Efficiently Manage Overbooking with Clinic HQ
Overbooking appointments for spay/neuter occurs when the number of animals scheduled exceeds the capacity set for an individual species/sex or the max capacity (total number) set for the day. Overbooking appointments is an area of great concern with clinics.
E-Appointments and Overbooking
Our powerful scheduling engine will only provide dates and times to users where you have availability, so there’s zero chance you can be overbooked. On this note, there’s a fundamental concept that is imperative to understand. Right when the user requests the appointment online, it is pulled off of your calendar, even if you haven’t “confirmed” it yet. This ensures there’s no chance of overbooking.
“The day is full and I have e-appointment requests for that same day?”
Oftentimes, new clinics implementing online booking will be concerned that they are getting overbooked because the calendar tiles are full but they have pending e-appointment requests for that full day. Don’t worry!
Please note that your pending e-appointment request is included in the total count of appointments for the day.
For instance, if the day’s capacity is 20 and all 20 spots are already booked, and you have a pending e-appointment request for the same day, it is already counted as one of the 20 spots. If you confirm the request, the count for the day will remain the same. However, if you cancel/decline the request, the count will drop to 19, and the spot will become available for someone else to book.
- TIP: Click Tiles in the upper right corner of the Spay/Neuter Calendar. Then tick the box to show “E-Apps”. This will enable a tile on each day to show the number of pending e-appointment requests for that day.
Internal Scheduling and Overbooking
Capacity Full Warning
When scheduling an appointment internally, if the capacity has already been reached for that species/sex/size then a warning message will appear for the user. The red banner indicates how many animals are already booked for the capacity you are trying to add the new appointment in.
Manually Overbook
Overbooking is not a common practice and should always be approved by the clinic manager or veterinarian.
Manually overbooking can only be done when scheduling internally.
To create an appointment when the day is already filled you must tick the box that says “Create the appointment(s) even if the day is overbooked” This option is located on the last step on the bottom of the page when scheduling internally for a public client or volume client.
Issues That Arise from Intentional Overbooking Specific Capacities
If a day is intentionally overbooked it will leave some of the individual animal capacities unfilled and they will not be offered through online booking. Intentionally overbooking a specific capacity will fill up the maximum capacity while still leaving the other capacities unfulfilled.
When the max capacity is reached, the day is no longer offered for online booking, even if slots are available.
To help you understand this concept, let’s work through an example.
Suppose your clinic has a daily capacity of 10 female cats and 10 male cats, making it a total of 20 cats. Now, let’s say your clinic director or vet approves overbooking the female cats. As a result, the female cat category is overbooked with 12 out of 10, while the male cat category is only filled with 8 out of 10.
This means that your day is full with 20 out of 20 cats, but you still want the last two male cat spots to be available for online booking. However, once the maximum capacity is reached, the day is no longer offered for online booking.
To ensure that the last two male cat spots are still available for online booking, you need to increase your maximum capacity.
Go to the Spay/Neuter Calendar and click on the day you want to adjust.
- Choose Adjust capacity for today only and increase the category that was overbooked. In this scenario, it’s the female cats.
- Change the female cat capacity from 10 to 12, and now you are booked 12 out of 12 females, and the whole day is 20 out of 22 cats.
Since the max capacity has not been met, the last two male cats will be offered online.
Adjust Capacity
If you are full in one category on your capacity but have room in another, you can make micro-edits to the calendar capacity for that one day.
Here’s what you need to do:
1. Go to the Spay/Neuter Calendar and click on the day you want to adjust.
2. Choose Adjust capacity for today only
3. Take appointments from one category and give them to another category. Increase and decrease the numbers.
Example scenario: You haven’t filled the male dog tile, and your admin has approved adding a small female dog to the schedule in place of the male. To accommodate more appointments for this type, you can use the Adjust Capacity tool. Decrease the male capacity and increase the female dog’s max capacity.
