Get Your Availability Dialed In

0:00 Yeah. So, uh, with availability, um, you know, when when people are traveling or even just kind of on an ongoing basis, um, you know, one of the things that Czecherry does is, um, has lots of different tools to manage different kind of use cases, different things that come up. Um, and so, um, we just kind of wanted to walk through some of those. So, um, so I'll I guess I'll start with

0:23 with the feature that we call availability. Um, and it's a little bit buried under manage. Um, if you go to business settings and availability. Um, this to me is kind of the starting point of all the availability stuff. And Matt, if I could just I just want to hop in. Absolutely. you know, when we were Matt did a lot of the, you know, the work behind this feature specifically Longo,

0:47 but we specifically didn't want kind of like a traditional inventory asset management feature because in talking with our customers, it seemed like they had um a lot of different packages all backed by the same hardware and it was just like it was just a the approach we took. it was not inventory or in a traditional sense and so we called it availability basically and that's

1:10 that's basically why we stick with that term. Um but yeah exactly and um and obviously the goal is to you know if you've got one person doing all the events or you've got one booth or if you've got limitations um we want to make sure that you're not not getting double booked not getting over booked things like that. So um kind of the simplest you know if you're just a single

1:33 operation you know single person operation or you've got one booth or you can handle only you know one event at a time. Um kind of the simplest thing is just to drop in the number one there. Uh once you do that and hit save and basically what that means is you can only do one booking at a time. We call them simultaneous bookings. Um, but basically like that kind of means like how many,

1:58 you know, whatever the limiting factor is. Is it people? Is it equipment? Whatever it is. Um, how many can you do at a time? And for some people, like I say, that'll be one. For some people, you know, you can do maybe have enough staff or equipment or whatever the case is to do three at a time or five at a time. And of course, you can come in and change that, you know, as your

2:18 business grows. You know, maybe you start out, you know, you're just getting into it, you set this to one, and then um couple months later, you get another booth, you get some people helping you, you can bump that up to two to three and so forth. It's a common setup where somebody has just one one one photo booth or one they're just a solo entrepreneur and they have a bunch of packages

2:38 below um and they only have to put a number one right here. It's super easy. So, I love that. And kind of the next thing that that I want to look at is so we call these simultaneous bookings. You know, you can have one simultaneous booking. Um what that actually means is by default with a lot of our photo boothers, they only want to do one event per day. So once you know July 4th

3:04 is booked, I'm done. I'm not doing any more on July 4th. Um and I think that's the the default that we use on if you sign up as a photo booth account. And so what that means is, you know, once you're booked on July 4th, that's it. You're done. Um, another way to do it though is to kind of, you know, stack your events. So what you can do is leave, say, an hour, two hours, whatever

3:26 you think you need between your events. And then you can do um multiple events on the same day, just not at the same time. So again, you might still just have one booth, but you can go to, you know, you can do a morning event and an evening event and make that happen. And I think this is most common that's like somebody who lives in a market that there's a corporate business or

3:48 they're focused on, you know, a daytime kind of event basically. Yeah, exactly. And this setting, we're going to see this kind of repeated down below um as well, but this is kind of your going to be your business default. And you can override individual packages if you need to. But in general, I would kind of think of your availability like, you know, do you treat your

4:10 availability as full day? You know, a full day is blocked or do you kind of want to squeeze them in, you know, multiple per day. Um, and that minimum time per per booking is a little, you know, that's the, you know, you want to give yourself a little extra time to to get between different events to set up and things like that as well. So, um, and, uh, you can also set this stuff up further down.

4:34 So, we'll dig into that a minute in a minute. But, um, if you don't want to set a businesswide limit, you know, you can just clear that out, delete it, and there won't be any limit there. Next thing is, are you available every day of the week? Uh, by default, you know, we assume you are, but if you change that to no, you can come in here and say, no, I don't work. you know, maybe you have

4:56 a job and you only want to take uh weekends or um something like that. Additionally, you can if you set it to no, you can set it to certain hours. So maybe you you only want to do Friday, you know, after a certain time or you want to do weekdays after a certain time. And again, just kind of a way to stack or, you know, to to squeeze things in where where you have that that availability. I I

5:19 want to just mention something which is um this is primarily for the online booking side when it comes to um preventing people to book. Um you can send proposals and still have events outside your standard availability accepted, right, Matt? Yeah, but it'll give you warnings and stuff like that. Exactly. Yeah. So, we'll we'll take a look at that a little bit later, too. But basically

5:44 um you know when somebody's going through the online booking process if any of your availability rules prevent them from booking um you know then we'll we'll uh prevent them from proceeding. Um when it comes to things like like leads or bookings or proposals or stuff like that where you know where you're exceeding that limit, we'll give you a warning so you know. Um so it can still

