{"id":87,"date":"2020-04-27T13:57:57","date_gmt":"2020-04-27T13:57:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/123formbuilder.polarbuildingcleaning.net\/blog\/how-to-set-up-an-online-booking-system"},"modified":"2023-03-07T11:32:18","modified_gmt":"2023-03-07T11:32:18","slug":"how-to-set-up-an-online-booking-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/123formbuilder.polarbuildingcleaning.net\/blog\/how-to-set-up-an-online-booking-system\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Set Up an Online Booking System"},"content":{"rendered":"

Do You Need An Online Booking System?<\/h2>\r\n

Without a trace of doubt, the world has changed quite a lot and in a pretty short amount of time. In a matter of weeks, countries have literally shut down the vast majority of their activities and went into quarantine with the purpose of guarding their citizens (and health systems) against the Covid-19 threat.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

As a result, businesses of all kinds have had to adapt quickly to the changing landscape. The luckiest were already able to continue their operations remotely. The others had to find new ways to keep in touch with their customers and keep their businesses going.\u00a0And here’s where booking systems have captured more attention. Because you can use a booking system for a variety of scenarios, such as arranging online appointments, setting up an online class, and more.<\/p>\r\n

Setting Up a Booking System with 123FormBuilder<\/h2>\r\n

123FormBuilder is an online form builder<\/a> that can be easily used to create your very own booking\u00a0data management<\/a>\u00a0system without coding.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

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Get a Booking Form Template<\/a><\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n

The guide here is the first of a longer series we\u2019re putting together to help businesses move their activity online. We will start with how you can take online bookings for businesses and institutions such as schools and educational institutions were among the first ones to close. If you would like to learn more about moving your activity online, so make sure to hit the subscribe button at the end of the page and stay tuned for more information – we\u2019ll be posting one of these each week to help businesses from a wider array of circumstances.<\/p>\r\n

So, without further ado, let\u2019s jump right into the topic of the week: how to create an online booking system the easiest way possible.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

Learning the Basics on the Free Plan<\/h2>\r\n

Even on a free plan, you can do SO much with 123FormBuilder. There is a pretty wide range of features available to free users – and although they might be limited (e.g. you can only have 10 fields per form, 5 forms, and 100 submissions per month), they will still provide you with a good array of options.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

The entire form builder<\/a> was created to be easy to work with. The principle is simple: you add fields by clicking on \u201cFields\u201d from the blue sidebar (first button is \u201cFields\u201d) adjust form settings (such as conditional formatting, payments, products, and notifications) the left hand sided sidebar (with blue icons)\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

The example in this section is created entirely using our free plan, to exemplify how you can use it to take online bookings. More specifically, we imagined an online school that offers three main courses: Advanced Math, Modern English Literature, and Chemistry and created an online registration form<\/a> to suit this purpose, as follows:\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

1. Create your 123FormBuilder account and sign in.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n

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Create a Booking Form with 123FormBuilder<\/a><\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n

\"booking \"123FormBuilder \"123FormBuilder 2.\u00a0Click on \u201cNew Form\u201d, then on \u201cBlank Form\u201d (to create a new form from scratch) \"create \"booking3. Start adding fields by selecting them from the left-hand bar or by dragging and dropping them into the form. We added a few personal information fields, as you can see in the image below.\u00a0<\/span> 4. Add a multiple-choice field to allow future students to select the course they want to enroll to. \"booking \"booking Multiple-choice fields enable you to create a list of options for the user to choose from. You can set this up to only allow one or a certain number of options to be selected, you can add an open-end option (to enable users to add their own answer), and you can use this field as a quiz as well. When you click on this field in the form you\u2019re creating, you will see a menu in the left-hand side of the screen – this is where you can make all the adjustments you need to make on your multiple-choice field.\u00a0<\/span> Optionally, you can also add a Single-Choice field. For instance, your courses might be grouped based on age. In this case, you have to select the single choice field option from the form builder\u2019s \u201cFields\u201d menu, and adjust it according to your needs. Here\u2019s an example:\u00a0<\/span> \"edit If you prefer this to be a drop-down option, you can simply add a \u201cDropdown\u201d field and adjust it as per your needs, as you can see in the screenshots below:\u00a0<\/span> \"add \"booking Both the single choice and the dropdown fields have the same features as the multiple-choice one, so you can adjust them according to your preferences and needs.\u00a0<\/span> 5. Add a date field to allow them to select their preferred date for the online course. You can adjust these fields from the left-hand bar that will appear when you click on the respective field in the form. For instance, we thought our teachers would only be available on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday – so we selected these days from the \u201cDate\u201d menu.\u00a0<\/span> \"add \"booking Our form builder will allow you to add other very specific fields like the \u201cDate\u201d one as well. For instance, you might want to add a \u201cTime\u201d field, as shown in the screenshots below. You can also adjust this field according to your needs by clicking on it in the form builder (e.g. you can adjust it to show a 24-hour format, instead of a 12-hour one).\u00a0<\/span> \"date \"booking Our basic form is pretty much ready by this point, but we thought it would be a great idea if both the educational institution behind it and its students would be notified by email with each submission. Fortunately, you have access to Notifications on your Free plan, and this will allow you to set up an intricate Notification system to help you (and students) keep track of the information submitted through this form. Keep in mind that one notification equals one email and that you have one email notification template available on the Free plan. <\/span>To set up notifications, you can follow these steps:<\/span> 6. Go to \u201cNotifications\u201d on the left-hand sidebar (as you can see in the image below)\u00a0<\/span> \"booking 7. Set up your notification. To begin with, we set up a notification email the course provider would receive each time someone sends in a form. Of course, you can adjust when this notification will be received by clicking on \u201cAdd Rules\u201d on the top right button and setting up your rules (e.g. to receive notifications only when a certain course is picked from the drop-down list)<\/span> \"booking This is how your email notification will look like:\u00a0<\/span> \"example8.\u00a0Next, we set up a notification for the user. To do this, you can add a \u201cNew Email\u201d from the menu on the left of the screen and select \u201cEmail\u201d instead of \u201cMy Email\u201d in the notification setup.\u00a0<\/span> Keep in mind that much of the notification setup is based on a series of variables. These variables will pull information from the form to customize the entire setup. For instance, here are some of the more commonly used variables:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n