What is the Difference?
You are using Volo for all your scheduling and billing 1 thing to remember is that a member isn't charged until the status of the appointment is marked to Done. To change a status to Done you need to check in the appointment and you can do that 2 different ways. Here is the difference.
Checking In a client from either the appointment screen or through the check in tab sends this appointment to the clients account so that it can be invoiced at a later date.
Close Day is essentially a mass check in for everyone on that day. Closing the day will send all the appointments that have not been checked-in on the schedule for that day to the accounts of the members who were booked into each appointment.
Before closing the day, check to make sure all the appointments for that day are correct, and simply go to the Admin tab, choose the date you would like to close, and click Close.
If the day has already been closed and you need to make changes,
- Go to the Admin tab
- Click Open
- Go to the schedule and make the changes you need to
- Go back to Admin and find the date you need to close
- Hit Close.
This will adjust the items in question on account, or add/subtract items from packages on account.
Q: How do I choose which way to set up my packages when it seems like the monthly recurring, auto renew and selling a big package and splitting it into multiple payments all do the same thing.
A: You are right the end result is similar in all these features it is the small details that will help you decide which is right for your business. Many businesses use all of them so it is just a matter of thinking through how you want things to happen. Here are the differences so that you can decide which is right for the package that you are trying to sell:
- Auto renew, You can setup an item/package in inventory to have a specific renewal tied to it. This means that every time you sell that item/package Volo will log it into the member auto renewals area and you can edit or delete it from here. You can set up items/packages to renew after a certain amount of days/weeks/months/years or after the item only has a certain amount remaining. You can also add auto renew on at the moment of sale. At midnight every day Volo will go through all of your members and anyone that has an item that is ready for auto renew Volo will create an invoice and attempt to take a payment on the invoice. This does not pro-rate the item/package to the members account due date and you can set different parameters on the renewal.
- Monthly, when this is selected during the inventory setup the item/package will be tied to the member's account due date. When you go to sell the item it will pro-rate the price from the date of sale to the next due date. After that it will renew at what ever price you have it setup and it will keep renewing until you "remove" it from the member's on account area. This item is added to the members monthly bill when you "create Invoices due". This is always tied to the account due date.
- Payment Split, you can create split templates and apply them to the invoice or you can create a custom split. This will log the entire sale on the day that you make the sale and then take payments on the original invoice whenever they are due. There is a separate tab in your sales area that will show you all of your scheduled payments that are due. You will go to the scheduled payments tab and process the payments there. This is not tied to the account due date, it is scheduled based on what you set up.
Q: What is the difference between Booked, Cancel, Cancel$ and Done?
A: In Volo every appointment has a status, this lets you know what is happening with the appointment and Volo know when to bill the client, whether you have your clients buy packages or get monthly bills.
Booked, this appointment status lets you know that the member has not been "checked in" to the appointment or you haven't "closed the day". "Closing the day" checks in all of the appointments on every schedule. Either one of these will change an appointment status to Done.
Cancel, the appointment was canceled without charge, you get to choose whether you charge or don't charge your clients. Your business, your rules!
Cancel$, the appointment was canceled with a charge, the great thing about Volo is that if you charge a special cancellation fee you can set it up so that when you cancel$ a member they are charged the cancellation fee instead of the regular rate.
Done, at this point Volo will check the members' account remaining, if they don't have that item purchased Volo will put the item onto the members' account due. This way you will always know what a member owes you even if they haven't purchased a new package yet.
Q: How do I set my staff permissions different for the different schedules that we have?
A: To set your staff permissions you must be an "owner" status.
- Click on Staff
- Search for the staff you want to update
- Select the Permission button on the right side of the screen next to their name
- Turn on the top level tabs you want them to see
- Scroll down to the Schedule permission area,select the schedule from the drop down area, update the permissions
- Click Save at the bottom of the page
- Repeat as many times as needed
Now your staff will only see the schedules you want them to see and the will only be able to book or edit appointments based on the criteria that you have inputted!
Q: I want to start 30 minutes appointments and I need to set this up in Volo, how do I do this?
A: To create new appointments it is a 2 step process, 1st you create the inventory that you would sell to the client for a single appointment and then you create the appointment and link it to the inventory item.
Step 1: Create Items
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Click Setup
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Click Inventory
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Click Products
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Click Add New
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Fill in the appropriate fields, remember for count it is either a specific amount (for product) or unlimited (for services)
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If it is a service make sure to tick the service box for it to track properly off the schedules
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Click OK
Step 2: Create Appointment
- Click Setup
- Click Schedules
- Click edit next to the schedule you want to add an appointment to
- Scroll to the bottom
- Fill in the name of the appointment you want to see in the book appointment screen
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Select the color for the appointment to be displayed on the screen
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Select duration of the appointment
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Select the Link to item to link it to the appropriate invoice item
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Select the link to cancel $ to link it to the appropriate cancellation invoice item
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If you bill the trainer for this type of appointment click the bill trainer box
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Click Add, repeat as many times as needed
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Click Ok to save changes
This is an area that if you haven't thought about before can be a bit confusing, I hope that we can clear it up for you so that you that you will be able to create your inventory smoothly and easily.
Items are allocated to Categories so that you can see all the Items that you sell that are in the same income stream. For example personal training, you could have a 30 minute personal training session that you sell but you could also have a 60 minutes session that you sell. When you look at your sales they are both related to your personal training income stream but they are different Items.
You can create as many Categories as you need to track your sales but an Item can only belong to a single Category.
Packages are groups of Items, for example a single boot camp class is an Item but a monthly package that has 8 boot camps in it is a Package that you assign 8 Items into.
This is important to understand as when you link your appointments to inventory they can only link to an Item, an Item links to a single appointment, so the Item needs to be in the Packages that you sell at the correct quantity.
Q: My clients don't want to get the "Book appointment confirmation" or "Appointment reminder" emails what can I do?
A: The client chooses, or you choose for them, if they want to receive booking confirmation/appointment reminder emails by selecting email in the reminder field on their profile. They will only receive these emails if you have turned on your automated emails.
To turn on your automated emails go to:
- Setup
- Personalize
- You will see a tick box on the left side of each of the automated emails tick/turn on the ones that you want to enable
- Save your changes
This is a great feature to make sure that your clients are getting the information that they need about their appointments with no work on your part.