6:06 be helpful to set this up even if you're not doing online booking. Um but um but it won't necessarily prevent anything. The next setting here is about lead time. So how much you know businesswide, how much lead time do you need before a booking? I think by default we put it to maybe like a day or something. Um but again it's it's uh some people prefer to have more lead time, less uh whatever

6:29 the case may be. And again, you know, if you have plans already for the weekend and you know, somebody comes in half an hour before, um, you might, you know, might want might not want to take that booking. So, it's real common to set this to at least a day or so, um, maybe more. And then kind of looking at the other way, what is the furthest out you will accept a new booking? Um,

6:55 you know, are you okay if somebody books you for an event in 2028 or something? um you know uh if that worries you, if that's something you don't want to allow, you can set a limit there as well. Um and typically that's going to be, you know, at least like generally six months out, a year out, maybe, you know, maybe further. So, um or you can just not worry about

7:17 it. You know, at the end of the day, if somebody books you for five years from now and you know, you don't decide to do it ultimately you can refund the deposit or something else. Um, and then as we discussed, uh, the, you know, whether you want to set these to entire day or just the schedule time. So, so those are your businesswide settings. Um, but if that's not granular enough,

7:38 um, you can of course set this at the package level as well. Well, and Matt, you you left the very top one blank, right? So, there is no limit. So, you're going to rely on you don't have to put anything here basically. Exactly. Yep. Um, and so but you're now you're going to rely on the package service package group and package caps. Exactly. And so how this is going to be organized,

8:02 this is going to mirror the packages you have set up under manage packages. Um, and it's going to be nested. So I've got my DJ service and within that I've got some wedding packages, some corporate packages, some school packages. Um down here I've got my photo booth service and within that I've got my 360 booths, my corporate booths, etc. Um what you can do is, you know, obviously set

8:26 a limit on any of these packages. So I can come in and say, you know, for my photo booth light, I can only do one at a time. Probably more useful though, you can also set that at at the category or at a higher level. So, say you've got several 360 booths and you want to say, you know, I've only got one 360 booth, but I've got uh three packages that use it um or four packages that use

8:51 it. Um what you can do is you can set it here at the the package group level. And what that means is that if any of these packages are booked, then all of them will become unavailable. or if any two of these packages are booked, all of them will become available. Um, and so you might have, say you have two 360 booths and then one, you know, whatever your corporate booth is. Um, and you can

9:16 do it that way. One thing that I see people do a lot of times is they'll come in and say, "Oh, I've got one 360 booth." And they'll put a one, you know, they'll put a one in all of them. Um, it doesn't really matter. I mean, it doesn't hurt anything. It just kind of makes it a little bit, you know, it's extra work you don't necessarily need to do. Um because how our availability

9:38 works is we're going to go through each of your settings, you know, each limit that you have and see if that prevents the booking. So, you know, whether I leave this blank, um when I put this at one, then when any of these are are booked, all of them are going to become unavailable. So, if I also set a limit here, I mean, again, it doesn't hurt anything, but it's kind of unnecessary.

10:02 And then later if I decide, oh, I'm ready to bump this up to two, now I need to do that in a bunch of places. In general, I would I would recommend, you know, you probably only need to put a handful of numbers here. You know, you don't need to put a limit on absolutely everything one at a time. Um, and then let's click this show more settings. So basically what that'll do is that'll let

10:23 you override the setting for, you know, by default since I have it at the business level. I'm blocking off my entire day. Um, you know, if I go into those additional settings, I can override that. Um, in general, I would just recommend leaving it as the business default. So again, you know, you don't want to have to update a million things if if something changes. Um,

10:45 so it's easier just to kind of leave it at the default unless you have a special, you know, special case. Um, so maybe you know an example of that maybe for photo booth you want to block off a full day but for photography um you want to get more granular and kind of stack them um one after the other. So lots of options there. Um again I would you know generally you shouldn't need to

11:08 put a ton of things here. You know there's just a couple of numbers you have to put in usually to to kind of capture all of your availability settings. And one thing I've noticed is the availability. It's um it can get more confusing than you would think uh quickly. You know, you're like, wait, do I have it right? Um and it's not, you know, you're like, I think I got it right. And we have

11:27 this cool test availability feature up on the left which is just really helpful. And that'll check um basically against your calendar and you can check a package, an add-on, a backdrop, a staff member, and we'll cover all these, but um highly recommend these features once you once you have your rules set up, it's going to tell you um and it's even on the support side, it's

11:49 occasionally what'll happen is, hey, somebody says I'm not available, you know, what's going on here. And we'll we'll often use that even internally. Um and it's really helpful. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. generally when somebody because we'll get you know not infrequently we'll have people ask about availability and usually the first thing we do on our end is you know we log in and and

