Hi, I'm building a website for a drop-in daycare centre. The centre has a maximum capacity of 16 children that I need to ensure the booking system adheres to.
For each of these periods, I need to ensure that we do not exceed the maximum capacity of 16 children at any one time.
Ideally, I would like to set up a single 1-6 hour daycare booking product that people can book for any time period during the day.
In the evenings, I am planning to offer 2 separate products - a 3.5 hour booking for Friday and a 3 hour booking for Saturday and Sunday.
If possible, I would like to allow people to make a single booking for multiple children as well without adding multiple products to their cart, but I'm not sure this is possible.
How can I go about setting these products up through the Amelia interface?
For a little more detail - I don't need to use the individual staff profile feature, so could I do something like:
16 individual staff dummy profiles with the same working hours
Allow 1 appointment with each staff member
Doesn't matter which staff member is assigned to a booking
Essentially 16 slots per hour?
Could this be combined with variable length appointments?
Hoping for some feedback if you know someone who's successfully executed this before as this is a deal breaker for whether or not this plugin will meet my client's needs. If you know this is something that your plugin can't do, please let me know.
A single staff profile that has a maximum capacity of 16 per service.
A single service with a 1-6 hour custom duration.
However, there's an issue with the custom duration - if the customer selects >1 hour, then it doesn't allow them to choose their start time. It simply divides the availability hours by that number.
So for example, if they choose a duration of 3 hours, and the working hours are from 9am - 3pm, they can only select from either:
9am - 12pm
12pm - 3pm
They can't choose any other variation, like 10am - 1pm or 11am - 2pm. Is there a way around this?
Another issue seems to be that bookings starting at the same time all count towards the same time slot capacity, even if they are of different length. So looking at how they're grouped in the dashboard, if you have 4 bookings for 9am, but one of them is 3 hours long, it counts towards 4/16 slots. Which is fine, but I suspect that means the 3 hour booking won't be counted as overlapping and taking up slots between 10-11 and 11-12.
Aaaand I've also just discovered that with a 3 hour booking introduced from 9am - 12pm, that blocks out people from booking 10-11 and 11-12 completely with 1 hour blocks. If you also add a single 3 hour booking in the afternoon from 12-3, that stops people from booking 1-2 and 2-3. This isn't going to work at all.
Honestly, the easiest way to accomplish this would be to treat each 1 hour time slot separately, with 16 slots, and allow the user to 'check' multiple time periods in one transaction. Is this possible? Buried in the settings somewhere?
Honestly, the easiest way to accomplish this would be to treat each 1 hour time slot separately, with 16 slots, and allow the user to 'check' multiple time periods in one transaction. Is this possible? Buried in the settings somewhere?
Thanks for reaching out to us and apologies for the late reply (please note that we don't work on weekends)
To keep it short, i will refer to your initial message explaining what is possible with Amelia and also looking at your use cases.
So, the maximum capacity (number of people) is related to the Service settings, not the employee. This can be configured within Service settings and if that is the limit, the customers will not be able to book appointments above this limit. There are two settings related to this feature, so you can find more information regarding them on this link.
You may notice that, as soon as you increase the maximum capacity to 2 or above, the option "Bringing anyone with you" will appear. If this is enabled, on the booking form, the customer will be asked if he wants to bring someone with him. I believe this is useful in your use case since you want to offer the possibility to make group bookings, without the Cart feature, meaning that the customer can book for more people per one booking. (but just the customer will leave the information, only the total number of people will be shown in the appointment section)
Looking back at the booking, here is how they work. The timeslot availability and duration, depend on the employee's work hours and service duration. If the service duration is 3 hours (like in your use case) Amelia will follow the work hours of an employee assigned to that service, and based on that, it will offer the timeslot.
So, if the employee's work hours are 09 - 17 and the service duration is 3 hours, the timeslot displayed will be like this 09 - 12, 12 - 15, etc. If the timeslot is not able to fill the service duration, that means that the employee will not be able to work on it during his work hours.
