Service areas are for businesses that work at the client's home or office: cleaners, mobile hairdressers, plumbers, pet groomers. An area is a set of suburbs, and you choose which team members work in it. Clients tell you their suburb before they pick a time, only see times for team members who work there, and the team member gets the client's address with the booking. Service areas are a Pro feature.
Before you start
Service areas apply to services that happen at the client. Open each such service and set Where it happens to At the client's address. The other choices are At your business and Online. Clients booking an at-the-client service are always asked for their street address, whether or not you use service areas.
At the client's address is for one-on-one appointments only. Group sessions and programs cannot happen at the client's address, and a multi-service booking is either all at the client's address or none of it.
Setting up an area
- 1
Open Service areas
In Settings, open Service areas and click Add area. Give it a name your team will recognise, such as "Southern Suburbs". - 2
Pick the suburbs
Choose a province, then a municipality (your local municipality or metro). A map shows the municipality outline with a pin for each suburb, next to a list you can search. Tick suburbs in the list or on the map. Selected suburbs show as chips you can remove. - 3
Select by distance
To select everything near one place, use Select by distance: pick a centre suburb and a distance in kilometres, and every suburb within it is ticked. You can untick any of them afterwards. - 4
Choose the staff
Under Staff, tick the team members who work in this area. Staff are chosen on the area itself. A team member's page lists their areas, with links back to them. - 5
Save
Save the area. Add as many areas as you need. A suburb can be in more than one area.
A suburb is missing
The suburb list comes from OpenStreetMap, which covers most of South Africa but not every new or informal suburb. In the area editor, type its name under Add a suburb that's missing to add your own. It has no pin on the map, but you can tick it like any other suburb, and clients find it by typing its name.Asking clients for their suburb
Once you have at least one area, switch on Ask clients for their suburb on the Service areas page. The switch stays off until an area exists, and deleting your last area switches it off again. Your booking page then asks Where do you need us?:
- If every service you offer happens at the client's address, it is the first question.
- If you offer a mix, it is asked when the client picks an at-the-client service.
The chosen suburb stays in the booking page link, so refreshing, going back or sharing the link keeps it. To send a client a link with their suburb already chosen, pick it on your own booking page and copy the link from your browser. If you embed Booklink on your website, the Start in a suburb option on the Embed settings page puts a suburb into the embed code, so the booking page opens with that suburb already chosen.
Who clients can book
A client in a covered suburb only sees times for team members who offer the service and work in an area that includes the suburb. When a suburb is in several areas, the team members of all of them count. Automatic assignment picks among those team members only. Booklink checks coverage again when the booking is made, so an old or edited link cannot get around it.
When a suburb is not covered
If no area includes the suburb (Kenilworth, in these examples), the client sees We don't service Kenilworth yet. and can leave their email address. If the suburb is covered but no team member who works there offers the chosen service, they see We service Kenilworth, but not for this service.
Email addresses left this way appear on the Service areas page under Requests from other suburbs, with the suburb and the date. When one suburb keeps coming up, use Add to an area to start covering it. Booklink does not email those clients for you, so let them know yourself.
The client's address
At the details step the client types their street address. When you ask clients for their suburb, it is shown with a Change suburb link. The address is stored encrypted with the booking and copied to the client's profile, where you can edit it.
The address goes to your team:
- in the new booking and rescheduled emails to you and the assigned team member, with a Directions button
- in the WhatsApp new booking alert, after the time
- as the location of the Google Calendar event and of the calendar invite attached to your emails
- on the booking in the web app and the mobile app, with directions
The client's own confirmation and reminder emails say At your address instead of repeating it, and leave out your business address so nobody heads to the wrong place.
Check your booking instructions
If your account-wide booking instructions give directions to your premises, give at-the-client services their own instructions, such as what the client should have ready, or switch them off for those services.Bookings you make yourself
When you create a booking for an at-the-client service, enter the client's street address. When you ask clients for their suburb, enter their suburb too. Coverage does not stop you: Booklink makes the booking and then warns you when the suburb is not covered. If you do not ask clients for their suburb, there is no coverage check and no warning.
- If you chose a team member who does not work in that suburb, the warning names them, for example Booked, but Thandi doesn't cover Kenilworth.
- Otherwise, when the suburb is outside your areas or nobody who covers it offers the service, it reads, for example, Booked, but none of your team covers Kenilworth for this service.
Pro only
Service areas need Pro. If your subscription ends, clients are no longer asked for their suburb and your areas are kept, paused, for when you come back. While Ask clients for their suburb is still on, you can delete areas or switch it off. Once it is off, upgrade to Pro to change your areas again. At-the-client services still ask for the client's street address.Map and suburb data
Suburb names and positions are from © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database License (ODbL). Municipal and province boundaries are from the Municipal Demarcation Board, via geoBoundaries, under CC BY 3.0 IGO.
Our list of suburbs, built from OpenStreetMap, is available under the ODbL on request. Email [email protected] and we will send you a copy.