Booking Location Types

OctopusPro can be used to manage any service business and supports a wide range of businesses including:

• Businesses that provide mobile services at the customer’s home or work address, like mobile mechanics, mobile massage and beauty services, mobile vets and animal care services, private tutoring services, furniture removal services, handyman services, and cleaning businesses.
• Businesses that provide services at fixed-site locations like beauty salons, massage studios, and car wash shops.
• Businesses that provide services at virtual/online locations like online education services, technical support, virtual assistance, and consulting services.

Regardless of how you offer your services, OctopusPro provides all the tools you need to run your business, and the features required to help you grow your business smoothly while staying in control over your business operations, whether scheduling a mobile mechanic for a regular service, booking a massage at the studio, or booking and scheduling education services online.

This page list of contents:

Managing mobile services provided at your customer locations

If your business provides services at your customer locations, like your customer’s home or work address, or any mobile location, for example, your customer’s vehicle breakdown point, you can enable the mobile locations to feature in your settings to allow creating bookings at mobile locations.

Whether you run a mobile auto mechanics business, mobile massage business, mobile vet business, a cleaning business, tow truck business, solar panel installation business, personal training business, dog grooming business, mobile makeup and beauty business, or any other mobile service business, OctopusPro has all the features you need to help you run and grow your business and manage your growing team of mobile fieldworkers.

Keeping track of your mobile bookings

OctopusPro provides booking tracking features to help you track appointments scheduled for your mobile fieldworkers. You can activate the booking tracking process from your Settings > General Settings > Booking Settings to help you better manage services that are provided at mobile locations.

A booking tracking process is a group of actions and reminders that appear to your mobile fieldworkers through the app when they have visits scheduled at your customer locations. This feature uses GPS tracking through the app to help ensure your fieldworkers arrive at their scheduled bookings on time, keeping your admin users informed about your fieldworkers’ locations from the moment they start heading to their bookings until they finish and leave their booking location. This process also keeps your admin users and customers informed when their fieldworkers are running late and when there are changes to their expected times of arrival

Creating a booking for a mobile location as an admin user

Your admin users can create and manage mobile jobs provided at your customer locations using any desktop or mobile device through the web portal or admin app.

When the “mobile location” feature is enabled, admin users will see the address details input fields when creating inquiries, quotes, bookings and invoices. Since the fieldworker is travelling to the customer’s location to provide the booked services, the more details the admin user provides on the job address, the easier it would be for the fieldworker to reach the booking address without having to communicate with the office or the customer.

Using Google Autocomplete to find the address

All users can easily find the booking address without having to enter all of the address fields using the “Find address” feature, which is a search field that uses Google maps to search for the address and autocomplete it. The autocomplete service can match on full words and substrings, resolving place names, addresses, and codes, as the user enters text, and returns place predictions in the form of a dropdown picklist. When the user selects a place from the list, information about the place will autocomplete the booking address form, saving time finding each job location and helping ensure the address is entered correctly.

Using GPS coordinates instead of a street address

All users can also enter the GPS longitude and latitude coordinates to specify the exact location for the booking, which is useful for locations which don’t have proper street addresses setup, new locations that aren’t on the map as yet, or places like a breakdown location of a vehicle on a highway, a man hole cover, or a post box. The user making the booking can simply enter the exact GPS coordinates for the fieldworker to locate the right area quickly and efficiently.

Storing the customer address in their profile

The billing address of your customers which displays on their invoices can be stored in their profiles. Your customer’s billing address can also be used as their default booking address and will be used to auto populate the job address if you select the “My booking and billing address are the same” button that appears in the add/edit customer popup. Once selected, the booking address will auto-populate from the billing address of your customer when creating a new inquiry, quote or booking for that customer. If your customer’s billing address is always different from their booking address, then you should keep that button unselected.

After entering the booking location, your admin users can then select the services which your business provides at mobile locations to add to the booking. You can specify which services can be provided at mobile locations from your service settings, and you can provide the same service at different location types. You can also have different services available at different locations, this can be controlled from the profiles of the fieldworkers that provide your services.

Creating bookings that require multiple booking locations

OctopusPro handles bookings that require multiple addresses by allowing you to add up to 3 different addresses per booking, with the ability to label each address as needed.

You can add multiple addresses and label them accordingly, e.g., Pickup address, Delivery address, and Key return address. Your admin users and fieldworkers have the option of entering the physical address for each location or entering the longitude and latitude for each location.

