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”.

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!

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!