I am considering Amelia as my booking solution for WordPress, however have a few pre-sale questions regarding features and integration first..
1) Is is possible to also book group sessions/classes through it? (ie, allow more than one person to book specified slots, and then see a head count plus who paid vs who has yet to?)
2) Related to #1 above, is it possible to offer an “early bird” discount to those who pay a certain number of days ahead?
3) For normal (single person) bookings, is it possible to require payment up front in order to create the booking? Partial deposit? How about a variable refund/rescheduling policy so if they reschedule or cancel less than 24 hours before the appointment they get charged a fee or get only a partial refund?
4) I saw your calendar syncs with Google Calendars. How about Apple’s iCloud calendar (my preferred)? If not, is there an extension or plug-in which would allow for this?
5) Lastly, I noticed in the documentation that connecting Amelia to WooCommerce disables the “add to Google Calendar” option for customers at check-out.. yikes! That is probably THE most important feature to avoid cancellations (next to sending e-mail/SMS reminders, which I think Amelia does do). Is there ANY way (extensions, plug-ins, etc) to have both WooCommerce AND Google Calendar (or even better Apple iCloud) integration?? Feels like it really shouldn’t be an either/or for these 2 of the most critical functions of a calendar app (calendar + check-out cart).
Basically I was hoping for a Calendly (which has all 5 of the above) that plays well with WordPress and WooCommerce and is not separate..
Thanks so much in advance for your answers/suggestions!!
thank you for taking interest in Amelia, and for reaching out to us
I'll be happy to advise:
1. Yes, you can increase Maximum Capacity of both Services and Events, so that multiple people can book the same events / service time slots, and you will be able to see and edit them as a group appointment in Amelia > Appointments
2. We do have coupons that can be sent to the customer automatically once they have a certain number of appointments approved (individual ones); when they receive a certain number of notifications for approved individual booking, they receive a coupon.
3. Sure, you can require immediate full payment, or a deposit during booking process. For the refunds, they are not done automatically upon the cancellation of the appointment. If you or the client cancel an appointment, you would need to go into the account of your payment method and refund manually from there. So you could place this disclaimer about the cancellation policy, and if the client cancels at a time not covered by the policy, you can simply not refund the deposit payment, or refund them partially if your online payment account offers this option.
4. At the moment, we don't have an extension for iCal I'm afraid; please check if someone already made a suggestion for this integration on our Feature Request page, and vote for it (if there is none you can also add it yourself if you have a minute, and we will make sure to direct all other interested clients to the page to vote).
Features are pushed up on our "to-do" list when there are a lot of customers requesting those features, so having your vote as a customer can be beneficial to this feature being developed sooner.
5. You can turn on the option that would send the ics file for the calendars to the client via appointment confirmed notification. In this way there wouldn't be a button to choose the calendar they want, but an universal file format they can place into their calendar manually.
I hope this helps, let me know if you have more questions.
Thank you so much for this amazing & detailed reply, Ivana.. truly appreciated!!
The coupon described for #2 isn’t quite the same.. I meant more based upon payment/booking date as opposed to frequency (in order to encourage earlier registration). I have made this suggestion via the feature request, as well as voting up the iCal integration which was indeed listed already (with 333 votes!)
In the meantime, until Amelia adopts iPhones and iCal, I’m still curious which work-around are currently being used by other users.. comments welcomed!!
Thank you for your patience as we worked to get back to you, we apologize for the delay, due to a high volume of tickets our team has received, our response time has been delayed, but we're working to ensure everyone receives the help they're needing!
And, thank you for your submission; for the iCal at the moment, clients can download the ics file on the final step of the booking, and for the employee I'm afraid there is no workaround, except trying to use the JS hooks we have.
Hello,
I am considering Amelia as my booking solution for WordPress, however have a few pre-sale questions regarding features and integration first..
1) Is is possible to also book group sessions/classes through it? (ie, allow more than one person to book specified slots, and then see a head count plus who paid vs who has yet to?)
2) Related to #1 above, is it possible to offer an “early bird” discount to those who pay a certain number of days ahead?
3) For normal (single person) bookings, is it possible to require payment up front in order to create the booking? Partial deposit? How about a variable refund/rescheduling policy so if they reschedule or cancel less than 24 hours before the appointment they get charged a fee or get only a partial refund?
4) I saw your calendar syncs with Google Calendars. How about Apple’s iCloud calendar (my preferred)? If not, is there an extension or plug-in which would allow for this?
5) Lastly, I noticed in the documentation that connecting Amelia to WooCommerce disables the “add to Google Calendar” option for customers at check-out.. yikes! That is probably THE most important feature to avoid cancellations (next to sending e-mail/SMS reminders, which I think Amelia does do). Is there ANY way (extensions, plug-ins, etc) to have both WooCommerce AND Google Calendar (or even better Apple iCloud) integration?? Feels like it really shouldn’t be an either/or for these 2 of the most critical functions of a calendar app (calendar + check-out cart).
Basically I was hoping for a Calendly (which has all 5 of the above) that plays well with WordPress and WooCommerce and is not separate..
Thanks so much in advance for your answers/suggestions!!
Hi Andrei,
thank you for taking interest in Amelia, and for reaching out to us
I'll be happy to advise:
1. Yes, you can increase Maximum Capacity of both Services and Events, so that multiple people can book the same events / service time slots, and you will be able to see and edit them as a group appointment in Amelia > Appointments
2. We do have coupons that can be sent to the customer automatically once they have a certain number of appointments approved (individual ones); when they receive a certain number of notifications for approved individual booking, they receive a coupon.
3. Sure, you can require immediate full payment, or a deposit during booking process. For the refunds, they are not done automatically upon the cancellation of the appointment. If you or the client cancel an appointment, you would need to go into the account of your payment method and refund manually from there. So you could place this disclaimer about the cancellation policy, and if the client cancels at a time not covered by the policy, you can simply not refund the deposit payment, or refund them partially if your online payment account offers this option.
4. At the moment, we don't have an extension for iCal I'm afraid; please check if someone already made a suggestion for this integration on our Feature Request page, and vote for it (if there is none you can also add it yourself if you have a minute, and we will make sure to direct all other interested clients to the page to vote).
Features are pushed up on our "to-do" list when there are a lot of customers requesting those features, so having your vote as a customer can be beneficial to this feature being developed sooner.
5. You can turn on the option that would send the ics file for the calendars to the client via appointment confirmed notification. In this way there wouldn't be a button to choose the calendar they want, but an universal file format they can place into their calendar manually.
I hope this helps, let me know if you have more questions.
Thank you so much for this amazing & detailed reply, Ivana.. truly appreciated!!
The coupon described for #2 isn’t quite the same.. I meant more based upon payment/booking date as opposed to frequency (in order to encourage earlier registration). I have made this suggestion via the feature request, as well as voting up the iCal integration which was indeed listed already (with 333 votes!)
In the meantime, until Amelia adopts iPhones and iCal, I’m still curious which work-around are currently being used by other users.. comments welcomed!!
Hi Andrei!
Thank you for your patience as we worked to get back to you, we apologize for the delay, due to a high volume of tickets our team has received, our response time has been delayed, but we're working to ensure everyone receives the help they're needing!
And, thank you for your submission; for the iCal at the moment, clients can download the ics file on the final step of the booking, and for the employee I'm afraid there is no workaround, except trying to use the JS hooks we have.