Online scheduling software: Frequently asked questions

How do I set up your scheduling software?

First of all, you define your timetables and schedules. After that you can make combinations between timetables and schedules available in time, for each week or for specific dates.

Timetable: who or what object? A schedule belonging to a person is often just the name: (therapist) John, (hairdresser) Jane, (driver instructor) Smith. If the schedule is about an object (with a non overlapping schedule), all the objects should be listed: hotel room 14, motorised rental boot, restaurant table 4, the big concert hall, meeting room downstairs, and so on.
Service: what do you provide? Examples are: a short massage, a night in a hotelbed, a day sailing, a dinner, a specific concert or theater, a performance, a driving lesson, cut hair with or without washing, etc.

A service itsself has certain properties, like the duration, the price, and optionally some time in between (for cleaning or as a break), the payment service, on which minutes in the hour the service may start, etc. You can find a lot of examples here at the information overview page.

If you have any problems with or questions about setting up your account, do not hesistate to contact us to help you set up your account (for free, of course).
You can watch this instruction video, which gives a good general overview and specificly shows a lot of options of this online scheduling software. You should be able to set up your own account quite easily after watching this video.

How do I put your schedule system on my own website?

To put our scheduling software on your website, you should put the following text on a seperate page. Also replace "URL" with the URL from menu "Front" in your account; this looks for example like "main=obbx&id_company=4923". If you do so, your customers will not notice that you are using our system for your scheduling; even links in e-mails will look like these come from your website. Please contact us if you have any questions or special needs.

If you have any problems with or questions about setting up your account, do not hesistate to contact us to help you set up your account (for free, of course).

How do I remove your logo and use my own layout?

You can remove the Sokati logo and layout by setting a .css layout file in your account in menu "Account", for example by entering https://www.sokati.com/online-agenda-planning-maken/afspraken-planner/css/style-sokati-font-larger.css . When you apply a .css file, the Sokati website and layout will immediately disappear, and our software becomes a web component. To use your own layout, upload a .css file to your own server and fill in the full URL in your account (to test, fill in the URL above). Or ask us (free or charge) to adjust the layout to your site: you can request it (after buying an account) by creating a page first (see the previous question) and mail us the location of this page.

If you add your .css file, your domain name wil be used in your reply address, which means that your customers really never see the word "Sokati". Ask your domain name provider to add "ip4:195.211.72.5" to your SPF record, to ensure that we can send e-mails on your behalf. After you have done that, e-mail us about it and all e-mails will now be send from noreply@*yourdomain*.

I am looking for something like your scheduling software but with slightly different options and specifications.

We can surely adjust our scheduling software for you, for example by asking additional information when new customers subscribe (like the insurance company, or birthday). The "Comments"-field which is always asked, can be replaced by any question you would like to be asked during the process, for example by "Including breakfast?" or "Voucher code", and with any characteristic you require (like: a minimum of 10 characters, yes/no, etc.). There are even more things that we can do to extend our software for you; we are always pleased with good tips from users.

Are there any warnings when I schedule something impossible?

Yes, there are several warnings, which you can ignore as well. There are warnings for when there is already another entry at the given date and time, if the maximum number of customers is about to be exceeded, if you are about to schedule inside a scheduled vacation, or if the timetable-service combination is not available anywhere and therefore probably incorrect. Note that if you make an entry yourself in the overview page, it is impossible to make a pending entry, because you are creating the entry yourself.

How do I set up online payments?

First of all you should pick a payment service, see HERE_. You can set up an online payment service for each service. What you exactly have to do, depends on which one you have chosen.

Voor Mollie is dit de procedure. Maak een account en doorloop de hele procedure. Ga nu in Sokati naar menu "Diensten" en maak of wijzig een dienst.
Voer nu bij de betalingsinstellingen in : "Mollie,live_......." waarbij u live_.... vervangt door de API-key die helder in beeld komt als u bij mollie inlogt.

These are the steps to create your Stripe configuration text. Please contact us for help, because although it might just take 5 minutes, this is quite challenging.
1. First of create the text "stripe,"
2. Secondly, go to https://dashboard.stripe.com/apikeys and copy the secret API key. Add the secret API key and a comma to our configuration text, so now you have "stripe,pl_live.........,"
3. Thirdly go to https://dashboard.stripe.com/webhooks/create and create a webhook for URL that we give you:
https://www.sokati.com/..........?api=pl_live.... (please add the full API key at the end)
for event: checkout.session.completed
After you created this so called "webhook", open it and search for the so called "Signature secret". Click on a show-button to show that secret, copy it and add this text to the stripe configuration text.
So now you have a payment configuration text which goes: "stripe,.....,....".
Please go to Sokati, click menu "Services", click on the little icon with mouse-over text "edit service" (or something like that) to go to the edit page. At the service edit page, go to the second tab and look for the payment configuration field. Copy-paste the payment configuration text there, and click at the save button somewhere at the top of the page.

At the "Services" page, pick a service, and enter in the payment-entry: the name "Paypal", comma, your e-mail, For example: "Paypal, example@somewhere.com"

How can I easily process real-life reservations or by phone?

1. After logging in, select the upper menu-page. Here you see the upper bar for filtering which calendar items you want to see, and in the middle a list of current appointments or bookings. In the lower bar you can fill in your new appointments or bookings. Choose customer "Offline" to make a booking if a customer is not yet registered.

2. On the same page you can find a "plus"-sign at the top of the page. Use this one to create appointments or bookings with existing customers or with a new customer (which you can make on the fly), by choosing the same choices as your customer would. Note that it is impossible to create an appointment or booking that is not available.

3. On the same page you can also use the upper bar to create a new appointment or booking. Fill in the schedule and the timetable and the preferred date. If the combination of these three has any availability, then you will see a list of gray options below. Our scheduling software shows you the free spots in your calendar. If you click on any of the green signs after a gray item, our scheduling software copies the information into the lower bar.

4. You can make appointments by the graphical calendar, but only in a primitive way. Choose the graphic calendar (second menu option) and click (and drag) somewhere on an empty spot. Our scheduling software now shows the choice between making a new appointment or booking, or to create an item for the availability.

How do I place a "Your Online Appointments" page on my website?

You can create a page on your website specificly for when a customer lost all his or her e-mail and wants to search for all online appointments. This can be very useful when you have to maintain a lot of customers and you want to minimise spending time on managing all appointments.
The steps to create such a page are exactly the same as for how to place our scheduling system on your website. Only now you have to replace the URL in the two lines of HTML with another string, which you can also find on the "Front End" page in your account, for example:

"m=885345879&id_company=9110"

If you use this together with the two lines of HTML, the Sokati website will automaticly disappear around the question itsself.

Why are certain changes not automatically adjusted to existing scheduled items?

If you change the name of a timetable, or the description or cancel period of a service, this will not be automatically visible in overviews for you and your customers. This is a little bit of customer protection: you cannot make a change in the choice of the customer without notifying the customer as well. By selecting the "edit" icon next to an existing entry in the overview, you are about to send the customer an e-mail. After sending this e-mail, all information from the timetable and service are updated, and you have informed the customer about the changes as well.

Our online planning system is for example in use as

Subscription system (lessons): Course and (driving) lesson
Reservation software (reservations): Theater, venue, meeting room, events
Appointment scheduling (appointments): Health and beauty care
Booking system (bookings): Hospitality and tourism: hotel and hostel
Scheduling software (reservations): Hospitality and tourism: restaurant
Rental scheduling (bookings): Rental

Online scheduling software

Support - Frequently asked questions - Users

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Example

Speciale settings during scheduling:

Our online planning system is for example in use as