12:08 put the date and time and see what it says and um it's going to tell you you know whether the date's available or not but it's also going to give you the reasons why so in this case you know I can't book a wedding silver package because that's in the past and you know that's not possible so um you know as you set different rules you know if I Say if I've got a a oneweek lead time rule

12:32 set up and I put in a date three days from now, um it's going to tell me that and it's going to say, "Oh, it's that's a common one, right? Somebody's testing out, they're new, they're testing it out and they're picking like tomorrow, right, that they have that set up." Yeah, exactly. And so, um, so if you keep scrolling down here, we've got a lot of different packages and add-ons

12:58 set up in this account. Um, but you can also do kind of the same thing with your add-ons. So, if you've got a limited number of add-ons, you can set those limits here as well. Um, so for something like idle time or whatever, you wouldn't typically set a limit, but for physical equipment, it can be real helpful. You know, maybe you've got one of these setups and one TV and two of

13:18 the uplighting units or something like that. you can come in and and set those limits and we'll, you know, obviously if somebody books two of your uplightings and and you know, you've got three total, then we'll only allow future bookings to to book out one of those. And then similarly with backdrops, um backdrops are is a place where you, you know, you probably will be putting a number in

13:44 a lot of different fields. So, you know, if you've got one of each backdrop or something like that, you can come in and and set those limits. Um, we'll take a look at at some lead time features on backdrops later, too. Um, but another thing that that some people like to do is instead of setting a um, you know, a limit on the number they have, they'll just order them if if they get over

14:05 booked. But in order to do that, they need to set a lead time. So, we'll take a look at that as well. And then kind of the most complicated is this what we call availability rules. Um you know a lot of most of the time for most relatively simple setups you know this this works fine. Um but if you've got more complicated um circumstances these available availability rules

14:31 uh come in handy. So, as an example, say you've got a photo booth and a lot of your packages use that same photo booth hardware. Um, what you can do is you can set up an availability rule for it and you can say, "Okay, I've got one of these photo booth uh packages or one of these, you know, pieces of hardware." And this is going to basically be like, you know, almost like an

14:57 inventory or something like that. you know, if you've got two of these, you'll probably put two here, or you know, if you've got, you know, and then what you can do is you can check off all of the packages and add-ons that use that um that use that that piece of equipment. So, if your wedding gold package and this one and this one and this one, you know, if if all these packages use the

15:20 same piece of equipment, you can just come through and and check them all off. I think it's worth noting that it's not common for people to do that. you for most of our customers the availability rules work great and they don't necessarily need to come in here there are times where you might um but I think for most people the availability work if you structure your packages with the package

15:40 groups and stuff it can work really nice exactly and then um the other thing you can do with these availability rules is is uh handle double-sided backdrops um so again if you want to come in here and say hey I've got one white red double-sided backdrop. What you can do is you can come in and you know those backdrops. Yeah, we got enough in here and you can give me some backdrops. Yeah,

16:09 hit command F to find it and then uh you know check off whatever whatever two backdrops you have in here. So there you go that and yeah with the availability rules I mean think the easiest way I can understand it uh is if one item is that it checked item on that list is booked all other checked items are basically considered booked exactly for for your uh availability purposes.

16:37 So you're basically tying together items. So, you know, if a you another thing I see people do is they'll put in packages and backdrops and then get confused as to why, you know, oh, this backdrop has been booked and therefore all these packages are unavailable and stuff like that. But as always, chat with us if you have questions and use the test availability feature. Um,

16:58 there's Gerald saying, I use availability rules more often than anything else. Thereby, it'll make my system work. Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. And it's definitely like Jud said, I would, you know, if you're checking off packages and backdrops, uh, something's probably doing something wrong. Probably not. Not necessarily, but probably. Yeah, probably just use the test availability

17:17 feature. You know, I think that's the way to go. But exactly. Um, and so with these availability limits, I kind of think of these as your um, you know, kind of kind of for just ongoing business. um you know as you know just on a day-to-day basis. Um you can also set up what are called blockout dates and there's a couple places you can do this. Um you can you know if you're already on

17:42 this availability page you can go to the blockout dates calendar and add stuff here. Um I actually usually do it you know I find it easier you know if I'm on the dashboard I'll usually go to the calendar and add them there instead. But what you can do is you can add a blockout date. And this is great if you're going to be traveling. So say, hey, for, you know, Fourth of July, we're

18:06 taking a long weekend. You can come in, you can put your start date, your end date. Um, you know, if you have just times, you can, or you can just check the all day box. And then you can say, you know, travel or something. And just to be clear, this is for the all packages, the entire account. You know, if you if you have staff and they can work while you're on vacation, you don't want to

