FEATURE IMPROVEMENT PROPOSAL FOR THE BOOKING APP (for APPOINTMENTS)
1. allowing to set services appointments either as “bookable by 1” or “bookable by many clients”
2. showing the 1 hour appointments on timetable when the appointment is for multiple attendants
In this way, you allow Regular Classes to be at the same time all the following, and suitable also for independent contractors:
A. flexible to the time that who delivers them has available
(to go around this, at the moment I need to use appointment for classes, even if only 1 person can book the class, and I need to create 1 different location for each class, so I can assign different hours to each location. If I don’t do this, clients see in the booking calendar page of each regular class ALL the available hours of a contractor, not only the hours of each class. They are not employees: to stay contractors, they need to decide WHEN they work.)
B. logged on the Google Calendar of the staff who is delivering them only if at least 1 person books them
(at the moment, even if no one books a class the members of staff get in their personal Google Calendar a log of a scheduled regular class, when there only difference with a class that is actually booked is that the log has a zoom link. My members of staff don’t want these logs if there are no clients who paid the class, as these logs ‘block time’ that is otherwise offered for 1:1 irregular hours appointments)
C. not shown as available when the staff who delivers them ‘blocked time off’ at the time of the class
(at the moment, the expected behaviour for scheduled classes in a calendar is that if a member staff goes on holidays - and blocks all the days that is away on Google Calendar on their business calendar on their Wix.com - the classes that have to be delivered by the member of staff don’t get cancelled, because who programmed the Regular Classes Calendar made the wrong assumptions that classes go on even if someone is on holidays, thinking that another member of staff can cover who is absent! This is true only for businesses who have employees, but I for those as me who have independent contractors, it is not legally viable: classes have to be as appointments, and offered only when the member of staff who delivers them is available. In fact, by law, to be INDEPENDENT CONTRACTORS, they have to work WHEN, WHERE and HOW they want, and if I change this, by law they become employees and have to be paid even when there is no clients booking them, which I cannot afford. YOUR CLASSES SETTINGS WORK OK FOR EMPLOYEES ONLY: FOR WHO HAS CONTRACTORS AS MYSELF, THE REGULAR CLASSES CURRENT FEATURES ARE NOT SUITABLE)
D. shown on a timetable, which is the preferred way to book fitness classes for clients all over the world
(at the moment, to have a timetable - and at the same time avoid to have logs of blocked time for all the unbooked regular classes in my members of staff calendars - I have to duplicate the contractors who offer classes, and create the classes only with their staff-duplicate, which isn’t linked to their Google Calendar. So my staff has an email confirmation and calendar log for each class only when someone books)
IN THE SCREENSHOTS BELOW YOU CAN SEE MY CURRENT WORKAROUND TO USE APPOINTMENTS FOR CREATING THE POSSIBILITY TO BOOK IRREGULAR GROUP CLASS: THIS IS DONE ASSIGNING A DIFFERENT LOCATION TO EACH SET OF HOURS THAT IS PERTINENT TO EACH CLASS (however, this has its downsides: 1. only one person pre group class can book, and 2. in the confirmation email the clients don’t get the location name but the placeholder-physical-address that I had to input to create VARIOUS ZOOM LOCATION NAMES, to assign to each a different set of bookable hours in the BOOKNG CALENDAR PAGES FOR EACH).
Maybe this workaround can help to develop the 2 features that I proposed here for the Appointments product in the Wix Booking App … even just allowing to create different locations without a physical address is a first fix, and then allowing to book more than 1 person per appointment is the next, and finally finding a way to have a timetable for appointments, so that they can be used as irregular classes
@stevenjose FYI … in case you can kindly add all of this in the Internal Logs for new features … This is important to make the classes legally feasible also for business models that use contractors rather than employees, as contractors need to be able to choose WHEN to work, and they cannot be managed, to maintain the legal status of independent contactors and be paid only when I assign them work (that is: I have to pay them only when the clients book them, not when they’re available)
