Appointments: Bookable Time Slots for Retail

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Square Appointments: Set up bookable time slots for your retail store As a retailer, you may be looking for additional ways to maintain safe social distancing for customers that would like to visit your store in-person. One option is leveraging Square Appointments to help you create bookable time slots for your physical location.

Step 1: Activate Appointments Using a desktop/laptop, head to Appointments from your online Square Dashboard or navigate to squareup.com/appointments/ and log in with your existing Square account credentials. Enter in your Business name and phone number and confirm your time zone Enter your mobile phone to receive a link to download the Appointments app — you can also skip this step and download after completing setup

Step 2: Set up your bookable shopping options Next head to the Services section of your Appointments Dashboard (you will then be asked to go to the Service Library in the Items section due to a recent migration) If there are any pre-created services, feel free to remove them by clicking into each service and selecting Delete. Select Create a Service Give your service a name — let’s use “Personal Shopping Window” as an example — and an optional description Select Fixed for the price type and enter $0.00 for the price Set the duration to your preferred booking length Turn on the Block Extra Time feature if you’d like a buffer between the end of one appointment and the beginning of the next (For example. customers will see “20 mins” as the appointment length but additional time will be blocked on your calendar) Make sure Bookable by Customers Online is enabled to allow customers to use your online booking flow and click Save.

Step 3: Create your online booking flow Find Booking Site within the Online Booking section of your Appointments Dashboard Select Edit Business Details and confirm your location information and hours are correct and click Save. Your booking site is ready to share out with your customers! You have a few options sharing this with customers: Share the link to customers to send them directly to your booking site Embed a booking widget or button on your existing website If your site is powered by Square Online Store, you can quickly add your booking options from your Online Store Dashboard site editor by adding Square Appointments as a menu item to your navigation bar Add a booking button to your email

Step 4: Confirm your booking preferences Find Calendar & Booking within the Settings section of your Appointments Dashboard Set up your booking preferences within the section labeled Online Scheduling Decide whether you want bookings to be scheduled on a certain time (e.g. half hour) or according to the service duration Choose minimum and maximum times you want to accept bookings from customers (e.g. minimum 2 hours in advance and no farther than 2 weeks away) Click Save

Step 5: Customize your customer notifications Find Communications within the Settings section of your Appointments Dashboard Decide whether to send customers a confirmation request by text and/or email reminder along with the time frame you wish to send the communication Square Assistant will be turned on by default, allowing your customers to confirm, cancel, or change their appointments by replying directly to Square text messages Optional: Customize the message in your email notifications with dynamically generated information to make sure it matches your use case We also recommend downloading the Square Appointments app to manage your appointments from a mobile device or iPad, available from the App Store or Google Play Store.

Step 6: Keep in mind, once your customer books the appointment, you only have the option to manage appointments through the separate Square Appointments app, available from the App Store or Google Play Store. When your customer is done shopping, you can choose to check them out from the Appointments section of your dashboard or the Square Appointments app using their appointment, and your inventory as well as your Square reports will update.