In this documentation, we'll go through how to edit a repeating appointment in several different use cases, including:
- Changing the date or time for a single appointment in a repeating appointment series
- Extending the date range through which a repeating appointment series goes through
- Switching the day of the week for which the appointments are set
- Changing the time of the day for the appointments
- Adjusting how frequently the appointment occurs
- Swapping out the service for the appointments
The more you use TimeTap's repeating appointment functionality, the more you'll get used to how to make these types of changes. The goal by the end of this documentation page is to get you familiar with some of the common changes you may need to make.
In this use case, let's say you're a massage therapist who offers 10, 15, & 20 minute chair massages. One of your clients, Michelle Luong, came to see you during her lunch break one day for a 15 minute chair massage and decided this is the kind of relaxation she needs more of in her life.
After leaving that day, she made a standing appointment for every Wednesday & Friday from 12:15pm-12:30pm starting next Wednesday, November 19th, 2014, through the end of January:
On November 26th, she comes in for her standard appointment but tells you that she's not going to be able to make it on Friday, November 28th because she'll be travelling for Thanksgiving holiday. She's wondering if she can just reschedule for Monday, December 1st, at the same time.
To check out whether this is possible, you navigate to Michelle's appointment that is set for November 28th and click the Reschedule button:
After clicking reschedule, you are presented with the Reschedule Appointment window. You click through to December 1 to see what kind of availability you have that day around noon:
You tell Michelle that you don't have 12:15pm to 12:30pm open specifically, but you could do 12:20-12:35 if she's alright with that. She tells you that'll be fine and so you click the 12:20pm - 12:35pm timeslot and press "Confirm & Reschedule" at the bottom:
This brings up the "Confirm Rescheduled Appointment" window where you will see a summary of the rescheduling changes you are making and can opt to send out emails to the client or the staff and add any rescheduling notes before saving the rescheduled appointment time:
After pressing the "Save Rescheduled Appointment Time", the date and time will update for just that one instance in the repeating series while leaving all the other appointments in the series on the same day of the week (Friday) and at the same time (12:15pm):
Again, this is the best method to use if you only want to change the time and/or date of a single appointment in a repeating series. Below, we discuss the best way to go about switching the day of the week or the time of day for all the appointments in a repeating series.
In this use case, let's say you're a life coach and you've been meeting with your client, Brandon Mortisen, every Tuesday evening for three months now (since August 19th, 2014). He bought a three month starter package from you originally, and Tuesdays at 7:30pm were the most convenient times for him to have calls with you.
The three month package ends next week (on 11-18-2014), and he has decided that he really loves working with you. His life is so much more organized and he is meeting goals like nobody's business. He wants to buy a six month package from you now and work through some more goals every Tuesday evening.
Well, you're ecstatic (to say the least) and are thrilled that Brandon's gotten so much out of your time together. You send him an invoice for the package and then head over to TimeTap to make sure his appointments are all set for the next six months.
To do this, you navigate to one of the appointments in his current set of repeating appointments and click the "Edit Frequency" button:
From the "Setup Repeating Appointments" window, go ahead and move the end date out 6 months (in this use case that would be May 19th):
Once you've selected the new end date, click the green "Update repeating instances" button:
At this point you'll see the repeating summary update with the new end date. You can review this to make sure it all looks good before pressing "Save Changes" on the appointment detail page:
You'll then be present with the options of whether you want to apply the update (the extended end date for the recurring appointment series) to just this appointment, all following appointments or all appointments in the series. Selecting "All appointments" will apply the extended end date to the repeating appointment summary for all appointments. Selecting "Following Appointments" will apply the extended end date in the repeating summary only to the appointments that occur after 11-18. In this case, since he has just bought a new package, I will select that I want the change to apply to the following appointments:
This will break off his first 3 month package from 8-19-2014 through 11-18-2014 from the new 6 month package so I have a definitive start and end date for the 2 types of packages he bought. I'll see that when I look at the repeating summary for the appointment I just updated as it will have a new start date defined:
Appointments from the previous series will have an updated start and end date of 08-19-2014 through 11-17-2014:
Let's say you're a foreign language tutor and you meet with one of your students/clients, Jenny Bingham, every Thursday at 5:00pm to do some conversational Spanish tutoring. Starting in December, however, Jennifer's basketball practice goes into high gear and Thursday evenings are out of the question for her. Being the flexible tutor that you are, you offer to meet with her on Sunday afternoons when no basketball will get in your way.
You currently have her repeating appointments series starting from September 4th and extending indefinitely (or "Forever"). You find her appointment set for December 4th and select the "Edit Frequency" button:
From the "Setup Repeating Appointments" window, you deselect Thursdays and select Sundays and press the green "Update Repeating Instances" button:
You can review the repeating appointment summary before pressing "Save Changes":
Upon pressing Save Changes, you'll be presented with the option of whether you want this to affect only this appointment, following appointments, or all appointments. By selecting that you only want it to affect the following appointments, then all the appointments between 09-04-2014 and the end of November will remain on Thursdays, where as any appointment from 12-04-2014 onward will be put on Sundays:
Pressing that you want it to affect all following appointments will then bring up the "Save Changes to Appointments" window where you'll see a brief summary of the date range change you made. You can also select to send out an email to Jennifer or send an update to yourself about the change to the appointment. You can also add in a change note which will go to Jennifer as well.
