This has been a long requested feature, and we are proud to announce that we have added this feature to all Pencil’em accounts.  There is good reason for the delay in rolling this feature out, and it is largely due in part to the way Pencil’em users create their services.  In talking with our users, we discovered that many of you didn’t want the service listed in the reminder emails, or wanted to be able to control which services would appear in the emails and which wouldn’t.  So we have now built this into the system and with a quick set up, you can select which services you would like to appear in your reminders and confirmation emails.

Add Services to reminder / confirmation emails

1. First, navigate to the “Services” page in the main menu.
2. Click on the first Service in your service list that you would like to make appear in the confirmation / reminder email
3. Click on the “Edit this Service” button and the Edit Service dialog form will appear.
4. You will notice there is now a new drop down menu labeled “Display in Emails?”, by default this will be set to No, so change it to “Yes”.
5. Click “Save Changes” on the dialog box to save the changes.
6. Repeat the above steps for each service you want to be made public (show up in confirmation / reminder emails).

The above steps are for services that have already been created.  If you are creating a new service, the process is the same, however you would just specify wether or not it should appear in the emails at the time of creation.

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So you going out of town, planning a trip, or just simply don’t want to be scheduled on a particular day.  There is now a simple way to block out an entire day so that you won’t be scheduled.  Just follow the instructions below:

Pencil’em Desktop:

1. Select “<Personal Time>” from the “Select Client” drop down menu item.
2. From the “Personal Time” drop down menu item, select “Entire Day” to signify you would like to block out the entire day.  At this point the “Select Time” menu settings will disappear since the entire day will be blocked out, there is no need to specify the start time.
3. Continue on to add your Appointment Label and any neccessary notes.
4. Click the “Create Personal Time” button and the personal appointment will be scheduled.  It will appear in your daily view as a personal appointment starting at 12:00 am and lasting 24 hours.  You can still book other appointments on this day, however you will need to confirm the booking conflict.

Pencil’em Mobile:

1. Click on “Schedule” to access the scheduling page.
2. Click on “Personal Appointment” in the secondary navigation bar.
3. Set the Date you would like to block out.
4. You can skip the “Start Time” as this will be an all day appointment, and the start time will be automatically set for you.
5. From the “Length” drop down menu select “Entire Day”.
6. Add a label and notes and click “Schedule”.

We’ve reworked the way recurring appointments work (in look and function).  In the past, the recurring appointments would automatically schedule recurring appointments for one year.  After receiving feedback from our users, we’ve found that many users book appointments in chunks, like 3 – 4 months at a time.  In this case, the system would create appointments for one year, when they really only needed recurring appointments for 3 or 4 months.

Clicking the “Recurring” button on the scheduling page now brings up a small pop up box (see the image below) and you can specify the Appt. Frequency (how often the appointment recurs IE every 2 weeks) and the Appt. Duration (this is how long the appointment should recur for, IE 4 months).  So, if you select “2″ for Appt. Frequency and “4″ for Appt. Duration the appointment would be scheduled every 2 weeks for the next 4 months.

It’s a simple change, but one that makes the recurring functions even more flexible.

New Recurring Appt. box

This might not be a question you’ve ever asked yourself. Or, you might immediately say, “It costs me nothing, I use my appointment book and that works just fine!”. And I would probably agree with you, it does work fine. Many nail techs and hair stylists live by the book to manage their daily schedules. So you might then be asking yourself why I’m asking you how much your scheduling costs you….let me explain.

For many stylists, missed appointments means lost revenue. With this in mind, I’m guessing that a majority of you are taking personal time to make calls, send emails, or send text messages to remind your clients of upcoming appointments. If the client is aware that your expecting them, they are less likely to cancel or no show. So how much time does it take to make these calls, write the emails, and type the text messages? I would also ask, if you weren’t spending the time to make this contact, what else could you be doing? Developing new clients, building your business, spending time with family / friends?

On average, we find the stylists that use Pencil’em manage between 75 – 150 clients (or more!). Now, lets assume that on average, a stylist books 6 appointments per day (5 days a week). That’s 30 appointments a week. If we were going to calculate the time it takes to make contact with each of these clients (assuming 5 minutes per contact) that would come to 150 minutes a week, 600 minutes a month, 7200 minutes a year!

Cost of scheduling calculation

So, as you can see above, stylists are leaving a lot of money on the table, just to manage their schedules! This is the main reason that we’ve created Pencil’em. At just $14.95 a month, Pencil’em is the most affordable business management tool available today. With Pencil’em, you will spend a fraction of the time / money you are currently spending managing your appointments, so you can spend more time on your clients, your business, and your life. Pencil’em helps to eliminate this schedule management by automating the process of appointment reminders. Since you won’t have to spend as much time on the phone, you can focus on what’s really important, the client in the chair!

Benefits of Pencil’em Scheduling Software

• Access anywhere, from any computer with an Internet connection.
• Pencil’em Mobile lets you manage your appointments from your web enabled mobile device.
• Not tied to one book (what if you lost your book?), your data is safely secured on our servers.
• Connect with clients in new ways!
• Bring your business up to date and embrace technology to make your life easier!
• Spend less time reminding customers of upcoming appointments.

If your still not convinced, we ask that you give Pencil’em a try, for free! Sign up for a free trial (no credit card required) and you will see first hand how this great tool can help you build your business.

We’ve added a simple new feature today that gives you the ability to more easily navigate specific dates while booking appointments.  Often times, when your sitting with a client, you will want to book a follow up appointment in “x” weeks.  We’ve added a new feature that will easily let you jump 2, 4, 6, or 8 weeks as well as a “Today” and “Tomorrow” button.  Using these Quickjump links gives you an instant visual confirmation of these dates without having to count weeks on a calendar.

To access this feature, simply click on the “Quickjump” button, found on the main scheduling screen, directly underneath the “Select Date” label (and above the “Recrurring” button).  A pop up will appear that will allow you to select the date you would like to jump to.  Your “Daily View” will be updated, as well as that date selected on the “Select Date” datepicker.  See the image below for more details.

New "Quickjump" feature lets you navigate your schedule in a new way.

In a previous post on this blog, we made mention of a new feature we are going to be adding soon that will add the Service being performed to the confirmation and reminder emails.  We are still working on this feature, but as we found out during development, there is a little more to it that we initially believed.  We reached out to a number of Pencil’em users and found that not everyone wanted the service listed in the email, or only wanted specific services listed, and not others.  Not to worry, we have a plan and are working hard to make the necessary changes to get this feature launched.  We will update this blog again once it’s complete, along with the instructions on how to add the service to your reminder emails.

Lastly, we are working on a redesign of our public website (http://www.pencilem.com).  We are hoping to launch this website this week, so stay tuned for that.  As always, comments are appreciated!