The TIMIFY handbook
To get started using TIMIFY, there are just three steps you need to complete. In this article, we explain the essentials, plus, we give you a few use cases scenarios for different business types.
Here's the good news: setting up your TIMIFY account is super easy!
Your set up will vary, depending on the industry your business belongs to, and what you want to get out of our software, Generally speaking however, set up involves the following three steps:
Add your resources. These are the people or "things" you manage; typically employees, rooms, and/or equipment.
Add the services you offer - be it consultancies, viewings or training sessions. Then allocate the resources that are needed for each service: this means that whenever a service is booked, the resources are automatically added to the booking.
Activate online appointment booking - this is only necessary if you want customers to self-schedule appointments themselves.
You can tailor your resources and services to suit your specific needs – we built our software to be super flexible, so that it meets the wide ranging needs of all our users.
More about resources
Resources can vary hugely. For many of our customers, resources are staff, meeting rooms and equipment; but also things like tennis courts, real estate, and vehicles. In short, resources are the people or things (including you/the account owner) that you manage, and want to make available for booking.
Each resource gets its own column in your calendar. If some of your resources are employees or consultants, you can invite them to access your account and view their schedule.
To add resources, go to Management -> Resources.
Want to know even more about resources? Have a look here: Everything you need to know about resources
More about services
Services are the things a customer can book with you. For example, a massage, a consultation, or a haircut.
You can create categories for your services, and list your services according to the categories. What's more, you can set duration times, add on fixed preparation and follow-up times, and allocate which of your resources can offer which services. Some users need for certain services to be performed by several resources at the same time - that's also possible!
Add services in your account in the section Management -> Services.
Would you like to learn more about services? If so, then click here: Everything you need to know about services
More about online booking
Once you've added your resources and services, you can activate online appointment booking by clicking on the lower left corner of your account menu bar.
Once online booking is activated, you can integrate TIMIFY to your website, Facebook Page and/or your content management system (CMS). Go to Booking setup -> Integration and follow the instructions. Plus, don't forget about the Profile Page that we provide for you - it's essentially a microsite (think "mini-website"), with an in-built booking button. Go to Booking setup -> Profile Page to add your business info and a picture to your Profile Page.
Next we'll show you how some businesses set up their TIMIFY account.
TIMIFY is used by a wide variety of companies, from entrepreneurs to multi national corporations, across many different industries. These include beauty salons, physiotherapists, yoga studios, real estate agents, hairdressers, consultants, opticians and many more. However, the account setup process is always similar.
As we mentioned above, the basic setup always involves adding any resources you want to manage, with the required availabilities and the services that you can book with those resources.
A hairdresser makes all his team (his "resources") available from Tuesday through to Saturday, from 10am - 8pm. He invites his team to his account, so that everyone has access to not only their schedule, but every team member's schedule. Next, he adds his services - haircuts, colouring, highlighting and so on.
A consultants work alone, and don't need to add any staff as resources (as the "account owner" he is automatically listed as a resource). He adds "telephone consultation" to services, and offers this service for online booking.
A boat company offers boats for rent. The owner adds the boats as resources, and restricts their online booking times to Saturday and Sunday, for April through October.
As you can see, TIMIFY is flexible enough to lend itself to all businesses and industries!
Next steps: benefit from all the features TIMIFY has to offer
Once you've completed your basic settings, you can get the full potential out of TIMIFY. Here are some of our most popular functions and apps: