We’ve added a simple but useful feature today to Pencil’em Desktop that will allow you to cancel an appointment from the main scheduling page, so you don’t have to go to the “Edit Appointments” tab.  As you hover your mouse over the appointment details of any appointment on the main scheduling page, you will notice a new “Cancel Appt.” button appears.  To cancel the appointment, click this new “Canel Appt.” button, and then confirm the cancelation by clicking “Yes, Cancel It” on the cancelation prompt.  That’s all there is to it!  See the image below for an example of this new feature.

New inline appointment Cancelation.

NOTE: This feature is not available if you are using Internet Explorer 6.  If you are still using Internet Explorer 6, we suggest you give this article a read, and upgrade to a more modern browser.

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.

Well, it’s been just over a week since our last blog post, so we thought we would let you know what we are up to.  We are now in full developement of the “Client Self Booking” feature, that will give you the opportunity to let your clients book their appointments with you online.  This feature will give you the ability to give your clients a special web address that they can go to, where there can book their appointments with you.  This feature adds an entierly new element to the Pencil’em Software Platform and will make it even more flexible for you and your clients.  The best part is, we will be offering this feature to you as an included part of the Pencil’em Software, at no extra charge!

We’ve also recently updated our email reminder system to fix a bug we found that would attempt to send reminders to clients with no email address.  If, in the past few days, you’ve received an “Email not sent” or bounced email notices, rest assured your email reminders have been delivered as expected.  The bounced emails are simply a result of the system attempting to send reminders to clients without email addresses.  The problem has been fixed and you should no longer receive bounced email notices.

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