At the customer or on location
One choice on the appointment type decides which address the appointment gets, which roster blocks count, and what your customer picks when booking.
Every service you offer answers one question: do you go to the customer, or does the customer come to you? You set it once on the appointment type, but the choice carries through to four places — the address on the appointment, the roster blocks that count, the travel time between two jobs, and what your customer picks while booking.
No single screen shows all of that. This page does.
The choice in short
| You choose | The appointment gets this address | The roster has to say |
|---|---|---|
| At the customer's address | The customer's own address | Workplace At the customer or Mixed |
| At one or more locations | The location's address | Workplace At a location or Mixed, at that location |
| Both | Whatever the customer picked when booking | Both of the above, each for its own half |
Where you set it
On the appointment type, under Where does this take place?. These are two independent tick-boxes rather than a single choice — you may tick both, and at least one has to be on.
The default for a new appointment type: you travel to the customer.
Tick At one or more locations and a second list appears. That is where you choose which of your branches this service can be booked at — and it is required, because without a location there is no address to put the appointment on.
Both ticked: the customer decides whether to come to you or have you come out.
What then happens to the address
This is the part you cannot see on screen, and it explains most of the surprises that turn up afterwards.
At the customer. The appointment gets the address the customer fills in while booking. That address is also saved to their customer record, so it is already there next time.
At a location. The appointment gets the location's address — never the customer's, and the customer's own address is not updated here either. For a service offered at several locations the address comes from the roster block that actually serves the booking; where that cannot be determined, Schedulinq falls back to the service's first location so there is always an address.
Both. This depends on what happens during booking: if the customer picked a location, the location's address applies. If they picked none, it is simply an appointment at their own address — including saving that address to their record.
The roster has to agree
This is where it goes wrong in practice. An appointment type says where a service may happen; the roster says where someone works that day. When the two do not line up you get no error — you get zero available times.
Every roster block therefore carries its own Workplace, and for At a location a Location as well.
Mornings in the workshop, afternoons out on the road. Two blocks on one day is how you record exactly when someone is where.
The rule Schedulinq applies:
- A service at the customer only uses blocks whose workplace is At the customer or Mixed. Whichever location the block names is irrelevant.
- A service at a location only uses blocks whose workplace is At a location or Mixed, and then only blocks at one of that service's own locations.
- A block whose workplace was never set counts as At the customer.
There is more on how availability is produced in Duration and availability.
What your customer picks
On your booking page the customer first chooses where the appointment happens — at their own address, or at one of your branches — and only then the service. One booking covers one destination: services not delivered there cannot be added to that same basket.
So your choice here also decides what customers can combine. Offer a service both ways and it shows up under both destinations.
Reading it back in your catalogue
The appointment types overview has a Locations column. It shows at a glance what you set: At customer, or the name of the branch.
Useful as a check after setting things up — a service pointed at the wrong destination stands out immediately here.
Frequently asked questions
Can I switch this later? Yes. Existing appointments keep the address they were booked with; the change applies from the next booking onwards.
I switched a service to on location and now nothing is bookable. Check that your colleagues' roster blocks sit at that location. Changing the appointment type alone is not enough — the roster decides whether anyone is there.
Do I need a separate appointment type per branch? No. One service can be booked at several branches; tick them all in the Locations list.
What if I tick neither? You cannot — you get a message and the service is not saved. Without an answer to this question there is no address to build an appointment from.