18:28 do this necessarily, right? This is Exactly. Yep. You know, you you don't want any bookings during this period. Yeah. Exactly. And then you can put a reason in here. Um this reason is just for you. Um we're never going to show this to the customer. You know, if they're going through the online booking, um for really for any reason, you know, when they get that message that you're not

18:51 available, we're not going to say why. We're not going to say if you've got other events going on, if you're out of town, um whatever the case is. uh the message is going to be just kind of generic as you know you're not available and so once you hit save you know now I show that um I can also see it on my businesswide calendar too if I toggle this on so again it'll show oh I'm at I'm unavailable

19:16 um you know I'm traveling whatever the case may be you can also just limit that to certain packages you know maybe you're a wedding DJ and or you know just a DJ and and you're the only one that does the weddings though. Um, you know, maybe you want to allow other kinds of bookings, just not certain things. So, again, you can limit that just to certain packages as well. Or, uh,

19:40 maybe you're around, but you know, you've just got one person that does all of the DJ services and, you know, you kind of partner up with somebody and you just want to block those out. So, lots of different options there. Um, you know, I would say most common is all packages, but you can definitely uh get more granular if you need to. And you can also block off partial days. Um,

20:03 again, probably less common, but but it can come in handy. You know, if you're just going to be out of town for, you know, a few hours or something or, you know, unavailable, you can do that as well. Um, let's see. Guess the next place is what do you think Jud staff time off maybe? Yeah, I suppose you're already on kind of blocking stuff off. So yeah. So from that same calendar pl page

20:31 can also do staff time off as well. So, if you've got multiple staff um you know that work events, you can manually add you know if they're going to be out of town for a week or something um you can uh select who the staff is, you know, the reason and block them off. And again, we'll show that on your um on your uh calendar if you turn that those on. Um or alternately, you know, if it's kind of

20:58 too much, you know, like here we've got a bunch of things already. Nobody's working. It's the summer. Maybe you want to turn that toggle that off. So, um, but again, you can go to any of these. It'll take you to the place where you can edit it. You know, if something changes, you need to change it. Um, you can do that. And that and and the staff time off is helpful, right? If you're assigning

21:17 somebody to work a booking, basically, it'll give you a a warning, so to speak, about that. Exactly. Yeah. So, if I go to um to this booking here and I try to assign Olivia um you know, when I go to view the staff, it's going to show who's available and it's going to show oh, she's a she's not not available at this time. Um so, it's a great way to just kind of, you know, make it easy to tell at at

21:48 a glance. And it's worth noting through and look. Yeah. And and Chick Cherry will still allow you to sign somebody. Um, and that's intentional and it'll give you an alert. Um, for whatever reason, we just over time we've learned, you know, people it's there's a scheduling conflict. Um, people always want to override. Oh, yep. Nope. But in this case, you know, we got to we do it. We have

22:09 a hand up here. Uh, Tammy, is it right? Tammy. Tammy. Hello, everybody. Hi. Thanks for joining us. I have I'm gonna move my screen so I can look thoroughly at you all. Yeah, I have a question in reference to the to the calendars. Will you be going into detail about the actual um syncing the calendar on this call? Yeah. Yeah, we'll take a look at that as well. So, yeah. All right. So,

22:31 then I will hold my question. Thank you. To me, I'll remember that. Good to see you. We'll uh and we'll uh we'll go to that in just a sec. One I guess one other thing worth mentioning on the staffing side is um your staff can set their own availability as well. So, um, you know, within their account, um, I guess they go to set booking availability. They can set their own, you know,

23:02 request time off or, um, edit their availability. So, if they can't work, you know, Mondays because they have a job, they can put that in the system and that makes it really easy for you to kind of see at a at a glance. Um, yeah. Then we do have a setting, you know, by default, I think we let them just enter their time off, but if you want to kind of make it more of a a request and approval thing,

23:27 um, you can do that as well. So, if you go to, you know, if you're back over on the availability settings, um, I think we have that in staff, uh, you can say, oh, do do, uh, time off requests from staff require approval? Yes or no? And you can come in and check check that or or not. So, um kind of the next next thing I think so with the blockout dates, you know, that's

23:52 great. You can enter stuff manually. Um you know, if you're going to be out of town for a few days, things like that, it's, you know, helpful. Um the other way you can do it though is to link your uh calendar. And so if you click subscribe to calendar, um we have so there's a couple ways you can link your calendar to Check Cherry. Uh with Google calendar, they have an API basically

24:20 a two-way integration that we use that allows us to send events to Google and pull things already on your calendar into Cet Cherry as well. And so how that works is when you um when you go in and and link your calendar um you're going to have this option whether you want to pull events from Google and then once you enable that the next option is do you want to prevent your

