How to keep track of recurring appointments.

[CurlyDoodle]

The title of this thread has been edited from the original: recurring booking group and glitch.

Hi Everyone!

As a dog groomer, I encourage my clients to keep a regular appointment as it makes it better for me, for them, and for the dog! 

My first question is: how can I get Square to understand the parameters of such a group? Thinking like a computer is harder than one thinks 🙃. It would be easiest if the system could understand that X customer has the recurring appointment box checked. Barring that, how can it understand that certain customers have an appointment automatically every 2-8 weeks? I've tried various things and generated totally different lists!

Second question: because of that problem, I created a manual group that currently has about 50 clients. Sometimes I remove a client from the group because they moved, their dog died, etc. Here's the weird part: when I tick the box and select "remove from group," it doesn't. I have to repeat this process twice! Anyone else experience this glitch?

[Katie_SQ]

Thanks for your questions, @CurlyDoodle! I'd be happy to help you find the best solutions for your workflow.

Understanding Your Recurring Appointment Needs

I'm not sure that I understand your first question about Square "understanding the parameters" of your recurring appointment clients. Could you please share a bit more about:

- What specific information you're hoping to track about these recurring clients
- What actions you're trying to take with this group of clients (e.g., sending reminders, filtering reports, scheduling future appointments)
- What you have already tried that's generating "totally different lists"

I'd love to learn a bit more about what you're trying to accomplish, so I can explore alternative options that meet your needs.

Group Removal Issue

Regarding the issue with removing clients from groups - I'd like to gather a bit more information to investigate further:

- Does it consistently take exactly two attempts to remove a client from the group?
- After the second attempt, are clients successfully removed every time, or does it sometimes fail even after multiple tries?
- Are you removing clients one at a time or in batches?
- Does this happen with all groups or just this specific group with 50 clients?
- Does this happen on the Square Dashboard across multiple web browsers (e.g., Chrome, Safari, Firefox)?

Thanks! I'll keep an eye out for your reply. 😊

[CurlyDoodle]

Thanks for your reply! I have been playing with the new AI feature in hopes of solving this problem, but no luck. 

To answer your questions:

I want to track how many recurring appt clients I have as a percentage of all clients, how many visits, and how much income. My goal is for all clients to be regulars, but I know this is an impossible goal. However, I feel that the greater the percentage, the better for me, the clients, and the dogs. 

Not sure what actions I want to take directly with the clients, other than being aware and running reports on regulars versus others. 

Here's what I tried with AI that is similar to my direct Reports attempts:

I tried "top clients by visit frequency" and got a list. "Lifetime spend" was not accurate, showing like $15 for clients who have 50+ appointments already. 

It seems like I got some info on the request "how many customers book an appointment at least once every 6 weeks" yesterday, but today it's just saying it doesn't have access to my appointments. 

In Reports:

I tried the report "new vs returning customer visits" and it gave me some numbers, but said "visit frequency can only be shown for one month or less." I need to see trends over time, and since most visits are scheduled every 6 weeks, that won't show in a one month period. 

The smart group Regulars has the parameters of minimum visits in a time period. With an entry of 1 visit at least every 2 months, I get 128 customers. The problem is, some of them have visited in the last 2 months, but only once. I need to know who makes an appointment at least EVERY 2 months. The smart group gives me 128 customers, but when I manually filter it's actually 54 customers.