We’ve added some new features to the Week-at-a-glance calendar that we think will help you to visually differentiate personal appointments from client appointments.  Personal appointments are now color coded with a red background, while client appointments remain in the default teal color.  Below you will find a screen shot of the new Week-at-a-glance view:

New Week-at-a-glance view.

In addition to the color coding, we’ve also added the ability to begin the booking process from this screen.  You can now click on any empty date / time and you will be taken to the “Create Appointments” tab, with the date and time filled out for you.  While you hover your mouse over any empty cell (or cells that are filled with “—”), you will see the text “Book Now” appear in the cell.  The system will currently only allow you to book empty cells from this screen, to avoid any booking conflicts.  See the screen shot below for more details on booking from the Week-at-a-glance screen:

Week-at-a-glance Booking Feature

We think the “Visual Booking” will certainly help you fill spots in your schedule with more appointments, which means more money in your pocket!  Please feel free to leave any questions you might have in the comments!

Hello Pencil’em Pros!  I wanted to take a moment and let you know about a change that will soon be in place.  We will be adding the service name to the confirmation / reminder emails.  So, along with the Date and Time of your clients next appointment, they will see the service you’ll be performing.  The new emails will look something like this:

New reminder / confirmation email screen shot

We will be implamenting this feature on Wed. Aug. 5th.  We wanted to give you a few days notice in case you need to make any adjustments to your service names. If you have any questions regarding this new feature please leave them in the comments so we can address them publicly, or email support@pencilem.com.

EDIT: We will be delaying the implamentation of this feature by a few days to run a few more tests.  We expect to have this feature in place by mid next week.

In an effort to make Pencil’em more like a paper appointment book, we’ve added a new BETA feature that gives you the ability to book your own personal appointments in addition to client appointments.  This is a big upgrade as now you can manage your days much easier, and block out times when you don’t want to be scheduled.  You can use this feature to schedule your Dr. Appointments, unavailable time, trips to the grocery store, or picking up the dry cleaning (or anything else you can think of).  Right now, this is done on a day to day basis, but we are working on a recurring version of personal appointments.   How does it work you ask?  Let me explain…

To book a personal appointment, simply select the “<Personal Time>” option from the “Select Client” drop down menu (see below):

New Personal Time Option

When you select the “Personal Time” option, the form will change slightly to accommodate creating a personal appointment.  The new form will look like this:

New Personal Time Form

Fill out the form, taking notice of the required fields, and click “Create Personal Time”.  Your personal appointment will show up in your daily, weekly, and monthly view (using the “Personal Label” field as the focus of the appointment.).  Notice, on the daily view, your personal appointments have a grey background (to denote an unavailable time) and have the “Personal Icon”   next to the time.  You can add or view notes just as you do with normal appointments.  See full screen shot below:

Personal Appointment Detail

Deleting Personal Appointments

To delete a personal appointment simply hover your mouse over the appointment and a red “Delete” button will appear next to the appointment title. You will need to click the Delete Button twice, once to start the delete, and once to confirm that you wish to delete the appointment.  Click the Delete button once, and the button text will change to read “Are you sure?”.  Click this button again and the personal appointment will be deleted.  If you accidently click the Delete button, you can click the “or Cancel” link found next to the “Are you sure” button to cancel the delete. See below:

Delete a personal appointment

So you might be wondering what “BETA” means….BETA in software lingo, means we have rolled out a new feature, but it’s not 100% complete.  The base functions are ready for public consumption, but we plan to work on this feature over the next few weeks.  Go ahead and use the new feature, but know that some things may change before the BETA label is removed.

Now that we have that out of the way, lets talk about “Week at a glance”.  The week at a glance feature was created to help you easily visualize holes in your schedule and see a graphical representation of any given week.  You will find the week dates across the top of the graph, with the times of day down the left hand side.  Your appointments appear as blocks of time (based on the service length) within each day’s column.  You will see the name of the client at the start of the appointment time as well.  You can find the new Week at a glance view by clicking the “Week at a glance” tab from the main scheduling screen.

Week at a glance tab

As of right now, each time you click this tab, the calendar will refresh itself, and it will always start on the current day.  You can change which day the week view starts on by clicking in the “Select Start Date” box and selecting a new start date from the popup calendar.  You can also jump forward or backward a week by clicking the “Previous Week” and “Next Week” buttons found on the upper right hand side of the screen (see below):

Changing which day the calendar starts on.

Lastly, to help you see what time an appointment starts simply hover your mouse over the name of the client, and that row will highlight, showing you what time the appointment starts.  Notice the highlighted row turns a light red, and the start time of the appointment is highlighted on the far left hand side of the screen (see below):

Row Highlighting

If you have any questions about this new feature let us know if the comments!  We look forward to hearing your feedback!