If your customers have multiple booking addresses used frequently which you want to be stored in their profiles, you can create a Customer Property for them under Settings > General Settings > Customer Properties. You can then store all your customer booking addresses in their profiles to select from when creating a booking, which will auto-populate the booking address. This is useful for customers that send you repeat bookings for their clients, like real estate agencies and construction companies.

Viewing a booking with a mobile location as admin

Your admin users can view the location of inquiries, quotes and bookings on a map through the app or desktop portal. The map displayed on the view inquiry, quote or booking pages shows the address entered when the item was created. If no street address is entered, the map will instead show the marker location based on the GPS coordinates entered for the address.

If there are multiple addresses added for the inquiry, quote or booking, like a pickup and dropoff location, your users can view all these locations on the map with their marker labels added when the item was created. The main benefit of the marker labels is to help you distinguish between the different addresses for the booking.

The map will also display all your fieldworkers that match with the booking based on the location entered and the services required for the booking.

Tracking fieldworker locations while on the job

Your admin users can track the assigned fieldworkers from the view booking page using the GPS tracking feature, and can view their location while on the way to the booking, or while on the job site. They can also view the route traveled to the booking and the time spent on site from the booking timeline for bookings that have been previously attended. The tracking will start from the moment the fieldworker presses the “On the way” button up until the fieldworker presses the Finish button or leaves the job site.

Creating a booking for a mobile location as a fieldworker

Fieldworkers can also create bookings for your customers in a similar way to your admin users if they have the permission to do so.

After adding the customer, they can enter the booking address then select the services required for the customer, or they can copy the booking address from the default address stored on your customer’s profile, if they are granted permission to view your customer’s database. Your admin users can customize your fieldworker permissions from your account settings located in Settings > Company Settings > Users > Assign credentials.

Viewing a booking for a mobile location as a fieldworker

Fieldworkers can view the location of a booking from the booking page in the app, they can also start the Google maps navigation when heading to the job by pressing the navigation button on the map from the booking view page in the fieldworker app.

If you require your fieldworkers to accept or decline bookings to which they are assigned, your fieldworkers will be required to accept the booking request before being able to view the full address of the booking.

Displaying the full booking address to fieldworkers

By default, your fieldworkers can view the full booking address at all times. If you wish to hide the full address of the booking from your fieldworker until the day of the booking, then you should deactivate display the full booking address to fieldworkers at all times flag in your Fieldworker Permissions settings, this will force your fieldworker to press the “ON THE WAY” button for the booking and notify the office that they are on the way before being able to see the full booking address. The “ON THE WAY” button only appears a few hours before the booking start time, which means that your fieldworkers will only be able to view the full address on the day of the booking. If the button has not been pressed, only the suburb/locality part of the address will appear to your fieldworker, but the exact street name and street number will remain hidden until the button has been pressed.

Auto check out 

If you have the auto check out feature enabled in your account settings, once one of your fieldworkers is more than 500 meters (or 1500ft) away from their job site, the app will automatically check them out from the job. Fieldworkers can always check in to their jobs again from the job site until the booking status has been marked as completed.

Attending a booking with a mobile location as a fieldworker

You can force your fieldworkers to update their job attendance by activating the Force fieldworkers to update their job attendance flag in your account settings. When active, if a fieldworker doesn’t press the start job and later the finish job buttons through the app and their booking scheduled start time has already passed, the update needed dialogue will popup in the fieldworker app asking them to confirm if they have attended their past booking. Once the dialogue popup appears, your fieldworker won’t be able to continue using the app until they respond and update your admin users regarding their past booking.

If you have the booking tracking feature enabled, the following buttons will appear to your fieldworkers using the app throughout the lifetime of their scheduled bookings.

ON THE WAY 

The ON THE WAY button will appear in the fieldworker app dashboard and booking page on the days they have bookings scheduled. Your fieldworkers will need to press the ON THE WAY button before they start heading to their bookings which will notify your admin users that they are on the way to their jobs, this will also inform your admin users of their estimated time of arrival based on the current location of the fieldworker or the time manually entered by your fieldworker in the arrival ETA popup.

If you want your customers to also receive SMS notifications about the estimated time of arrival of their assigned fieldworkers, please ensure the related flags are active in your Fieldworker Permissions settings. 

