - Day of the week
   - Hours it will start and finish
   - First date that you want these sessions to show online
   - How frequently this will repeat (never, daily, weekly, fortnightly).
   Note, if you select daily this will change the day to everyday.
   - End date (optional)

   
   
   

5. If you would like to add another session for this appointment type that occurs on a different date or time click add session and repeat the steps, or click Save & Close.
   
   

6. The next section allows you to copy your custom session to other appointment types that this practitioner has available online for bookings.
   You're also able to copy the custom session for other practitioners appointment types.
   
   
   

   Note: This is an important step to save you time adding in these sessions that apply to multiple practitioners for during the week or on the weekend.

   
   
7. Select the checkboxes next to all those applicable and click the green Save. 
   
   
8. Repeat these steps for the rest of your appointments that are set specifically for during the week or on the weekend.