24:47 business from taking bookings during busy times. So for instance, if you have some time, you know, if you have an event on your calendar, um do you want that to block your availability or do you want to treat it just kind of more asformational um purposes? And then the next setting is do you want to enforce a buffer before and after? So for instance, maybe you have, you know,

25:08 dentist appointment on your calendar. You might not want a an event booked, you know, like one minute after your appointment's over. You might want to keep that buffer um before and after as well. And then here you can set which calendar you want to sync to or from. So um you know if you've got multiple calendars in your Google account, you can uh change that. And then similarly um you can

25:31 decide whether you want to send your check cherry bookings to Google. Um and again you can set which calendar you want to send those to as well. Um, and so, um, yeah, so based on that, um, that works pretty well for what I would say, you know, if you're kind of more of a solo op where, you know, you link your calendar, you're you're the only one doing events. Um, you know,

25:55 that works pretty well. Uh, where it doesn't, one limitation on that that Google two-way sync is as of now at least, it is kind of a businesswide thing. So, um, when you link your account, it's going to that availability is going to affect, um, you know, all bookings. So, if you've got, you know, if you're a larger business with a bunch of different people working events and things like

26:20 that, um, that feature is not really going to work very well for you at this point. Um, you know, I think we've got some plans to to add some more more Google Calendar stuff, but um, but yeah. So, and so yeah, so I don't know if that answers your question at all or if uh um yeah. Yeah, Tamina did that. Did we get you? We got we got more to cover on the IC. I think so, but um I ju

26:47 thank you for that because um I think what I had done when I first integrated is I kept everything pre-selected and it was blocking off um event times for just general stuff that I just had on my on my calendar, right? So I did that. But but also um I'm not really certain how to determine what the primary what is what is the system. Yeah. To primary so I can know which calendar to actually

27:14 select. So what um let's see here see what's on my Google calendar. Um so basically with um with Google calendar they kind of have the notion of a primary calendar. Um that's just something they they and I think it's I guess it's this default one probably in my account. Yeah. Okay. So kind of like the um yeah the first one and then and then we we'll list all of them though. So, um I don't

27:45 think this is it's not linked to my calendar, but um but in if I if I had mine linked, uh I would show this default birthdays, you know, whatever this test thing is and um I'm not sure what tasks is, but any any kind of like normal calendar that we're able to sync with will show up there. Um, and so yeah, so if you just want it to be kind of like your your normal, you know, default calendar,

28:09 um, you would probably do primary, but if you want to have like multiple calendars in there, um, you know, if you create I don't know how you create an uh, there's some way to do that, right? I think that plus sign there, but I do have a couple. But I've actually Where yours where on your screen where it says default, like I've create new calendar, that's okay. So I think that

28:32 the primary I'm looking and doing a comparison, it's probably the one at the top that it's pulling in. Okay. I think so. Yeah. And um Yeah. And so most common people have it set to primary, but um but yeah, sometimes they just want it. And Gerald's got his hands up. He maybe has a bad or a question. Yeah, I just kind of had a question because now it looks like you can pull stuff in

28:55 off the calendar. Is that something that you're looking at possibly doing with the appointments? Because I wanted to look to my Google calendar and not be able to book an appointment when I've got other things on my calendar, like whether I put it in through check or not, but I don't want I don't want it to block it so that I can't book events if I've got other stuff blocked off of my

29:13 calendar. But it's it's vital for me for the appointment part. Um, like I use calendar, it checks my calendar to make sure that it can book in something during that time. So if you have the ability to pull in the information for this, do you have the ability to pull it in as well for the appointment side of it to check your account once you book an appointment? Yeah. If memory serves

29:36 how it works is um again since there is just kind of one calendar that will um if it's um when that basically if there's something on your calendar it would pre it would prevent both bookings and appointments. So, it sounds like um it it's already doing the what you want for appointments, but it's going to be a little too aggressive in that it's blocking bookings. So, I guess if if you

30:06 um yeah, so there's not really currently a setting to split those separately. Um it would makes a lot of sense. And you know, we I think it'd be nice. We have you know, intentions to bring calendars more kind of more user level and stuff. I think that would, you know, obviously, you know, opens this up. Yeah, I love the appointment thing. Like I think I think it's absolutely great except

30:28 for if I can't if it it can book let people book into appointments when I've got other things like personal items or things that um that's like I use my Google calendar to book my time off. I just you know office closed all that kind of stuff but I still want to be able to book events like I will open the I just don't want meetings on those days but I'll do an event. So if there's a