While there is a possibility to assign one employee to multiple services and assign the work hours according to days/service, what we usually recommend is using separate employees (each employee for each service) to manage the service settings more easily. Since the availability of the timeslot depends on the employee's work hours, in that case, each service will depend separately.
I believe in your use case, you can make a service with a duration (1 or 6 hours, depending on the needs) and then assign the employee to this service with the work hours from Monday to Thursday. Then, another service with a duration od 3.5 hours (for Friday) and another for Saturday and Sunday. For each of these, you can assign a separate employee, but all service timeslots will be available on the booking form.
This is just a basic explanation, but of course, if you have any other questions, feel free to ask.
Thanks Stefan. After digging into it further (as detailed in my follow-up comments) it looks like what I'm trying to achieve isn't currently possible with Amelia. This is unfortunate as the UX among booking plugins is almost best-in-class.
For the drop-in daycare product I need complete flexibility for the customer over which and how many 1 hour timeslots they choose to book within a set period, with the system keeping track of how many people are booked at any one time and preventing more than 16 people attending simultaneously. Amelia almost has it - but falls down on booking multiple timeslots in a flexible and user-friendly fashion.
In case you're interested in evaluating this as a potential feature addition, I think I've found what I'm looking for with a plugin called Appointment Hour Booking. It's a much simpler plugin which has advantages and disadvantages. Basically, you choose a date, set a service duration, cost and capacity, and set availability hours, and you can then toggle select multiple 1 hour timeslots to build a longer booking. Unfortunately the design is archaic so I'll have to do some heavy lifting restyling it.
I think I'm going to have to look for a refund for Amelia unless you can persuade me that it can do this, or that you are planning to add something like this in the future.
Sorry to hear that the Amelia doesn't fit your needs.
I've just checked the link for the plugin you've provided. Well, Amelia is not working the same as that plugin, but it has the option for booking multiple timeslots. We've added this feature with the 7.0 version, and it is called "Cart'. As soon as it is enabled, the customer will be able to book multiple timeslots for multiple services, but he would need to select the "book another" option in the booking form. I recommend checking out the article regarding the Cart feature. The maximum capacity still applies to the service, though.
Like I said Stefan, it's almost there - but unfortunately having to add hours one by one to a cart via multiple steps, and not being able to actively view the list of timeslots in the cart while adding extra bookings is just not simple enough for our users. If you are able to add 'selecting multiple timeslots at once' to a future feature list, it would make a huge difference to the UX, and might bring me back around as a customer.
While we're on UX improvements, I would recommend detaching the cart from the booking flow entirely, and allowing customers to view it independently via a modal or sidebar, as at present you can't see it until you reach that specific point in the checkout process. This behaviour is very unintuitive for a shopping cart.
FYI I've also found that Simply Schedule Appointments makes it very easy to select multiple timeslots and has a great UI (much better than the previous plugin I linked). The one thing they lack is booking multiple appointments at a time (i.e. more than one person or more than one date), but this is on their feature roadmap for Q1 2024. They have a very extensive integration list too, so I suspect we may move to them in 2024 once they have the features we need - unless Amelia has plans to improve the way customers can select multiple timeslots in a flexible way.
I placed a refund request through the store yesterday, but can't find a record of it anywhere. Can you let me know how I can track this request? I haven't yet received a response.
I understand, thanks for the extensive explanation. I will double-check with the management, but just to let you know, form the moment when the refund request is processed, it usually takes 5 -7 business days for the funds to be processed to your account.
So, If you notice that you haven't received the funds in this period, please, report back to use and we will double-check.
Firstly, I would like to sincerely apologize for the delayed response as we have been experiencing an unusually high number of tickets. I am sorry that it has taken longer than usual to respond to your concern and your patience is highly appreciated.
