What are the options for taking bookings online?
There are three common setups, and many businesses use more than one. Instant booking confirms the job and time on the spot, within rules you set in advance. A booking request lets the customer suggest a time, which your team confirms or changes. An enquiry form collects the details and photos, and you reply with a quote, a site visit or a time. The right mix depends on how predictable each job type is. A plumber might offer instant booking for a hot water service check and only take enquiries for renovations.
Which trade jobs can customers book instantly?
A job suits instant booking when you can answer four questions before seeing the site: how long it takes, what it costs, which tech can do it and whether the address is in your area. Routine servicing, a gutter clean on a single-storey house, a pest treatment for a standard home and a measure-and-quote visit often meet that test. Breakdowns, renovations and anything where the cause is unknown usually do not. If the answer to one question depends on the customer, add a screening question to the form instead of guessing.
- A fixed or bounded duration.
- A price you are willing to show up front, including any callout fee.
- Any tech on the team can do it, or the form routes it to one who can.
- The address can be checked against your service area.
How does online booking work in job management software?
In ServiceM8, online booking forms let customers choose from your listed services, answer questions you set for each one, see prices and available times, then book. The available times take staff schedules and travel time into account. Forms can be set to book a job, book an on-site quote or simply submit an enquiry, can ask for a deposit or full prepayment, and can hold bookings that exceed distance or value criteria for manual approval. Tradify's Enquiries feature takes requests from a web form or a forwarding email address into an enquiry inbox, with the customer's name, address, contact details and any photos or videos.
Where should the booking link go?
Put the link where customers already look for you. Google Business Profile lets you add booking links, up to 10 per category, and some links from third-party booking providers can appear on your profile automatically. If a provider's link appears that you did not set up, Google's help page says providers need to remove third-party links within five days of receiving a removal request. Other useful places are your website, your social media profiles, the text that goes to callers you missed, and quote emails for jobs that need a follow-up visit.
What rules stop online bookings causing wasted trips?
Set the rules before the link goes live, then test them by booking a few jobs yourself. A booking can look valid to the software and still be wrong for the job: an address two suburbs past your area at 7 am, a standard service on a system you do not work on, or three short jobs stacked with no travel time between them. These settings stop those bookings reaching the schedule unchecked.
- Service area by suburb or postcode, with anything outside it sent as an enquiry.
- Minimum notice, such as no same-day bookings for routine work.
- Travel buffers between jobs and a daily limit per tech.
- Screening questions that change the job length or the tech, such as storey height or system type.
- An approval threshold for bookings above a set value or distance.
How do phone and online bookings share one calendar?
Every booking, whether it came from the phone, the website or a text reply, should land in the same schedule in your job management software. If online bookings sit in a separate booking app, two customers can take the same slot, and the tech on the road sees an incomplete day. The same applies to phone answering: whoever answers, a person or an AI, should book into the calendar the techs use, or create a booking request in it. Confirmation messages should come from that system too, with what the customer needs to prepare.