30:49 way to separate them or just filter say you know just for the calendar check the Google calendar or just for events if somebody wants that but I think it makes a lot of sense. Yeah absolutely. Okay thanks. Yeah. Yeah. The other thing too on the the Google calendar um right now the you know we'll we'll send bookings to Google. Um obviously it makes sense for us to send appointments and

31:13 proposals and leads and whatnot is you know at least optionally. Um, so you know, expect that to to come as well. Yeah, there's a lot of opportunity to run the calendar stuff, I think, and it's core to what we do. Yeah. Yeah. And so, um, the next thing we'll look at is lead time. So, um, so, as we mentioned earlier, you can set, you know, kind of a businesswide lead time. Hey,

31:38 businesswide, I want, you know, I need one day of lead time before a booking. Um, you can also do that at the package add-on or backdrop level. So, if I go into one of my backdrops, um, what I can do is come into the settings and say, "Yes, this backdrop requires lead time and I need 14 days of lead time." And what that lets you do is um basically order stuff you know that

32:10 needs to be custom made or custom shipped. Um you can order that before you know before the event. But if somebody is booking you last minute then you don't want to show that custom option. Um so you can do that here at the backdrop level. You can do it at the backdrop category level. So, if you want to set that on, you know, maybe you don't own any of these P these premium

32:31 backdrops because, you know, maybe use uh the PB backdrops widget or something like that, what you can do is set a lead time on all of those. And so, once you go in there now, all of these backdrops will um only show up if it's more than 14 days out. Similarly, under add-ons, you can do the same thing. So, if I go to one of my add-ons, I

32:59 um I have this lead time setting. So, does it require lead time? And again, I can say 14 days, and it won't show up unless it's within that. And then, um lastly, for packages, this is a new one. We actually just added it the other day. Um we had somebody that was it's come up a time or two where where people have different packages and, you know, for one reason or another,

33:22 they need more lead time. Um, now if you go to the advanced settings for a package, you can also set the lead time as well. So if you need to order something or do something, you know, it just needs a little more prep work, um, you can come in and set that. Um, it's probably worth mentioning that all of your availability rules have to match for it to be for it to show up. So,

33:44 you know, if you've got a a three-day limit here, but a 7-day limit on the business, um, it's not going to show up. Yeah, it gets confusing. That's it doesn't override it just we just make sure everything everything matches. So yeah, some other settings kind of on the package level that are worth knowing about. Um you know I don't I don't love that we have it here but if you're

34:09 on within a package um within the pricing and scheduling there is another availability section here. Um sometimes people have like time limits on their packages for various reasons. So, if you can only handle this package for certain times of the day, you can come in and put that. Or, you know, if you've got certain days of the week that you can do a package, you can do that as well. So,

34:30 um, you know, that's generally speaking, again, if if you're setting all of your packages one at a time, you know, you're setting the day of week, um, you know, you're probably doing a lot more work than you need. Generally, you can just leave it as a default and then set it at the businesswide level. So you can say, hey, I only work, you know, Friday, Saturday, Sunday,

34:49 um, at the business level. Then you don't need to come in and do it individually. And then yeah, so then I guess kind of the last thing is just that that troubleshooting availability. So um either if you're on your dashboard by default under the the tools we have that um that check availability tool you can come to or again that'll you know you can

35:14 also get to it under the the business settings availability and test availability and based on that you can drop in a date a time package add-on backdrop staff all that kind of stuff and see um see what's what's available for for something and just get more information about, you know, why it's not available if it's not. So, um, real helpful for for kind of troubleshooting

35:39 things like that. We'll also, um, when you come into say a lead, if a lead is not, you know, if there's any availability conflicts, we'll show them on the lead as well. So, say this um this lead here, you know, maybe somebody came in, they put June 30th. Um I guess that's okay. But, um anyway, uh I guess we don't show up for past ones, but in general, any any conflicts,

36:10 you know, if you've already got a booking there or something like that, we'll block it off. Um so, that can be helpful. Um, you know, particularly sometimes, uh, maybe a customer, maybe they start to go through the online booking process. They get a message about how you're not available. Um, a lot of times you can just go to sales leads, click on their information, and just take a

36:31 look. It'll have the message for why why it was blocked. Um, and you can see everything they put in. You know, we collected their name, their their date, all the all the information that we were able to collect. And then it'll have a a message about why it wasn't available. Similarly with proposals, um if there's any conflict, we're going to show that at the top. So

36:52 you'll have that kind of event conflict warning. Um with proposals, one thing you can do if you want to allow them to book even though it's, you know, even though it exceeds your availability, you can just set it to date reserved. Once you go to date reserved, we assume you're holding the date for them. You know, they kind of get that priority to book no matter what. and um you know

