To get it, open Skills, find Online booking and hit Install. The setup takes a few minutes, and nothing goes on the internet until you switch the page on at the end.
Online booking gives your business a page where a customer picks a time themselves, instead of the back and forth over text. You can send the link, print it as a QR code, or put a Book online button on your own website with one line of code. Everything a customer books lands in your diary, your clients and your leads, with nothing to copy across.
What the customer sees
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Their postcode first. If it is outside the area you cover, the page says so straight away and takes their details instead, and you get an enquiry to follow up.
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What they need. The price list items you have ticked Share with receptionist, with the price if the item has a plain one. If their postcode is in one of your pricing areas, the prices they see already include that area's uplift and its travel charge, so the figure online is the total the quote will come to. The quote itself still shows the travel charge as its own line. A free visit, such as a free quote, stays at £0. They can also describe something else, which lands as an enquiry for you to price.
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When. Only the times that are genuinely free in your diary, in the way you promise times (exact times, morning or afternoon, or your own slots). With travel time switched on, a time the van could not reach from the job before or after is not shown at all, and neither is one that would mean a longer drive between jobs than the limit you set (see Travel time between jobs).
With Offer days when you're already nearby turned on (see below), the times on days you already have work near them come first, under We're already in your area. The full list is still underneath, soonest first.
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Their details. Name, a mobile number or an email address, and the address looked up from the postcode.
Then either Requested or Booked, depending on how you set it up below.
There is also a chat on the page. It is the same receptionist that answers your phone: it knows what you do, checks the diary and can pencil a booking in, and it always says what it is.
Leading with days you are already nearby
If you work across a few towns, you would rather a customer in one of them picked the day you are already there. That is Offer days when you're already nearby, under How it offers times on the Receptionist page. It is the same switch for the phone, texts, the chat and this page.
- The page leads with those days. Once they have given their postcode, up to three days on which you have a job within about 10 miles of them show at the top, under We're already in your area, each with the free time that sits closest to that job.
- Nothing is taken away. Every free time is still listed below, soonest first, so a customer who wants tomorrow can still pick tomorrow.
- It never gives the other job away. The customer only sees that you are in their area that day, never whose job it is, what it is or where.
- It works the same as any other booking. It waits for your approval, or books straight in, as you set it below.
It needs the receptionist installed, because that is where the switch lives. It is on unless you turn it off there.
How a booking lands
Ask me first is the default. The booking is pencilled into your diary and you get a card to approve with one tap, exactly as a phone booking does. The customer is told you will confirm, and hears nothing else until you do. If nobody looks, Mucka reminds you before the slot.
Book straight in puts it in the diary immediately and sends the customer your booking confirmation text or email. You get a heads-up card.
Either way, a customer who books is added to your clients. Until you confirm, they sit under Leads.
The job carries the price the customer was shown for that service, including any travel charge for their area, so it counts in the booked work on your Reports page (see Put a price on a job). Something they described in their own words had no price on the page, so it takes the job type's default price if you've set one.
If the person booking is already on file as the tenant at that address, the job goes under the landlord or letting agent who pays for the property, not under the tenant. More in Add tenants to a property.
Just an enquiry form, with no booking
Don't want customers picking a time? On the Bookings or enquiries step choose Enquiries only. The same link, QR code and website button then open a plain form: their name, a phone number or email, their postcode and what they need. There is no time picker and no chat, and nothing goes in your diary.
Each enquiry adds them to Leads and gives you a card to follow up, and it shows under Enquiries on your Online booking screen. A postcode outside your area still comes through, since you are the one replying.
The button on your website changes to Send an enquiry by itself, unless you have written your own words for it. A reminder with {{booking_link}} in its wording will not send while bookings are off, because there is no time to pick. Take it out of the wording, or switch bookings back on. A Send booking link for a particular job still works.
Change your mind whenever you like: choose Take bookings and your services, times and area are all as you left them.
Asking for photos
Want to see the job first? Tick Ask for photos on the Bookings or enquiries step. It works for bookings and enquiries, and it is off until you tick it.
On a page that takes bookings, the customer can add photos of the job from the screen that confirms their booking, and they land on that booking's job. Somebody who cannot book and leaves their details instead is not asked.
On an enquiry form, they can add photos once they have sent the form. Each enquiry then also makes a job with no date for the photos to sit on, and the card opens that job. It stays out of your diary until you book it in, and you can cancel it if the enquiry goes nowhere.
A link for a job you already have
When the job already exists, such as a gas safety check a landlord asked for, use Send booking link on the job rather than your booking page. The customer, the tenant, or the landlord or agent passing it on picks a time for that job, so you never get a second booking to match up. See Send a booking link for a job.
Setting it up
Online booking has its own screen at Online booking in the sidebar. It shows what the page has actually done: bookings that came in, enquiries from people it could not book, and the chats Mucka had on the page. Tapping a chat shows you exactly what was said.