Once you've selected those settings, just click the green "Save Changes to Recurring Appointments" button and you'll see the appointment details update on the screen so that the new repeating frequency is on Sundays from 12-04-2014 onward:
And for the appointments on Thursdays from 09-04-2014 through 11-27-2014, they will have a new repeating summary applied to them that cuts off on 12-03-2014:
On your Calendar view you'll see that the appointments for Jennifer in November occur on Thursdays:
Whereas the appointments in December occur on Sundays:
Pretend you're a psychologist (or don't pretend if you already are one 
) and one of your clients, Garrett Holtz, wants to make a repeating appointment for Mondays starting November 10th through the end of February at 9am. You're thrilled, but you accidentally enter in the start time at 8am and Garrett is not trying to talk personal issues that early.
It's easy to switch the time to 9am instead of 8am if you made a mistake like this. Simply navigate to the Appointment Detail screen of one of Garrett's appointments in the repeating series and click the "Edit" button in the top right:
Once you enter edit mode, you can change the start time up to 9:00am by hitting the up arrow above the start time hour mark:
Once you change the start time to 9am, then the end time will automatically adjust to 10am since the duration of the service is set to 1 hour:
Now just press "Save changes" at the bottom of the screen:
And choose that you want the time change to apply to all appointments in the repeating appointment series:
After pressing the All Appointments button, you'll be presented with the "Save Changes to Appointments" window where you'll see a brief summary of the date range which the change you made will apply to. You can also select to send out an email to Garrett or send an update to yourself about the change to the appointment. You can also add in a change note which will go to Garrett as well:
Now all appointments in the series will display at 9am instead of 8am:
Let's say you are a consultant who meets with one of your clients on a weekly basis. You've had a standing hour long meeting at 3pm on Wednesday afternoons since August 6th. You're now half way through November and your client, Valerie Ernst, tells you that she wants to move the appointments from happening every week to every other week. The good news is all of your consulting expertise has helped them so much they are needing you less. While it may mean fewer billable hours, at least it is easy to make these changes to your schedule within TimeTap.
Valerie told you this news at your appointment on November 12th at the end of your weekly meeting. Afterwards, you login to TimeTap and navigate to the November 12th appointment detail screen (psst...don't know how to navigate to the appointment detail screen? Read our documentation on that here) and press "Edit Frequency":
This will bring up the "Setup Repeating Appointments" screen where you can switch the "Repeats every" drop down from 1 week to 2 weeks:
After selecting the new repeating frequency, go ahead and say that this new every other week basis is going to start from 11-12 onward (meaning you're not going in to have your meeting with Valerie on 11-19. You won't be back in to meet with her until 11-26):
After you've selected the new start date, click the "Update repeating instances" button which will take you back to the appointment detail page where you can review the frequency you just customized and save the changes to the appointment:
Since you made changes to a repeating appointment series, you'll be prompted with whether you want these changes to apply to just this one appointment, all following appointments or all appointments in the series. Since you just want it to take affect for Valerie's appointments from 11-12-2014 onward, you can select the "Follow Appointments" button:
After pressing the Following appointments button, you can decide whether you want to send Valerie or yourself an email about the change and whether you want to enter a change note:
Once you click the final "Save Changes to Recurring Appointments" button, the system will save the updated frequency information and you'll see those new appointments display in every other week increments on your schedule:
Let's say you are a dog groomer and the pet parent for your client Mutsy (a cute little west highland terrier) has had a standing monthly appointment for as long as you can remember. Mutsy has always just gotten a kennel clip on the first Monday of every month, but now, Mutsy's parent decides she wants to up the service and get Mutsy the Teddy Bear treatment.
You're thrilled! Extra income and extra time with that cute pup! It's easy to make this change to Mutsy's standing appointment in your system.
Let's say Mutsy's parent told you this on the first Monday in November, which means starting the first Monday in December, Mutsy will be in for the Teddy Bear treatment. What you'll need to do is navigate to Mutsy's December appointment detail screen and click the "Edit" button:
Once in Edit mode, you can go ahead and change the service to "Teddy Bear Treatment" instead of the assigned "Kennel Clip":
Once you've finished changing the Service, you will see the start time and end time for the appointment update based on the newly selected service's duration. From here you can just click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the Appointment Detail screen to commit the new service:
Since you made changes to a repeating appointment series, you'll be prompted with whether you want these changes to apply to just this one appointment, all following appointments or all appointments in the series. Since you just want it to take affect for Mutsy's appointments from the first Monday in December - onward, you can select the "Follow Appointments" button:
After pressing the Following appointments button, you'll see a summary of the date range you're applying the change to. You can decide whether you want to send Mutsy's parent or yourself an email about the change and whether you want to enter a change note:
After pressing the green "Save Changes to Recurring Appointments" button, you'll move back to the main appointments screen where you'll see that the service for Mutsy's monthly appointments has been updated to Teddy Bear Treatment:
If you are interested in learning more about using Repeating Appointments, you can read some of our related documentation by clicking the links below:
- Adding Repeating Appointments
- Repeating Appointment Confirmation Email to Clients
- Repeating Appointment Confirmation Email to Staff