37:16 and and there's no no conflict issues there. Um if you set it to date open then it's going to become um you know first come first serve. So if somebody else already booked it for that date then um you know we'll make sure that uh you don't get over booked. And then similarly on a confirm booking if there's any reason you know somebody a staff's unavailable the package is not supposed

37:42 to be available on that day whatever the case may be um you know we're not going to stop anything or delete anything of course but we will show you a warning so that you can see what's going on there and let's see I think that's about it anything I'm overlooking J no I mean there's nothing under the change policy that's availability related, right? I don't think so. Good question. Yeah. So,

38:09 under the availability um yeah, so we've got this this change policy section here. Um there's some settings here. This is actually the same setting as what's on the on the overview page. Um we just kind of show the same thing in both places. Um there are some settings here that I don't know kind of availability related. You can decide whether you want to allow um customers with

38:34 proposals, you know, when they're looking at a proposal, do you want to let them add and remove add-ons? Do you want to let them add and remove backdrops? Um do you want confirm bookings to be able to make changes? Do you want to let them um cancel their booking? Things like that. Um there's a lot of stuff in there that's kind of sort of, you know, maybe related. Um no, I think but I

38:58 think you covered it and that's good. I mean, I think, you know, and we're at 643. If anybody has questions, uh, feel free to, uh, you know, unmute yourself and chat in. Also, uh, go ahead, Gerald. Yeah, I just, uh, I had a question. Um, it's kind of a compliment and and a suggestion. I love that when you're looking at a lead that you can look down as you scroll down on the right hand side,

39:20 it shows you all the other things that are booked on that day and all the other leads that are showing up. Mhm. It'd be awesome if when you've got a booked event and you're looking at the same spot that you could see the other booked events that are on that same day because if you've got three or four events that are happening, you're generally when you're working on it,

39:36 you're probably working on all of them. And it saves me having to jump find the calendar, find the booking list. It'd be easier if if you've got all those leads and I could just click on the other things that are happening that day and just jump right to those events. And I could also see when I'm looking at that one event. I can see how many other things I have on that particular day

39:54 based on the right hand side. Like it's already set up for the leads, but once they're booked, it doesn't show up in that section right there. If it showed, that would be awesome because it does save an awful lot of jumping around and me trying to figure out how many events do I actually have on that day and what are the types of events that are happen because we have DJ and photo booth. And

40:12 yeah, it's interesting. even just assigning staff and stuff like that. I can jump quickly through all the bookings from one booking to the other one. You can do that on the leads. Yeah, I think we show other bookings by the customer, but yeah, I don't think we show the other things on the same. It's good feedback. I mean, I think I mean this page is, you know, obviously there's a lot on

40:32 this page, so I don't know. Maybe even a link to the debut on the calendar would be quicker. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. It's not not a bad idea. The other thing I guess that's kind of related um there are some widgets that that let you do some things. Um the appointment one will show you you know you can kind of advance by by a day and see all of your appointments. Um we have

40:57 customize this get what else we have. Um you can also oh this activity for date is helpful um because I believe that'll show everything. So, um that'll show all of your proposals, bookings, leads, etc. So, um that that one's a nice like kind of overview, um for um you know, just kind of getting things at a glance from the dashboard, but good. And I have my dashboard. I read it. I

41:27 have the upcoming bookings and all that, but I mean like like if you kill Can you click on an actual lead? Do you have any fake? Yeah. No, I know what you mean. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't um the other thing with the customer with that page is there is just so much stuff on it and so there's a a bit of a room issue but um it's not common feedback Gerald like you you have

41:47 a very different business I guess than most of our customers I think is what um but yeah having that there yeah it's uh or maybe it's something that we make a little more customizable in the future. It makes sense. Yeah. If we did blocks or something here, that would be something like it just saves to jump to the main page and then like every time you want to jump between events day. Yeah,

42:10 totally. And then Jim says, "Are there plans to overhaul the availability calendar web tool?" So I think what what Jim's referring to under manage website integration, we have this booking availability calendar. Um, and what you can do, you can copy that. Um, there's some advanced options in there as well. So, if you want to do things like just limit it to a certain package or,

42:35 you know, sometimes people want like a wedding specific one or something like that, you can do that. But, um, basically what you can do is copy that and embed that within your website. Um, and they can pick a day, pick a um, let's see here. Let me change that to all packages. Let's see. And then Jim, is there something specific,

43:00 I suppose, is what I would Yeah. So, so basically I'm still paying, you know, I'm paying for another DJ CRM software. Um, and there's a couple of them that do it, but basically on my web page, and this is the only reason I'm still paying that other subscription on that web page, you know, it's on my personal web page, I I have a a section where it says, hey, to see

43:24 if we're available, click here. Calendar pops up, they click the date, and then they simply get a message, yes, we're available or no, we're not available. And then it tells them to call to talk more or I have some friends that I recommend them to if we are available. It goes to the um uh what do they call it? The request for information form you know where they would put

43:48 in you know I just got one two hours ago actually and I was just replying to them while we're on this webinar. They put in their phone number you know it's the same form that you have or your customer contact capture type of information. They put their what their date, their venue, the time and whatnot. And then I text them, I give them a call, I I send them an email back.