RUNNING LATE

Your fieldworkers can also inform your admin users ahead of time that they will be running late by clicking the RUNNING LATE button as soon as they are aware that they will be running late to their booking. When pressed, your fieldworker will be required to enter their estimated time of arrival to update your admin users and customers ahead of time. You should activate the running late alarm if you want to automatically detect when a fieldworker is going to be late to a booking ahead of time.

NO LONGER ATTENDING

When unforeseen circumstances occur and a fieldworker is no longer able to attend their scheduled booking, they can inform your admin users of their circumstances by clicking the NO LONGER ATTENDING button. Your fieldworker will be presented with your cancellation policy if you have set it up in your settings, they will also be required to provide you with the reason preventing them from attending so you are better informed, this will allow your admin users to get involved and reschedule the booking or assign it to another fieldworker before it’s too late.

ARRIVED

After your fieldworker presses the ON THE WAY button and starts heading to their booking location, the ARRIVED button will appear for the booking. Once your fieldworker arrives at the booking location, they can press the ARRIVED button to inform their customer and your admin users that they have arrived at their scheduled booking location. This information will also appear in your fieldworker timesheet reports and in the booking timeline. 

Your fieldworkers can only press the ARRIVED button when they are within 500 meters from their booking location, as the app verifies the location using GPS coordinates to ensure your fieldworkers can only check-in from the booking location.

Activating the Running Late alarm for fieldworkers

The Running Late feature available in the app allows you to auto-detect when a fieldworker is going to be late to a booking in advance, giving you more time to take action and minimize delays to your customer.

How does the app know the fieldworker is going to be late for a booking?

By default, the app hides the street and building number from the booking address to force fieldworkers to press the On The Way button to view the full address of the booking, this notifies both the office and the customer that the fieldworker is on the way to the booking and informs them of the estimated time of arrival based on the current location of the fieldworker.

The app also starts the GPS tracking process for the fieldworker which allows the office to track the location of the fieldworker, from the moment the On The Way button is pressed until the moment the booking is complete and the fieldworker has checked out.

If the On The Way button is not pressed early enough to allow for the commute time needed based on the fieldworker’s location, then the app will activate the running late alert and notify the office and fieldworker immediately.

Creating a booking for a mobile location as a customer

If you have integrated your OctopusPro customer portal with your website, your customers will be able to place booking requests through your website for services they would like to be provided at their locations.

When your customers are placing booking requests through your customer portal, they can enter the booking address which they would like your fieldworkers to attend, assisted by Google maps autocomplete feature, or they can select their location on a map, detecting and saving the longitude and latitude for that location. 

If your business provides services that require multiple addresses, like a pickup, destination, or drop-off address, your customers can enter these addresses when placing their booking requests, as long as you have them activated in your customer portal settings. This feature is useful for Shuttle Services, Delivery Businesses, Removals, Skip bin services, and other types of businesses that require multiple addresses for their bookings.

If you run a business that provides repeat services to the same customers, your customers can create an account with your business and save their booking address, like their home or work address, in their profiles. Your customers can login to their profiles and select one of their saved addresses when making a booking through your portal, making their booking experience quicker and easier.

Viewing a booking for a mobile location as a customer

Your customers can view the location entered for their bookings on the map displayed on their booking page in your customer portal. They can also view the timeline of each scheduled appointment which includes the arrival, check in and check out times for each appointment.

If you have granted your customers permission to view the GPS location of your fieldworker, your fieldworkers will be able to view the location of the fieldworker while they are on the way to their job, and see their estimated time of arrival.

Managing services provided at your fixed business location

If you own a business that provides services at fixed locations and your customers visit your business locations for your services, you can enable the fixed-site locations feature in your account settings to allow creating bookings at your office or at one of your business branch locations.

Whether you run a massage studio, an education center, an automotive shop, a training center, a fitness center, a medical clinic, a beauty salon, a music school, or any other business offering services at your own business premises, OctopusPro provides you all the features needed to help you grow your business and manage your growing team of employees.

If your business operates at fixed business locations, you can enable fixed business locations from your business details page, under Settings > Company Settings > Business Details. 

Once fixed locations are enabled in your settings, you will be able to add your fixed business locations in your settings by entering the address for each of your locations.

Creating a booking at a fixed location as an admin

Your admin users can create bookings provided at your fixed business locations using any desktop or mobile device through the admin portal and OctopusPro app. 

