What Square Appointments is for
Square Appointments is online booking and scheduling software from Square, offered to beauty and service businesses among others. A practice on it runs the calendar, the customer profiles and the Square checkout from one account, and all of it stays there. The page for Square Appointments covers what stays in the account, what is built around it and how the connection is made.
A growth system begins with the sales record, because the Square checkout is where a booking turns into revenue. It reads sales by service and by month, puts the product cost and the provider's time beside each line, and writes the margin column. From the calendar it reads utilization by day and hour and the patients past their interval. The ninety-day plan comes from those reads. Then the work goes in around the account. Calls and DMs are answered and booked into the Square Appointments calendar. Comeback timing comes from past appointments, the party list is built from who is due, and the numbers go on one page.
One account holds the calendar and the sale, so the dashboard counts revenue rather than bookings
A booking tool from a payments company keeps the appointment and the sale in one account. When the growth system reports revenue it reads the sale, so a no-show, a rebooked slot and a package session each count the way your accountant would count them. From the calendar it takes the service and the date for timing; from the sale, what was paid. Charts are a separate matter. A practice on Square Appointments keeps the clinical record wherever the medical director has set it, an EMR or the documentation system in use today, and the system never reads it. When the agent books a new patient, the intake goes out by whatever process your medical director has approved, and the booking carries a note that it was sent. Nothing clinical is ever typed into a customer profile.
Job by job: where it lives and who does it
| Job | Where it lives | Who does it |
|---|---|---|
| The appointment, the client profile and the checkout | In Square Appointments, as today | Your front desk and your providers |
| The sale, by service and by month | In the Square point of sale, beside the calendar | Your front desk; the system reads it for revenue and margin |
| Answering the call, the DM and the text in seconds | The growth system, booking into the Square Appointments calendar | The voice and text agents, with handoff rules to the desk |
| Timing the comeback | Last-visit dates in Square Appointments; the interval, the message and the reply in the system | The system, in the provider's voice |
| Segmenting the list for a party or a launch | The system, from the Square Appointments client list | The system, with the offer written by you |
| The dashboard: calls, bookings, no-shows, revenue | The system, reading Square Appointments | Read weekly by you and the front desk |
When staying on Square Appointments is right
Stay on Square Appointments when the calendar, the customer profiles and the checkout already run from one Square account and the desk has stopped thinking about it. The growth system adds the answering, the timing and the dashboard around that account and changes nothing the desk sees. Revenue is read from the checkout you already reconcile, so the dashboard and the bookkeeper agree.
What a switch would cost you in time
A switch from Square Appointments moves the money as well as the calendar. Customer profiles move by export, and the online booking link on your site, your Google profile and your social accounts is replaced. With the point of sale goes a new way to take the card, a new deposit flow and a reconciliation the bookkeeper has to learn. The old account settles its last sales meanwhile. Through the overlap the front desk books in two calendars. Put the agreement in front of counsel before notice is given. The hours go into the move, and the holes in the calendar stay open.
How to do this on Monday
- Open the Square sales report for the past year by item and mark which items are treatments on an interval and which are retail; the treatment lines are where the comeback starts.
- Beside each treatment line write what the product cost and what the provider's hour cost; the gap is the margin the ninety-day plan is built on.
- Count last month's appointments on the Square Appointments calendar that the desk typed in against the ones patients booked online themselves. The typed-in share is the share the agent can take.
- Keep the comeback list to patients with written consent to marketing texts on record; what counts as consent is for counsel to confirm.
- Text ten patients from the list in Dana's voice with the booking link, and count who books.
What to do next
NorthCore's Run the whole practice solution builds the growth system on top of Square Appointments: the answering, the comeback timing, the segmentation and the dashboard, and Square Appointments stays where it is. Scoped in writing and covered by the promise on this site: results in 90 days, or we keep working until you have them.
