The booking system lets prospective families pick a time to visit your school — in person, by video call, or by phone — directly from your public profile. You set the availability rules; families book a slot; you confirm or reschedule. This article covers the configuration, the day-to-day flow, and the operational decisions that determine whether your tour calendar runs smoothly or becomes a mess.
Bookings are a Premium feature. Schools on Pro can show their profile and receive inquiries but can't accept self-service bookings.
What families can book
You configure a single calendar that supports three meeting types:
- In-person visit — the classic campus tour. Family comes to you.
- Video call — for families who can't travel (mid-year international prospects, second-conversation follow-ups). Either you paste a permanent meeting link once (Zoom PMI, Google Meet room) or the system can auto-create a unique link per booking if you've connected a meeting provider.
- Phone call — for the rare family that just wants a 15-minute intro conversation without video. Most schools never enable this; enable it only if you actively want phone-only conversations.
There's no separate "open house" or "info session" type. If you run events, use the dedicated Open Houses tab — it's a different surface with RSVP collection rather than 1:1 slot booking.
Setting availability
Settings → Bookings → Calendar settings. Five things matter:
- Weekly availability. For each day, toggle on and set time ranges (e.g. Tuesday 14:00–17:00, Thursday 14:00–17:00, Saturday 09:00–12:00). The system splits each range into slots based on the meeting duration + buffer (see below).
- Meeting duration (default 60 min). Most campus tours land at 60-90 minutes; video calls work at 30-45.
- Buffer between slots (default 15 min). Catch-your-breath time. Without buffer, a 4pm tour ending late means the 5pm family is waiting in the lobby. Don't go below 15 minutes.
- Minimum notice (default 24 hours). Stops families from booking the very next morning when your admissions lead hasn't prepared. 24-48 hours is the right zone for most schools.
- Maximum advance booking (default unlimited). If you cap it at e.g. 60 days, families can't book in September for visits in February — useful if your team's schedule changes seasonally.
Blackout dates (Settings → Bookings → Blackouts) override everything above. Add holidays, school breaks, board-meeting afternoons, the head's vacation week. Blocked dates show as unavailable to families regardless of weekly availability.
What families see
When a family clicks "Book a visit" on your public profile, they see a calendar showing the next ~4 weeks. Available slots are clickable; blocked or fully-booked slots are greyed out. Picking a slot shows a short form (name, email, phone, student name + age, notes) and a submit button.
After submitting, the family sees a confirmation screen and receives a confirmation email within ~2 minutes. The booking lands in your dashboard with status Pending.
The booking lifecycle
Bookings flow through three main states:
Pending → Confirmed → Completed
↓
Cancelled / No-show
- Pending — the family has booked but you haven't confirmed yet. Default behavior is "require approval" — you decide whether to accept each booking.
- Confirmed — you've approved it. Family gets a second email confirming the slot. For video calls, the meeting link is generated (or your fixed link is included).
- Completed — the visit happened. You mark this manually from the booking detail view after the tour.
- No-show / Cancelled — the family didn't show up, or the booking was cancelled by you or them. Mark from the same detail view.
The Pending → Confirmed transition is the operational step that matters most. Don't leave bookings in Pending — families assume the slot is theirs and won't double-check. The expectation is to confirm within a business day.
Confirming a booking
Bookings tab → click any pending entry. The detail view shows the family's info, the slot, the meeting type, and the notes they included. From here:
- Confirm — sends the confirmation email and creates the meeting link if applicable.
- Reschedule — pick a new slot. Family is notified by email. The system doesn't double-check the new slot against your availability — you're overriding your own calendar, which is often the point (squeezing in a family who can only do Wednesday).
- Decline — sends a polite "we can't accommodate this slot" email. Use sparingly; better to reschedule.
If you accidentally confirm something you can't actually do, the right move is reschedule, not cancel — families read cancellations as rejection.
Reminders
You can turn on automatic reminder emails in Settings → Bookings → Send automatic reminder email. When enabled, the system emails each family the morning before their confirmed visit — once per booking, no double-sends if the cron retries.
The reminder is off by default (opt-in). Once on, you don't need to do anything per booking; the system handles it. There's also a "Send reminder" button on each booking detail view if you want to fire one ad-hoc (e.g. for a visit happening the same day).
Why it matters: show-rate without any reminder is around 60%; show-rate with a 24-hour reminder is 75-85% (article: Understanding your dashboard analytics). A 10-tour week loses 2 tours without reminders — over a month, that's the difference between making vs missing your enrollment funnel targets.
Tracking show-rate
After each tour, mark it Completed or No-show from the booking detail view. The analytics tab uses this to compute show-rate over time, broken down by meeting type (in-person typically runs 70-85%, video calls 60-75%).
A show-rate trending down isn't usually a platform issue — it's usually:
- Too easy to book too far in advance (cap your maximum advance booking)
- Reminder not being sent (see above)
- Confirmation email is bare ("see you Tuesday") without practical details (parking, who they'll meet, what to bring) — useful confirmations stay at the top of the inbox
Custom confirmation emails
The confirmation email body is templated by default but you can customize per-meeting-type in Settings → Bookings → Email templates. Useful additions for in-person tours:
- Parking instructions (gate code, where to park, what to do if the lot is full)
- Who the family will meet (name + role) — humanizing this drops no-shows
- A short "what to bring" line — usually nothing, but explicit beats ambiguous
- A direct phone number for "if you're running late or lost"
For video calls, include the meeting link prominently (top of the email), a "test your audio before joining" line, and a fallback phone number.
Tour feedback (optional but worth using)
After a tour is marked Completed, the system can email the family a short feedback form: overall rating (1-5), sub-ratings on facilities / staff / curriculum / environment, and a free-text field. Results flow into the family's CRM record so the next person picking up the conversation can see how the visit landed.
Enable this in Settings → Bookings → Post-tour feedback. Default is off — opt-in because not every school wants to ask for feedback from every family.
Common mistakes
- Opening too many time slots. A calendar that's wide-open every weekday afternoon signals "we're not busy" — and families read "not busy" as "not in demand." Two or three afternoons a week with 4-6 slots each is better than ten slots a day.
- Letting bookings sit Pending. Inbox-zero discipline matters here. Confirm within a business day, ideally same day.
- Forgetting to mark bookings Completed. Without this, show-rate analytics are wrong, and your booking history shows phantom "confirmed" entries forever. Build a Friday-afternoon habit of closing the week.
- Using the booking system for parent-teacher meetings or internal staff calls. It's designed for prospect families, not internal use. Use a separate calendar for internal scheduling — otherwise your analytics get polluted with internal meetings counted as "tours."
When to escalate to us
Email admin@swissprivate-schools.ch if:
- A family says they booked a slot but you don't see it in your dashboard (rare but happens — usually a timezone display issue)
- The confirmation email isn't going out (we can check the delivery log)
- You're seeing the same family book multiple slots — we can merge the duplicates from our side
- You want a meeting provider (Zoom, Google Meet) wired up for auto-generated links — currently a manual setup we run for you
We respond within 2 business days.