If your business operates at multiple fixed locations like multiple branch locations, your admin users will need to select a location from the list of available locations when creating inquiries, quotes, bookings and invoices.

Once the location has been selected, your admin users will be able to assign any of the fieldworkers that work at that location to the booking.

Viewing a booking with a fixed location as an admin

Your admin users can view and manage bookings provided at your fixed business locations using any desktop or mobile device through the web portal and app.

Your admin users can see all matched fieldworkers that operate at the selected location from the available fieldworkers box which appears in the view inquiry, quote and booking pages.

Creating a booking with a fixed location as a fieldworker

If you have granted your fieldworkers permission to create bookings, your fieldworkers can only create bookings at business locations they have activated in their profile.

If you have fieldworkers working at multiple fixed locations like multiple branch locations, they will need to select a location from the list of available locations when creating quotes, bookings and invoices.

Viewing a booking with a fixed location as a fieldworker

Your fieldworkers can view and manage bookings provided at your fixed business locations using any desktop or mobile device through the web portal and app.

Creating a booking for a fixed location as a customer

If you have integrated your OctopusPro customer portal with your website, your customers will be able to place booking requests through your website for services available at your fixed business locations.

If you have multiple business locations added in your settings, the list of your fixed business locations will appear on your customer portal. Your customers can select the location which they would like to attend when placing a booking request.

Viewing a booking for a fixed location as a customer

Your customers can view the business location they have selected on their booking page in your customer portal. They can also view the timeline of each scheduled appointment which includes the start and end times for each appointment.

Managing virtual services provided online

If your business provides virtual/online services, you can enable the online/virtual locations feature in your settings to allow creating bookings at virtual locations.

Whether your business provides online education services, technical support, psychologist, coaching, consulting, virtual assistance, web & graphics design, video & audio editing, translation, or any service that is provided online, OctopusPro has all the features you need to help you run and grow your business and manage your growing team of online fieldworkers.

You can add links to Zoom, Google Meet, or any other online meeting tool to the description of your booking for your fieldworkers and customers to join for the booking. This allows your fieldworkers to have a voice or video call through the internet, and share their screens during their appointments or video conference.

Handling different time zones for virtual / online bookings

OctopusPro allows you to handle different time zones when creating virtual bookings, this allows you to accept bookings from customers in different time zones and manage online fieldworkers working in different timezones. 

When selecting the date and time for the virtual booking, you can specify the timezone in which you want to use for the booking, this helps ensure everyone views the scheduled time for the booking in their local timezone. It is recommended that you always select your customer’s time zone when creating a booking and use it as a base time zone.

Creating a virtual booking as an admin user

Your admin users can create and manage virtual/online bookings using any desktop or mobile device through the web portal or admin app. 

Your admin users can specify the timezone for the scheduled appointment times when creating a booking. It is always recommended to use the customer’s timezone as the base timezone for your bookings.

Your admin users can use Google meet, Zoom or any other online meeting platform to connect during the booking. You can add links to Zoom, Google Meet, or any other online meeting tool to the description of your booking for your customers to join for the booking. This will allow your fieldworkers to share their screens during their appointments or video conference.

After selecting virtual/online for the location type for the booking, your admin users can select the services which your business provides at virtual/online locations to add them to the booking. 

You can specify if the service can be provided at virtual/online locations from your service settings. You can have different services with different location settings, and you can also provide the same service at different location types.

Viewing a virtual / online booking as an admin user

When your admin users view a virtual / online booking, they see the scheduled appointment times in their local timezone, and can also see the local appointment time for the customer and assigned fieldworkers, if they are in different timezones.

Creating a virtual / online booking as a fieldworker

If you have granted your fieldworkers permission to create bookings in your fieldworker permissions settings, your fieldworkers will be able to create and manage virtual / online bookings using any desktop or mobile device through the web portal or admin app. Your fieldworkers can only create bookings at virtual / online locations if they have this activated in their profile. 

Your fieldworkers can specify the timezone for the scheduled appointment times when creating a booking. It is always recommended to use the customer’s timezone as the base timezone for your bookings. Your fieldworkers will still view the scheduled appointment times in their local time and will still be alarmed and reminded regarding their upcoming appointments based on their local timezone.

Viewing a virtual / online booking as a fieldworker

Your fieldworkers can view and manage virtual / online bookings provided using any desktop or mobile device through the web portal and app. Regardless of the timezone selected for the booking appointments, your fieldworkers will view the scheduled appointment times in their local time and will be alarmed and reminded regarding their upcoming appointments based on their local timezone.

