Set Up and Manage Bookings and Appointments

If Appointments is visible in your merchant dashboard, use it to define what customers can book, when your business is available, who can take a booking, and what happens after a customer chooses a time.

The workspace has four views: Calendar for time-based work, List for searchable appointment records, Services for your bookable catalog, and Settings for hours, staff, deposits, cancellation rules, and reminders.

Start with one active service and your working hours. Staff is optional: bookings use the business-level hours until you add people with their own availability.

Write down the real booking rules your business already follows before entering them in the dashboard. Clear source information helps customers see accurate times and prevents your team from correcting avoidable mistakes later.

• Service name, duration in minutes, price, and whether a fixed deposit is required.
• The days and times your business accepts appointments. Use more than one shift for a split schedule.
• Staff members customers can book with, if staff-specific scheduling is needed.
• How long a customer may cancel before the appointment starts.
• How long a time slot should remain reserved while a deposit is pending.
• When reminders should be sent and the deposit policy customers should read before payment.

Open Services and select Add service. Enter a clear customer-facing name, duration, price, and optional fixed deposit. Keep the service Active only when customers should be able to book it.

Duration controls which start times can fit into your working hours. Price is the full service price. Deposit amount is the amount collected to secure the slot when a deposit is required.

Review the values before saving. A service must be active before a customer or staff member can create a booking.

Open Settings and add each day your business accepts appointments. Hours are entered in 30-minute steps. Add a second shift on the same day when your business closes and reopens later.

You do not need staff records to begin. Without staff, bookings use the business working hours. Add staff when customers need to choose a person or when individual schedules differ from the business schedule.

If no time appears for a date, first confirm that the service is active, the business or selected staff member is working, and the full service duration fits before closing time.

Use Booking settings to define the rules that apply to every booking. These settings are customer-facing operational rules, so they should match what your team will actually enforce.

Cancellation window is how long before the start time a customer can still cancel. Deposit hold is how long a selected slot remains reserved while payment is pending. Reminder intervals are comma-separated hours before the appointment, such as 24, 2.

Write the deposit policy in plain language. The customer sees it before paying a deposit. Save changes after reviewing all fields.

Agent as a Service guides the customer through the choices your business has made available. The customer selects an active service, an optional staff member, a date, and one of the available times calculated from your current schedules.

Before confirmation, the customer reviews the booking details and accepts the relevant policy. If the service requires a deposit, the selected slot is held while payment is pending. The appointment becomes confirmed only after the deposit succeeds before that hold expires.

For a zero-deposit service, the appointment can confirm immediately after the customer accepts the booking details. The dashboard remains the operational record for the appointment and its status.

Use New booking when you are recording a booking on a customer’s behalf. Choose the service and date, select an available time, then add the customer’s phone number and optional name.

A manual booking confirms immediately and does not collect a deposit. If your business must collect money for a manual booking, handle that payment through your approved payment process and keep the appointment record accurate.

Do not use a manual booking to bypass a customer deposit by accident. It is designed for walk-ins, phone bookings, and other bookings your team is intentionally entering on the customer’s behalf.

Calendar shows bookings by week or day in West Africa Time. Use the staff filter when you need to focus on one person’s schedule.

List is better for searching and filtering appointment records. Use status, date, staff, or customer phone filters to find the work that needs attention without reading every booking.

Keep the status current. Customers, staff, reporting, reminders, and availability depend on the appointment record reflecting what actually happened.

A booking may be waiting for a deposit, confirmed, completed, cancelled, marked as a no-show, or expired after a deposit hold ends. Use the action that matches the real outcome.

From the appointment controls, your team can complete an appointment, mark a no-show, reschedule, assign staff, cancel, or record an external refund when that action is available for the current state.

Rescheduling must use a time that is currently available. Cancelling or changing staff can affect capacity, so recheck the calendar after saving.

A pending deposit temporarily holds the selected slot. If payment does not complete before the hold expires, the booking expires and the slot can become available again.

Marking a no-show records what happened; it does not automatically move money. Apply the deposit policy you showed the customer and use your approved money process when a separate financial action is needed.

Record external refund means recording a refund your team already made outside OryonTech. It does not send a refund through Paystack or move money automatically. Complete the external refund first, then record it so the appointment history stays accurate.

If a time is missing, check the active service, duration, business hours, staff hours, existing appointments, and whether the requested time fits completely inside the working period.

If a deposit booking is still pending, confirm whether payment succeeded and whether the hold is still open. Do not create a second appointment for the same customer and time while the first record is unresolved.

If you need help with the account or a booking record, open OryonTech Help & Updates from your signed-in dashboard. Include the service, date, approximate time, and what you expected to happen. Do not include card details, passwords, or a magic sign-in link.

Read Choose the Right OryonTech Help Path if you are unsure which support route to use.