-
Thank you for these improvement suggestions, we truly take great value from it.
We passed them as ideas to our management, but you can also help with the development speed from your end, if you can be so kind to add these as development suggestions.
to see if someone may be already suggested this feature. If you can't see it, feel free to add your suggestion there, and as more people vote, the feature will move higher on the priority list.
You can certainly follow our changeLog page if you'd like, where we state any changes/new features/bug fixes during updates;
and our newsletter, so you're informed about new features, bug fixes, freebies, etc.
2. In regards to the refund, we can confirm that our Accounts Team processed it yesterday, so you should receive the funds within the next couple of days.
Hi, I'm building a website for a drop-in daycare centre. The centre has a maximum capacity of 16 children that I need to ensure the booking system adheres to.
Drop-in bookings are available:
Friday 9am - 3pm (1-6 hour bookings) and 5:30pm - 9pm (3.5 hour booking only)
Saturday 9am - 3pm (1-6 hour bookings) and 6pm - 9pm (3 hour booking only)
For each of these periods, I need to ensure that we do not exceed the maximum capacity of 16 children at any one time.
Ideally, I would like to set up a single 1-6 hour daycare booking product that people can book for any time period during the day.
In the evenings, I am planning to offer 2 separate products - a 3.5 hour booking for Friday and a 3 hour booking for Saturday and Sunday.
If possible, I would like to allow people to make a single booking for multiple children as well without adding multiple products to their cart, but I'm not sure this is possible.
How can I go about setting these products up through the Amelia interface?
Thank you.
For a little more detail - I don't need to use the individual staff profile feature, so could I do something like:
Hoping for some feedback if you know someone who's successfully executed this before as this is a deal breaker for whether or not this plugin will meet my client's needs. If you know this is something that your plugin can't do, please let me know.
I've tried:
However, there's an issue with the custom duration - if the customer selects >1 hour, then it doesn't allow them to choose their start time. It simply divides the availability hours by that number.
So for example, if they choose a duration of 3 hours, and the working hours are from 9am - 3pm, they can only select from either:
They can't choose any other variation, like 10am - 1pm or 11am - 2pm. Is there a way around this?
Another issue seems to be that bookings starting at the same time all count towards the same time slot capacity, even if they are of different length. So looking at how they're grouped in the dashboard, if you have 4 bookings for 9am, but one of them is 3 hours long, it counts towards 4/16 slots. Which is fine, but I suspect that means the 3 hour booking won't be counted as overlapping and taking up slots between 10-11 and 11-12.
Aaaand I've also just discovered that with a 3 hour booking introduced from 9am - 12pm, that blocks out people from booking 10-11 and 11-12 completely with 1 hour blocks. If you also add a single 3 hour booking in the afternoon from 12-3, that stops people from booking 1-2 and 2-3. This isn't going to work at all.
Honestly, the easiest way to accomplish this would be to treat each 1 hour time slot separately, with 16 slots, and allow the user to 'check' multiple time periods in one transaction. Is this possible? Buried in the settings somewhere?
Pushing this to the top:
Honestly, the easiest way to accomplish this would be to treat each 1 hour time slot separately, with 16 slots, and allow the user to 'check' multiple time periods in one transaction. Is this possible? Buried in the settings somewhere?
Hello ankhou,
Thanks for reaching out to us and apologies for the late reply (please note that we don't work on weekends)
To keep it short, i will refer to your initial message explaining what is possible with Amelia and also looking at your use cases.
So, the maximum capacity (number of people) is related to the Service settings, not the employee. This can be configured within Service settings and if that is the limit, the customers will not be able to book appointments above this limit. There are two settings related to this feature, so you can find more information regarding them on this link.
