Frequently Asked Questions

This site is primarily for any businesses serving customers. If you're interested in learning about appointment scheduling, booking, or queuing, then this is the site for you!

We provide both a Learning Center and a Vendor Directory:

• The Learning Center has useful information on how appointment scheduling and booking software can can help increase revenue and support customers. In addition to general information, we also provide information that relates directly your your business. For example, booking solutions for restaurant reservations may be quite different than those for banks! So, we provide individual pages for each of these as well.
• The Vendor Directory is a way to find a vendor that can serve your specific requirements. You can see all the vendors that provide solutions for your business area or that provide a key feature you may need. You can also choose a language and country where you are located.

We also have a "Members Only" part of the site for vendors. This area has research and articles intended for vendors, and is probably not that interesting to businesses just looking for a solution! It is restricted to members of TASBIA™.

TASBIA™ is The Appointment Scheduling and Booking Industry Association. We are a trade association supported by vendors though annual membership fees.

Our team has been in this industry for many years. Our primary goal is to share lessons learned about appointment scheduling and booking and help you (the business) understand the value of these solutions. We also provide vendor-specific information in our directory, and then let you make a choice of a vendor that works best for you. Businesses that use scheduling solutions have happier customers and employees! And, we know these solutions can help increase your revenue and operate your business much more effectively.

In addition to our Learning Center, we provide a Vendor Directory . This directory contains information provided by vendors and reviewed by TASBIA™ for accuracy and clarity. The goal is to make as much information available to you as possible so that you can make an informed decision about the best solution.

Finally, we are independent of any vendor, even though vendors may be members. We strive to provide objective and useful information. You will see case studies, articles, and other content that mentions specific vendors. However, we hope that you will research all possible alternatives in the Vendor Directory as well.

You’ll often see “appointment scheduling” and “booking” referred to interchangeably. For example, we'll say “I’m booking an appointment” or "I'm scheduling an appointment" to mean the same thing.

However, for clarity, we have decided to define “appointment scheduling” and “booking” differently. This makes it easier to group vendors that offer solutions that have different capabilities in our Vendor Directory.

The main difference is that a appointment scheduling is normally between two people, and booking is used for activities, classes, events, tickets, etc. that may not directly involve a specific person. For example, a restaurant reservation is a booking since it involves the allocation of a table for a period of time. It’s not for a specific “person”, even though there may be a waiter. However, we don’t think of scheduling an appointment with the waiter!

To learn more about the differences please visit the Learning Center!

If you are a small business serving customers, or an individual that sets up a lot of meetings, you probably have a lot of experience setting up meetings or calls. The problem is that if you rely on your personal calendar, you become the "scheduler". This means either using phone calls or email to go back-and-forth to set up a convenient time and place.

The problem is that for each meeting you set up, it's possible that someone--like your customer--will need to cancel or reschedule. And then, you start the whole back-and-forth again!

Appointment scheduling and booking software will automate this for you. Most people are happy to use a "link" that you will send in email, or put on your website, to "self-schedule" without the back-and-forth. And, this has the added benefit of making your business look more professional, and saving you time and money.

For mid-size or larger businesses, appointment scheduling becomes even more critical. There is also added complexity with multiple people, locations, or the need to prioritize or rotate appointments amongst groups. Plus, integration with enterprise calendar and email systems is tricky.

The good news is that there are many vendors to choose from, each who have different capabilities to serve different size customers, business categories, and do it in different languages for specific regions. The Vendor Directory can help you find a good fit!

Absolutely, free is awesome! In fact, there are number of vendors that provide a "freemium" business model. This allows you to use a basic version of their software at no charge. Their goal, or course, is to eventually convert you to a paid customer. Usually this involves offering additional features, or the ability to "brand" the messages or web page with your business information (and not theirs!).

However, one thing we have learned is that the “technology solution” is actually a small part of how to be successful with appointment scheduling or booking systems. We know that you need to consider exactly how appointment scheduling will work with your business. For example, if you are a retail establishment with walk-in customers, you may have considerations different that someone who just sets up "virtual" appointments on the phone.

With the large variety of vendors out there you can find something that fits your budget. Many of the vendors start at just a few dollars a month, which is hard to beat, especially if it helps bring in one customer, or avoids losing one! Of course, as you start to need more capabilities, you will pay more. But we also know that the most successful companies using appointment scheduling and booking as part of their overall sales, marketing, and customer experience efforts perform better than their peers. It's worth it!

Reserve with Google, also known as "RWG", lets end user consumers discover and book appointments, classes and event tickets for local businesses. This can be done directly from Google Search, Google Map results with Booking buttons. The Buttons may say “Reserve”, “Book”, or “Schedule”, and appear on both the web browser and on mobile devices.

RwG was launched in 2017 with a focus on USA based personal services and small business customers. Since that time, it has expanded worldwide, and includes many other business categories such as banking, fitness, beauty, and restaurant reservations.

Even though the "Book" button appears as part of your Google My Business entry, you cannot directly enroll in RwG. You must work with a vendor that supports it. Lucky for you, our Vendor Directory has the ability to show all the current Reserve with Google vendors. You can also learn more about Google Appointments and RwG.

Yes they do! In fact, Appointments on Facebook lets end users book appointments from a Facebook business page, or via Instagram, for any business, at no charge.

However, like many free software solutions there are some limitations. Probably the main issue is that your customers must log into Facebook, and have a Facebook account, to make an appointment or booking.

Facebook refers to their own system as "lightweight" in that it has only basic features. For example, it doesn't support virtual/video meetings, custom questions, special workflows, or branded notification messages. Plus it doesn't integrated with Reserve with Google or other external systems.

The good news is that Facebook also provides integration with vendors, so you have a choice! If you're interested in learning more check out the Learning Center Facebook Appointments page.

The website currently supports English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Japanese.

In general, we try to make all the informational pages available in most languages. In some cases, only English may be available.

In the Vendor Directory, we use the information about the products or services in the native language provided by the vendor, if possible. In some cases, the vendor may also have information and resources in languages not support on the TASBIA™ site. In this case, we will still make this information available, and will indicate the source language.

For example, some vendors have informational videos or case studies available in languages we do not support. However, we will still make these available to users of the TASBIA™ website, irrespective of the language of the user.

If you are an Appointment Scheduling, Booking, or Queuing software vendor or custom developer, we'd like to talk with you.

Our goals are to help businesses learn about the benefits of appointment scheduling and booking, and also to serve TASBIA™ Members. Our Membersbenefit from being part of an organization dedicated to their growth. We promote Members through this website, provide critical research and information in the Member Only portal, and help Members work cooperatively and with other eco-system businesses.

To find out more about joining, please visit our Contact Us page and we will be in touch.