Installing opens a short setup in a panel over that screen, and every step is re-enterable later from the Settings button on it or from Settings → Customers → Online booking:
- Your link. The address customers use, book.mucka.ai/your-name. Keep it short enough to read out loud. The longer app.mucka.ai/book/your-name also works, so any link you have already handed out keeps working. Your logo and colour come from Branding.
- Bookings or enquiries. Whether customers pick a time, or just send you an enquiry. Choose Enquiries only and the steps about services, times, area, how bookings land and chat all drop away, because the page doesn't need them. Ask for photos is here too, for either.
- What can be booked. Untick any shared price list item you would rather talk about first. A length on the item decides how much diary a booking holds. If you add a service whose name is already on your price list (one that came across from your accounts, say), Mucka shows you the one you have and Use that one puts it on the page with the length and notice you typed, keeping its price.
- When. How your diary promises times, the notice you need, and how far ahead the page offers. Notice is in working days (same day, next working day, up to two weeks), and it is the notice for anything without its own: give a service its own on What can be booked, so a gas safety check can be booked today and a boiler install three working days out. Your receptionist follows the same notice on the phone and by text, so the page and the phone always agree.
- Where you work. The postcode areas you cover, on a map. Either type a distance, like everything within 30 miles, and hit Fill the map, or tap areas yourself: tap an area (RG, SL, OX) to cover all of it, or open it up and pick single districts (RG1, RG2). A distance fills in every district whose middle is within that many miles of your office, so the edge follows district lines, and you can still add or take off districts on the map afterwards. That is how you cover part of a big county without all of it. A customer outside your patch is asked for their details instead of a time. Your office postcode and travel time are set on the When step.
- A travel charge further out. Tick Charge for travel further out and say how far and how much, for example up to 50 miles, add £15. Customers between your standard patch and that distance can still book, and the prices they see already include the travel charge. It is saved on your price list as a pricing area, so your quotes, invoices and receptionist add the same charge. Setting it needs permission to change the price list.
- What can be booked also takes a picture per service. Add one and it shows on the tile a customer taps; without one the page draws a trade icon from the service's name.
- How bookings land. Ask me first, or book straight in.
- Chat. Whether the page has a chat, and its first line.
- Put it live. Nothing is on the internet until you switch it on. Copy the link, the QR code and the one line of code for your website from here.
Asking Mucka for your link
Ask Mucka for your booking link, typed or out loud, and it shows it in the chat with Copy link and Open underneath. It reads the link off your account, so it is always the real one, and on a call it won't read the address out, because a misheard letter is a link that goes nowhere. On a phone call with no screen it offers to text or email it to you instead. If the page is switched off it says so, since customers can't use the link until it's on.
On a phone
On a phone, Online booking has its own row in the Menu. The top of the screen carries your link: tap it to copy it. Beside it, the filter button shows Everything, Bookings, Enquiries and Chats, each with how many, and the cog opens your booking page's settings.
Underneath, a dark strip says whether you are Taking bookings, Taking enquiries, Switched off or Not set up yet, with Open to look at the page itself. A card shows what came in this month (bookings, enquiries and chats as a bar), with the bookings waiting for you as its next step. Then everything the page did, under To approve, Today and Earlier, each with the time it came in. Tap a booking to approve to approve it or turn it down, an enquiry to deal with it, a chat to read it, and a booking to open its job.
The cog opens Your booking page: the link with Copy, Open and QR code, and the setup steps, each with what it is set to now and a tick once you have done it. Tap a step to change just that one; Save keeps it. Preview at the bottom shows the page as a customer sees it, and while the page is off, Switch the page on sits beside it. If a change needs permission you do not have (opening hours need someone who can change the business settings, and services and travel charges someone who can change the price list), the step says so and stays open.
Not set up yet, the screen offers Set it up, which walks you through the same steps.
Putting it on your website
Copy the code from the last setup step and paste it anywhere in your site, or send it to whoever looks after the site. It draws a Book online button in the corner of the page, with a speech bubble beside it carrying your logo and a line of your choosing; the button opens your booking page without leaving the site. If you would rather have the booking page sit in the middle of a page of your own, add data-mode="inline" to the code.
What the button says, the bubble's line, and which corner it sits in are set on the last step of the wizard, and a change lands on your live site straight away: the code never needs pasting again.
Your site's own buttons can open it too. Give any button or link the class mucka-book and it opens the booking panel. And ?mucka_book=1 on the end of any address on your site opens the panel the moment somebody arrives, which is handy in a text or on a flyer.
On Google, open your Business Profile, choose Edit profile → Booking and paste your link as the appointment link.
Things worth knowing
- The page only offers days you're open. Working the odd Saturday? Open just that one, and keep a weekday free when you're holding it for a big job, and the page won't offer it. Both are a tap on the day itself (the Schedule's Day view on a computer, the Diary's Today view on your phone), or just tell Mucka. How it works.
- The page is only ever as free as your diary. If your diary holds one engineer's work but you run three vans, the page will look busier than you are. Per-engineer availability is on the way.
- The chat is capped per day so a busy site cannot run up a bill; past the cap it says so and the form still works.
- Switch the page off at any time from the last setup step. The link then answers as not found.