Add a service
A service is an appointment you offer, such as an initial consultation or a tax return review. Add it once, and customers can book it from your website.
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How to use CaliDiary, step by step.
59 guides, one for each task in the plugin, in the order of its menu. Each one says when you need it, shows every step with the plugin's own button names, and lists common problems and their fixes.
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New to CaliDiary? These six guides get a practice, clinic or studio taking bookings on its website.
Appointments
Services you offer, the booking set-ups that hold the rules, putting them on your website and the diary. In the plugin: CaliDiary → Appointments
Make a booking set-up
A booking set-up holds the rules for booking: the services it offers, the notice you need, how far ahead people can book, how many people can book the same time and when they pay.
Put a booking set-up on your website
Each booking set-up has its own booking form. Put it on a new page with one click, or add it to any page with its shortcode, the CaliDiary block or the Elementor widget.
Add a booking by phone or for a walk-in
When a client phones or calls in, add their booking yourself. It is confirmed straight away and blocks the time, just like a booking made on your website.
See your diary by person
The diary shows your bookings by day, with one column for each team member, by week or as a list. Open any booking to accept it, move it, cancel it or mark it as paid.
Classes and courses
Weekly classes, one-off dates, registers, courses and class passes. In the plugin: CaliDiary → Classes and courses
Add a class and its weekly times
A class runs at set weekly times, and people book a place on a date. Add the class once, then its weekly time: CaliDiary makes the dates for you.
Change or cancel one class date
Change or call off a single date without touching the weekly timetable, or add an extra one-off date.
Take a register
The register lists everyone booked on a class date. Mark who came, and CaliDiary completes the bookings for you.
Make a course
A course is a set of dates booked together as one, with one price, such as a six-week self-assessment course. People book the whole course, not single dates.
Sell class passes
A class pass is a pack of places bought once and used up, such as 6 workshop places to use within 3 months. Customers pay for the pass, then book with its code.
Events
Events on dates you set, with ticket types, QR tickets, checking in and door lists. In the plugin: CaliDiary → Events
Add an event and its dates
An event happens on dates you set, such as a year-end tax seminar, and people book tickets for a date. Add the event, then its first date.
Ticket types and QR tickets
Ticket types let you sell different tickets for one event, each with its own price and limit. Every booking gets QR tickets to show at the door.
Check people in at the door
Scan each guest's QR ticket with your camera, or find them by name, and watch the count of who has arrived.
Print tickets and the door list
Print all the tickets for a date, or a door list to tick off on paper when there is no signal at the venue.
Passes and memberships
Passes bought once and used up, and memberships that reset each period. In the plugin: CaliDiary → Passes and memberships
Sell a pass, and open the pass shop
A pass is bought once and used up: a number of uses within a time, such as 6 advice sessions within 6 months.
How customers use a pass
Customers pay with their pass or membership code at the last step of the booking form. One use is taken for each place they book.
Add a member
A membership keeps going and resets each period, such as a monthly advice plan with two sessions a month. Nothing is charged automatically.
What a pass or membership covers
A pass or membership can cover any mix of appointments, classes and events. One use is one appointment, one class place or one event ticket.
Team and locations
The people customers book, their sign-in, roles and teams, your locations, rooms and equipment. In the plugin: CaliDiary → Team and locations
Add a team member
Add each person customers can book, such as a partner or an adviser, and choose the services they offer.
Invite a team member to sign in
Team members see their own diary on your team sign-in page, never the WordPress dashboard. Send each one an invitation to choose a password.
Give a team member their own hours
New team members can be booked whenever the business is open. When someone works part-time or different days, give them their own hours.
Give people roles and teams
Choose what each person can see and do, and group people into teams that a team manager looks after.
Add a location
Every website starts with one location. On Solo you can have up to three, and on Pro any number, each with its own address, services and hours.
Add rooms and equipment, and make a service need one
Add the rooms, desks, chairs and equipment your appointments need. A service that needs one is only offered when one is free.
Make someone a branch manager
A branch manager looks after a place rather than a group of people: everything booked at their locations, whoever does it, and nothing at all from your other branches.
Opening hours
Business hours, people's own hours, special dates, time off and the free-times preview. In the plugin: CaliDiary → Opening hours
Set your business hours
Business hours are when customers can book. Everyone follows them unless you give someone their own hours.
Set people’s hours
Each person can follow the business hours or keep their own, period by period, and at a chosen location.
Close for a holiday, or open different hours on a date
A special date changes your hours for a day or a run of days: closed all day, closed for part of it, or open different hours.
Add time off for someone
Time off is for one person: a holiday, a training day or an afternoon away. Everyone else stays bookable.
