Initial Setup

1. Connect Your Clients

When you first open Book Visit Now, the Home screen prompts you to connect your contacts.

Tap Continue, then choose the contacts you want to make available in Book Visit Now. You can select individual contacts or select all. If you do choose them all, they don’t immediately move into Book Visit Now. You have just authorized them to be used in the future if you manually pick them.

Book Visit Now uses your Apple Contacts so you can select existing clients without having to enter their contact information again.

You can continue managing your business setup from Settings.

2. Complete the Required Business Setup

Open Settings to see the Business Configuration section.

Before Book Visit Now can create an appointment, four items must be configured:

• Company Information
• Providers
• Locations
• Services Menu

Book Visit Now uses colored status indicators to make setups easy to follow.

Red means an item is required and still needs to be configured.
Green means a required item is complete.
Orange identifies an optional setting you may want to review.
Blue means an optional setting has been reviewed, even if you chose not to change it.

Once all four required items are green, you are ready to schedule appointments.

3. Add Your Company Information

Tap Company Info.

Enter your business name. This is the only required field in this section.

You can also add optional information such as a mission statement or slogan and a logo. The logo will appear on invoices.

Save your changes. The Company Information indicator will turn from red to green.

4. Add a Provider

A provider is the person who performs the service for the client.

Open Providers and add your first provider.

Enter the provider’s information, including their name and phone number, then save.

The phone number is included in your appointment reminders and confirmations by default. If it’s not set up, it’s not sent to the client. Including it makes it much easier for your client to contact you.

Once at least one provider has been configured, the Providers indicator turns green.

If you operate the business by yourself, you can simply create yourself as the provider.

5. Add a Location

Open Locations and create the location where appointments are performed.

Only a location name is required, so a location could be something simple such as:

Main Studio

You can also enter the complete street address when appropriate.

The address is included in your appointment reminders and confirmations by default. If it’s not set up, it’s not included. Including it makes it much easier for your client to find you.

This makes Book Visit Now flexible enough for businesses with a traditional storefront as well as businesses that operate from multiple locations.

Save the location to complete this step.

6. Create Your First Service

Open Services Menu and add the first service your business offers. (The services will sort in alphabetical order when making appointments).

Enter a service name and, if desired, a description. The service description is for your reference within the Services Menu.

Next, configure the service:

Duration
Enter the amount of time normally required to perform the service.

Retail Price
Enter the amount you normally charge.

Price Override
Enable price override if you want the ability to change the service price while creating an individual appointment.

Service Cost – Basic or Detailed
Enter your total cost for providing the service. Cost has two ways you can use it. On the main Cost of Service line, you can simply add a flat cost. 

Book Visit Now can also track individual items that contribute to the cost of a service.  You can get very specific and use the Add Product / supply to enter a cost for as many individual items as you use. For example, if you provide waxing services, you can itemize the cost of the:

wax

strips

tongue depressors

gloves

clean up supplies.

Listing each item separately and accounting for their individual cost, makes your reporting even more accurate.

VERSION 1.1 Services Ordering: Arrange services and products in the order you want to use them. Appointment menus follow your catalog order

Optional Settings

7. Review the Optional Business Settings

You do not have to configure every optional setting before scheduling your first client, but it is useful to understand what is available. You should set up taxes if you’re required to collect taxes for your services or products.

Products

Use Products for items you sell separately from your services.

Products can be added to appointments along with services.

VERSION 1.1 Products Ordering: Arrange services and products in the order you want to use them. Appointment menus follow your catalog order

Taxes and Fees

Use Taxes & Fees to configure taxes or fees that apply to your business.

Book Visit Now lets you maintain separate tax settings for services and products.

Calendar Hours

Calendar Hours determines the hours displayed on your scheduling calendar. Actually, all hours still display, but there is a subtle color difference in the background to visually see the open hours.

These display hours do not prevent you from creating appointments outside the visible range.

Calendar Hours also controls the thresholds used by Book Visit Now‘s calendar capacity indicator. On the calendar views, you can instantly see your day’s capacity with green, yellow and red indicators. By default, the indicator will show green with less than 3 hours booked. Between 3 and 6 hours, the indicator will show as yellow. Over 6 hours will show a red indicator. You can change the number of hours that trigger these colors in Calendar Hours.

Booking Rules

Booking Rules include options that affect how your schedule is presented. 

For example, Smart Availability can be used to make a calendar appear fuller when someone is viewing your screen without changing your actual appointment data. You can choose a percentage of your open slots to fill automatically. Smart Availability will never get in the way of you making an appointments. Note that there is no customer-facing appointment schedule, so this one is merely cosmetic.

