Rescheduling canceled appointments

If a client’s appointment is canceled, you can quickly offer the time slot to up to 3 clients for an appointment. The first client to accept the offer will automatically be scheduled for the available slot.

Important: This feature is currently in early access. If you don’t see it in your account, you can send a help request to our Customer Success team to have the Cancellation Recovery feature added. To do this, see Getting support via email help request.

In this guide, we’ll cover:

• Offering a time slot from a canceled appointment
• How clients will receive offers
• Tracking and stopping offers
• Disabling the feature to offer a canceled appointment slot

Offering a time slot from a canceled appointment

When an appointment is marked as Canceled, Late canceled, or Clinician canceled, the appointment will appear with a Fill Slot button.

Note: Fill Slot will also appear in the appointment’s flyout. 

The Fill Slot button will only be available in the following conditions:

• The calendar is in the Day or Week view
• The initial appointment is scheduled more than 2 hours away
  • If the appointment is intended to occur within 2 hours, the button won’t be available

Selecting clients to offer a time slot

To offer the time slot to clients:

1. Click Fill Slot for the canceled appointment to open the Offer Appointment flyout
2. Review the Location and Service of the appointment, located under the appointment’s date and time
   • If this needs to be updated, click the pencil icon and select the appropriate option

Important: Once you’ve sent your offers, these details can’t be changed while the offer is in progress. After a client accepts, you’ll be able to update the newly created appointment, if needed.

3. Click Search clients and choose a client

Note: If you have clients in your waitlist, one or more of these clients may be suggested based on their preferences. To add a waitlisted client, click the waitlist client(s) suggested field and select + next to the client’s name.

4. Repeat the steps above to add up to 3 clients
   • This will form a queue of eligible clients for the time slot

Clients won’t be sent their offers all at once. After a client receives an offer, the next client will receive their offer within 30 minutes. For more information on how clients will receive their offers, see How clients will receive offers.

If needed, you can change the order in which clients will be offered the time slot:

1. Click the six dots next to a client’s name
2. Drag the client up or down

Once you’ve determined which clients should receive the offer, click Next. The Next button becomes available after you’ve added at least 1 client.

Reviewing and sending offer messages to clients

After choosing your clients, you can preview a prewritten message that clients will see when offered the time slot. This message will contain the date and time of the appointment.

Note: At this time, the prewritten message can’t be edited. 

Once you’ve previewed the prewritten message: 

1. Enter text in the Additional Message field, if needed
   • This text will be added below the prewritten message
2. Click Next
3. Review the following information:
   • The date and time, location, and service of the appointment
   • The order in which clients will receive their offer
   • If a client’s email address and/or phone number is displayed under their name, they’ll receive the offer by email and/or text 
   • The full offer message
4. When you’re ready to send your offers, click Send message to [X] client(s)

Note: If needed, you can click Back to edit the location and service of the appointment, which clients will receive the offer, or the additional message.

How clients will receive offers

After sending your message, the first client in the queue will immediately receive the offer. Depending on your permissions to contact the client, they’ll receive the offer through email, text message, or both methods. 

Note: To review the contact permissions for a client, see the Contact details section of Client Info.

If offered by email, the email will be sent from service@simplepractice.com. The email will consist of: 

• The date and time of the appointment
• An option to Accept Appointment
• An option to Decline Appointment

If offered by text, an SMS will be sent with the date and time of the appointment. A client can reply with 1 to accept the appointment, or 2 to decline.

Once the first offer is sent, the canceled appointment block will temporarily appear with the label OFFER PENDING.

Note: You can click on a pending block to track your offers. For more information, see Tracking and stopping offers.

After 30 minutes, the next client will receive the offer. This 30 minute interval can’t be customized. 

All clients’ offers will remain open until a client has accepted the offer. Once accepted:

• A new appointment for the client will be added to the time slot, and the original canceled appointment will remain on the calendar

• Any other client that attempts to accept or decline the appointment will see a message indicating that the appointment is no longer available

Otherwise, all clients’ offers will also remain open until: 

• All clients decline the appointment
• The appointment start time is reached, and no client has accepted
• You stop the offers manually

In the scenarios above, the pending block will revert to the original canceled appointment block. If applicable, you can click Fill Slot for the appointment to resend offers to other clients.

Tracking and stopping offers

If offers are active for a canceled appointment, the appointment block will appear with the label OFFER PENDING.

Clicking this block will open the Offer Tracker flyout. This will indicate the status of each client’s offer for the appointment, as well as:

• The date and time, location, and service code of the appointment
• Whether a client has declined
• The live countdown for a client before an offer is sent to the next one

You can also stop offers from being sent for a canceled appointment. To do this, click Stop Offer.

When you click Stop Offer: 

• The appointment will no longer be available to the clients in the queue
• The pending block will revert to the original canceled appointment block

If the canceled appointment is scheduled to start in more than 2 hours, you can click Fill Slot for the appointment to re-offer it to other clients.

Disabling the feature to offer a canceled appointment slot

The ability to fill a canceled appointment slot will automatically be enabled for your account. If you'd like to disable this throughout your account:

1. Navigate to Settings > Scheduling and inquiries > Cancellation recovery
2. Click the toggle next to Cancellation recovery

You can click the toggle again to re-enable the feature at any time.