Check the free times
The preview shows the times visitors can choose for the next 7 days, after notice, gaps, time off, special dates and bookings already made.
Settings
Your business details, time and money, tax and invoices, sign-in and security, your data and your licence. In the plugin: CaliDiary → Settings
Set your business details
Tell CaliDiary who you are and where new bookings should be emailed, and choose how your booking form starts.
Set your time zone, clock and currency
Make sure times and prices show the way your customers expect.
Charge tax such as VAT, and send invoices
Add tax to your prices on any plan. On Solo and Pro, give services different rates and let CaliDiary make invoices and credit notes.
Share the team sign-in page
Team members see their own diary on your website's team sign-in page, never the WordPress dashboard.
Use CaliDiary behind Cloudflare
One switch tells CaliDiary to look at each visitor's own address when your site is behind Cloudflare.
Export or erase a customer's data
WordPress's own privacy tools include CaliDiary, so one request covers a customer's bookings and the rest of their data on your website.
Add your CaliDiary Pro licence
After buying Solo or Pro (or starting a free trial), add CaliDiary Pro to your website and activate your licence key.
Give a location its own tax set-up
A branch in another country, or one that charges different rates, can have its own country, tax name, rates and invoice details, separate from the rest of your business.
Take bookings in another currency
A location can take bookings in its own currency. CaliDiary never converts anything: you type each price in each currency, so customers always see a figure you chose.
Business customers and reverse charge
Ask customers whether the booking is for a business, collect their tax number, and have CaliDiary charge no tax when reverse charge applies, with the right wording on the invoice.
Stop spam bookings
The booking form already turns away robots with a hidden field and a timing check. If spam still gets through, add free Google reCAPTCHA keys for a second line of defence.
Give customers a My bookings page
A page on your own website where customers sign in with a 6-digit code sent to their email, with no password to forget, and handle their own bookings within the rules you set.
See who did what: the activity log
A dated record of who did what: bookings made, changed, moved, cancelled or paid, and changes to your settings. Useful when something looks wrong and nobody remembers why.
Add your own booking statuses
Name the stages your work really goes through, such as “Paperwork received”, while CaliDiary keeps free times, emails and reports right underneath.
Keep sensitive answers encrypted
A question about health, or anything else private, can have its answers encrypted in your database and kept out of every email, so only staff who should read them can.
Payments
Telling customers how to pay, and taking card payments with your own Stripe, PayPal or Mollie account. In the plugin: CaliDiary → Settings → Payments
Tell customers how to pay you
Take payment on the day, or ask customers to pay before by bank transfer, and keep track of what has been paid.
Connect Stripe
Card payments go straight to your own Stripe account. CaliDiary never handles your money and takes no fee.
Connect PayPal
PayPal payments go straight to your own PayPal account, using an app you make in the PayPal Developer Dashboard.
Connect Mollie
Mollie offers customers the payment methods you have switched on in Mollie for your currency.
API keys, webhooks, Zapier and Make
Sending bookings to your other tools, and letting your own tools read and change bookings. In the plugin: CaliDiary → Settings → Integrations
Use API keys and webhooks
Webhooks tell other services when a booking is made, moved or cancelled. API keys let your own tools, Zapier or Make read and change bookings and customers.
Connect Zapier or Make
There is no CaliDiary app in Zapier or Make: you connect them with their own built-in webhook steps, and API keys when a Zap should look up or change bookings.
Video meetings and calendars
Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet links, the business calendar, and each person's own calendar. In the plugin: CaliDiary → Settings → Integrations → Video and calendar
Connect Zoom
Connect your business's Zoom account once, so booking set-ups can give each booking its own Zoom meeting link.
Connect Microsoft Teams and Outlook
Register your own Microsoft app once, so bookings can get Microsoft Teams links and appear in Outlook or Microsoft 365 calendars.
Connect Google Meet and Google Calendar
Make your own Google app once, so bookings can get Google Meet links and appear in Google calendars, with busy times blocked.
The business calendar and the organiser account
The business account makes meeting links by default, and the business calendar receives every booking. Set them up once, after connecting Microsoft or Google.
Connect your own calendar
Each person connects their own Google or Microsoft calendar by signing in and allowing it. Their bookings then appear in it, and their busy times can't be booked.
Video meetings in booking set-ups
Each booking set-up chooses its video service, and for Zoom, Teams or Meet whose account makes the link. Every booking then gets its link automatically.
When a booking with a video link changes
Links and calendar entries follow the booking: moved with it, handed over when it goes to someone else, and removed when it is cancelled.
Video and calendar troubleshooting
What each video or calendar message means and what to do. A booking never fails because of video or calendars: it is confirmed as usual and the link follows.
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