You may notice that, as soon as you increase the maximum capacity to 2 or above, the option "Bringing anyone with you" will appear. If this is enabled, on the booking form, the customer will be asked if he wants to bring someone with him. I believe this is useful in your use case since you want to offer the possibility to make group bookings, without the Cart feature, meaning that the customer can book for more people per one booking. (but just the customer will leave the information, only the total number of people will be shown in the appointment section)
Looking back at the booking, here is how they work. The timeslot availability and duration, depend on the employee's work hours and service duration. If the service duration is 3 hours (like in your use case) Amelia will follow the work hours of an employee assigned to that service, and based on that, it will offer the timeslot.
So, if the employee's work hours are 09 - 17 and the service duration is 3 hours, the timeslot displayed will be like this 09 - 12, 12 - 15, etc. If the timeslot is not able to fill the service duration, that means that the employee will not be able to work on it during his work hours.
While there is a possibility to assign one employee to multiple services and assign the work hours according to days/service, what we usually recommend is using separate employees (each employee for each service) to manage the service settings more easily. Since the availability of the timeslot depends on the employee's work hours, in that case, each service will depend separately.
I believe in your use case, you can make a service with a duration (1 or 6 hours, depending on the needs) and then assign the employee to this service with the work hours from Monday to Thursday. Then, another service with a duration od 3.5 hours (for Friday) and another for Saturday and Sunday. For each of these, you can assign a separate employee, but all service timeslots will be available on the booking form.
This is just a basic explanation, but of course, if you have any other questions, feel free to ask.
Kind Regards,
Stefan Petrov
[email protected]
Rate my support
Try our FREE mapping plugin! MapSVG - easy Google maps, interactive SVG maps, and floor plans, choropleth maps and much more - https://wordpress.org/plugins/mapsvg-lite-interactive-vector-maps/
wpDataTables: FAQ | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Front-end and back-end demo | Docs
Amelia: FAQ | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Amelia demo sites | Docs | Discord Community
You can try wpDataTables add-ons before purchasing on these sandbox sites:
Powerful Filters | Gravity Forms Integration for wpDataTables | Formidable Forms Integration for wpDataTables | Master-Detail Tables
Thanks Stefan. After digging into it further (as detailed in my follow-up comments) it looks like what I'm trying to achieve isn't currently possible with Amelia. This is unfortunate as the UX among booking plugins is almost best-in-class.
For the drop-in daycare product I need complete flexibility for the customer over which and how many 1 hour timeslots they choose to book within a set period, with the system keeping track of how many people are booked at any one time and preventing more than 16 people attending simultaneously. Amelia almost has it - but falls down on booking multiple timeslots in a flexible and user-friendly fashion.
In case you're interested in evaluating this as a potential feature addition, I think I've found what I'm looking for with a plugin called Appointment Hour Booking. It's a much simpler plugin which has advantages and disadvantages. Basically, you choose a date, set a service duration, cost and capacity, and set availability hours, and you can then toggle select multiple 1 hour timeslots to build a longer booking. Unfortunately the design is archaic so I'll have to do some heavy lifting restyling it.
I think I'm going to have to look for a refund for Amelia unless you can persuade me that it can do this, or that you are planning to add something like this in the future.
Hello ankhou,
Sorry to hear that the Amelia doesn't fit your needs.
I've just checked the link for the plugin you've provided. Well, Amelia is not working the same as that plugin, but it has the option for booking multiple timeslots. We've added this feature with the 7.0 version, and it is called "Cart'. As soon as it is enabled, the customer will be able to book multiple timeslots for multiple services, but he would need to select the "book another" option in the booking form. I recommend checking out the article regarding the Cart feature. The maximum capacity still applies to the service, though.
I hope it helps.