Creating a virtual / online booking as a customer

If you have integrated your OctopusPro customer portal with your website, your customers will be able to place virtual / online booking requests through your website for services available online.

When your customers are placing a booking request through your customer portal, they can select their local timezone when selecting the appointment date and time, this helps ensure your admin users and assigned fieldworkers are aware of the timezone the customer is in, helping ensure they attend the booking at the correct time after adjusting the appointment times to their local timezone.

Viewing a virtual / online booking as a customer 

Your customers can view the scheduled dates and times for their bookings in their local timezone when viewing their online/virtual bookings through the customer portal. They can also view the timeline of each scheduled appointment which includes the start and end times for each appointment in their local timezone. The timezone selected will also appear in booking email and SMS reminders and confirmations sent to your customers.

Offering services at different booking location types

If your business offers services at different location types, for example, if you run an education business that offers mobile services where your fieldworkers travel to your customers locations, and services at fixed-site locations where customers travel to your business location, as well as services at virtual/online locations, OctopusPro allows you to offer all different types of services together from your one account, and provides you with all the features you need to handle the different types of services.

After setting up your business to support multiple location types, you need to determine which services are available at each location type, as you might have some services that are only available at your fixed business locations, while others can be available at your fixed business locations as well as at your customer locations. 

For example, if you run an auto repair business that operates at your repair shop garage, while also offering mobile services at your customers homes or work locations, your business might not be able to provide all of your services at your customers locations, as some services such as gearbox replacement or car engine rebuild can only be performed at your repair shop because some tools and equipment can’t be easily mobilized, while other services such as oil change or engine performance checks can be performed anywhere, and you can send your mobile mechanics to perform these services at your customers locations.

Another example is if you run a veterinary business that offers mobile services as well as services at your clinic, you can send your vets to your customers locations for certain simple or emergency services, while other services such as complicated surgeries can only be performed at one of your clinics.

To enable different location types for different services, you need to go to Settings > Services Settings > Services

From the service Add/Edit action, scroll down the service details tab and you will see a section labeled “Where do you provide this service?”, you can then select the location types for the service. You can select one location type, or you can select multiple location types for the same service. The location types available in the service settings are limited to the location types available for your business overall, which you can set in your Settings > Company Settings > Business details

Selecting a location type as an admin user

If you have multiple location types enabled in your business details settings, your admin users will need to select the required location type when creating an inquiry, quote, booking or invoice. The fields visible in the form will then be affected by the location type selected, for example, selecting the mobile location type will display the booking address fields to enter the location where the service should be performed.

If you have the fixed location type enabled with other location types, your admin users will need to select the fixed location address which they want to place the booking at from the list of location types.

After selecting the location type from the options in the list, the only services available to add are the services that have that location type enabled in their settings. For example, when selecting a fixed location for the list of location types, services which are only available at mobile locations will not appear in the list of services.

Selecting a location type as a fieldworker

If you have multiple location types enabled in your business details settings, your fieldworkers will need to select the required location type when creating a quote, booking or invoice. The fields visible in the form will then be affected by the location type selected, for example, selecting the mobile location type will display the booking address fields to enter the location where the service should be performed.

After selecting the location type from the options in the list, the only services available to add are the services that have that location type enabled in their settings. For example, when selecting a fixed location for the list of location types, services which are only available at mobile locations will not appear in the list of services.

If you have fieldworkers that are available at multiple location types, for example, if a fieldworker is available for mobile services, as well as services at your fixed business locations, you will need to enable these location types in the profiles of each of your fieldworkers. The location types available in your fieldworker profiles are limited to the location types available for your business overall, which you can set in your Settings > Company Settings > Business details

Selecting a booking location type as a customer

If you have integrated your OctopusPro customer portal with your website, your customers will be able to place booking requests through your website.

When your customers are placing a booking request through your customer portal, they will first need to select the location type which they want the service performed at.

Your customers can select the location type from the homepage in the customer portal, or from the view service page when trying to book the service. 

If your business offers services at multiple booking locations types, your customer can:

• Enter their address if they require the service at their location 
• Select a fixed location from your list of business locations if they want to attend one of your business locations for the service
• Select the “Make a virtual booking” option if they want to place an online / virtual booking request

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