Appointment Padding: Not implemented in version 1.0.
Version 1.1 : Default Padding for Conflict Checking adds time before or after an appointment when Book Visit Now checks conflicts and availability. It does not change the service duration displayed on the appointment or silently update padding already saved on existing bookings.

Time Off Planner

Time Off Planner allows you to select a provider and then set an appointment block time for lunch, a partial day, full day or multiple days. This will warn you if you try to make an appointments during these times. You still have full ability to overbook this time, if desired.

Special Event Banners

Special Event Banners allows you to put a colored icon on any day, or multiple days on a calendar to remind you of special events. There are several icons you can choose from, choose a color and a date or date range, give the event a name, and the icon will appear just under the date on the calendar. Click or touch on the icon to see the event name.

Appearance

Appearance lets you set Light or Dark themes or to follow your system settings.

Message Templates

Adjust confirmations, reminders, cancellations, rescheduling messages, and follow-up wording. Message templates have been built to give the client the most appointment information possible. You can use ‘variables’ within the templates and change the wording to sound more like your voice. They are ready to go already. 

Sync Contacts

Compare linked Apple Contacts with Book Visit Now records and choose which field changes to apply.

Making Appointments

Open Your Schedule

Tap Schedule to open the Book Visit Now calendar. This view is different on an iPhone versus an iPad or Mac. The reason is simply screen space. Each has it’s own way of displaying Day, Week and Month calendars.

iPhone

Day

Most of the screen is the day view, but the week and month are within view.

Week / Month

At the bottom of the day view, there is a Week / Month toggle.

Week – When this is set to Week, there is a horizontal date picker tag that shows 6-7 days at a time. This view shows the capacity color capsules under the date, so you know in an instant how full a particular date is. Tap any date, and the Day view changes to that date. Tap and hold on any date gives you a total of booked hours and dollars booked for that day without switching to it.

Month – When the toggle is changed to month, a small Month calendar will open. There are colored capacity capsules on each date here as well. The same tap or tap and hold features work here as well. 

There’s more – More? Yes, 

Hide – There is a small

Understanding Calendar Capacity

A colored bar beneath each calendar date provides a quick indication of booking capacity.

The green, yellow, and red thresholds can be configured under Calendar Hours.

Touch and hold a date to see additional information, including booked hours and booked revenue.

This provides a quick way to evaluate how busy a particular day is without opening each appointment individually.

9. Create Your First Appointment

Tap the plus (+) button in the upper-right corner of the Schedule screen.

This opens a new appointment.

Select a Client

Tap Select Client and choose the client from your Apple Contacts.

Book Visit Now brings the client’s available contact information into the app so you can use it when managing appointments and client records.

Select the Date and Time, Provider and Location

Choose the appointment date and starting time.

If the client has a repeating schedule, you can also create recurring appointments.

Book Visit Now supports repeats including:

• Daily
• Weekly
• Every two weeks
• Monthly
• Custom intervals

Provider and Location will only show if you have multiple of either set up.

Add Services and Products

Select one or more services for the appointment.

You can also add products when appropriate.

Once everything looks correct, tap Save.

Your first Book Visit Now appointment now appears on the calendar.

10. Review or Edit an Appointment

Tap an appointment on the calendar to open it.

From the appointment details, you can review or modify its information, cancel the appointment, or update its status.

Appointment statuses make it easier to see where each client is in the visit process.

Use Checked In when the client arrives. Use Completed when the visit is finished.

The appointment changes appearance and displays the Checked In status, making it easy to identify directly from the schedule.

11. Complete the Appointment

When the appointment is finished, open it again and change its status to Completed.

Marking an appointment Completed does more than update the calendar. It also allows Book Visit Now’s business reports to reflect the completed appointment and its revenue.

In Version 1.1, completion preserves the financial record, so review the prices, discounts, and taxes first. Use the correction or refund workflow (v1.1) for a later financial adjustment.

You have now completed the entire Book Visit Now workflow:

Set up your business → select a client → schedule services → manage the appointment → complete the visit.

What’s Next?

Your basic Book Visit Now setup is complete, but there are many additional tools you can configure as you become familiar with the app. If you must charge taxes for your services, then Taxes should be the next item.

Next, you may want to explore:

• Calendar Hours and capacity thresholds
• Booking Rules
• Products
• Taxes and Fees
• Service costs
• Recurring appointments
• Client records
• Reports and revenue tracking
• Appointment statuses
• Additional providers and locations

You do not need to configure everything at once. Book Visit Now is designed so you can complete the required setup first and add optional business settings as you need them.

HELP CENTER: Start with Initial Setup to configure your business. Use Optional Settings to explore additional tools, Business Settings to maintain your configuration, and Creating an Appointment for the booking workflow. If you need help with another feature, visit the FAQ or contact support.