Kind Regards,
Stefan Petrov
[email protected]
Rate my support
Try our FREE mapping plugin! MapSVG - easy Google maps, interactive SVG maps, and floor plans, choropleth maps and much more - https://wordpress.org/plugins/mapsvg-lite-interactive-vector-maps/
wpDataTables: FAQ | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Front-end and back-end demo | Docs
Amelia: FAQ | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Amelia demo sites | Docs | Discord Community
You can try wpDataTables add-ons before purchasing on these sandbox sites:
Powerful Filters | Gravity Forms Integration for wpDataTables | Formidable Forms Integration for wpDataTables | Master-Detail Tables
Like I said Stefan, it's almost there - but unfortunately having to add hours one by one to a cart via multiple steps, and not being able to actively view the list of timeslots in the cart while adding extra bookings is just not simple enough for our users. If you are able to add 'selecting multiple timeslots at once' to a future feature list, it would make a huge difference to the UX, and might bring me back around as a customer.
While we're on UX improvements, I would recommend detaching the cart from the booking flow entirely, and allowing customers to view it independently via a modal or sidebar, as at present you can't see it until you reach that specific point in the checkout process. This behaviour is very unintuitive for a shopping cart.
FYI I've also found that Simply Schedule Appointments makes it very easy to select multiple timeslots and has a great UI (much better than the previous plugin I linked). The one thing they lack is booking multiple appointments at a time (i.e. more than one person or more than one date), but this is on their feature roadmap for Q1 2024. They have a very extensive integration list too, so I suspect we may move to them in 2024 once they have the features we need - unless Amelia has plans to improve the way customers can select multiple timeslots in a flexible way.
I placed a refund request through the store yesterday, but can't find a record of it anywhere. Can you let me know how I can track this request? I haven't yet received a response.
Thank you,
Ian
Hello ankhou,
I understand, thanks for the extensive explanation. I will double-check with the management, but just to let you know, form the moment when the refund request is processed, it usually takes 5 -7 business days for the funds to be processed to your account.
So, If you notice that you haven't received the funds in this period, please, report back to use and we will double-check.
Thanks.
Kind Regards,
Stefan Petrov
[email protected]
Rate my support
Try our FREE mapping plugin! MapSVG - easy Google maps, interactive SVG maps, and floor plans, choropleth maps and much more - https://wordpress.org/plugins/mapsvg-lite-interactive-vector-maps/
wpDataTables: FAQ | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Front-end and back-end demo | Docs
Amelia: FAQ | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Amelia demo sites | Docs | Discord Community
You can try wpDataTables add-ons before purchasing on these sandbox sites:
Powerful Filters | Gravity Forms Integration for wpDataTables | Formidable Forms Integration for wpDataTables | Master-Detail Tables
Hi Ian,
Firstly, I would like to sincerely apologize for the delayed response as we have been experiencing an unusually high number of tickets. I am sorry that it has taken longer than usual to respond to your concern and your patience is highly appreciated.
-
Thank you for these improvement suggestions, we truly take great value from it.
We passed them as ideas to our management, but you can also help with the development speed from your end, if you can be so kind to add these as development suggestions.
Please feel free to search through our feature suggestion page,
to see if someone may be already suggested this feature. If you can't see it, feel free to add your suggestion there, and as more people vote, the feature will move higher on the priority list.
You can certainly follow our changeLog page if you'd like, where we state any changes/new features/bug fixes during updates;
and our newsletter, so you're informed about new features, bug fixes, freebies, etc.
2. In regards to the refund, we can confirm that our Accounts Team processed it yesterday, so you should receive the funds within the next couple of days.
Let us know if you have any questions.
Kind Regards,
Miloš Jovanović
[email protected]
Rate my support
Try our FREE mapping plugin! MapSVG - easy Google maps, interactive SVG maps and floor plans, choropleth maps and much more - https://wordpress.org/plugins/mapsvg-lite-interactive-vector-maps/
wpDataTables: FAQ | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Front-end and back-end demo | Docs
Amelia: FAQ | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Amelia demo sites | Docs | Discord Community
You can try wpDataTables add-ons before purchasing on these sandbox sites:
Powerful Filters | Gravity Forms Integration for wpDataTables | Formidable Forms Integration for wpDataTables | Master-Detail Tables