44:06 And that's where I get like 80 to 90% of my um my referrals. And with Check Cherry, I can't use that tool because when they're presented with picking a package, that's kind of like a roadblock in the DJ business. You know, I just want to contact them. I want their information. I don't want them to pick a package. They're not going to book online before I talk to them and try to, you know, have a

44:27 conversation with them and try to sell them. Yeah. Well, if I remember right, you're you're like a premium option, right, in the in the market. No, not really. It's actually pretty common. I mean, we have lots of customers that buck with pack that offer online booking and book with packages. So, I mean, it absolutely does happen. How many leads do you get in a given week that you're unavailable

44:49 for? you know, we talking like seven, 50. I mean, I'm just a small one, you know, uh, solo op, so I'm only doing, you know, 30 to 40 events a year. Um, I probably I probably get 10 inquiries a week. And of those 10, you know, seven, eight, nine of them, I'm unavailable. And I'm The most you're unavailable. I think that's See, that's what it is. It's kind of a percentage. Yeah. Yeah.

45:16 So, I just, you know, it I just And so, I mean, you can do all of the like, you know, to be clear, you can redirect them to a to a a contact form and all that, right? Um, it's just the the package is is that much of a deal breaker though for you. Oh, yeah. They won't they won't click on that. I mean I most DJs I know at least you know it's it's all about contacting them and and getting them to I

45:46 mean the issue so the issue for us we don't know if you're available because you know if you have any availability settings you know would you be lying like if you had a one year and and you know you misconfigure it like so so I guess that's the problem is I don't want to like tell people I just black out my dates I black out the dates and you know I'm only Friday, Saturday and Sunday and then

46:12 any dates I don't want I mean know you can with check cherry I mean an alternate solution would be we do have a lead form option and you could say give me your date and then give me your email address and I'll let you know and with a click of a button you can you know you'll see on the lead whether you're available in the in the right hand side when it comes in and then you can use like

46:33 our like our quick send or template just to say nope I'm not available or you can even have it go automatically. Um, we do have a um um a condition as well. So, you could have one one condition if you know send out one email if it's available, one if it's not. So, instead of like the first step being a calendar, the first step would be just a just give me your email and a date. Yeah,

46:56 email and a date and then I'll email if you're available. And that might work for you actually. I don't know if you know, but yeah, no, that looks good. Chat with us and we can help you set that up, but it's under the lead forms. But I mean, I get it. Like I I could I would be annoyed. I got I can totally understand how frustrating it would be that most most leads you're not available, you

47:14 know? Yeah. And it's like, uh, another one. Uh, you know, and again, Yeah. Yeah. Like if if I was going to DJ $400, they'd be like, oh, hell yeah, but I'm not going to do that. You know, I'm I wouldn't say I'm premium, but I'm not going to, you know, I'm not I'm not competing on our senior weddings are amazing, the ones you do. Maybe it's just your

47:33 marketing materials. They're awesome, aren't they? I feel like they're like super nice. They're all right. No, I mean I the one thing that, you know, to to give you guys props, the one thing that really uh closes the deal is when I send them a proposal. Oh, good. It's just so damn professional and so sharp, you know, where most

47:54 the other guys in town are sending out, you know, a PDF contract and it's just, you know, so so the proposal really presents me as being professional, you know, it it's it's really nice. So, and it's so easy to accept and sign in like this, you know, my goodness. So, you know, my workflow is they they they check their data that's available. They put their information in. I start

48:17 texting them and emailing them and, you know, ask them more information about their event and then I craft the proposal. I shoot them over the proposal and and that's that's that's that's the hook right there. They see the proposal and after I've had a couple back and forths with them, you know, they typically sign pretty quickly. So, have you found most people respond to email or

48:37 text better? That's right. Huh. like emails like Yeah, I I I do a text and an email at the same time and the text I mean I'm texting this this this girl right now who's getting married in October, you know, and she's she's been going back and forth with me all night. So, and then you'll text the link to the proposal. Yep. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep. And they sign on their phone.

49:00 Yep. Absolutely. Yeah. Exactly. See, that's why that works. That's a good That's a great workflow, by the way. Yeah. Yeah. It it works. It's great, you know. Yeah. I think a lead form with just the date, the first name, last name, you know, um and then um two emails. One that says, "Hey, we're not available, you know, and you can send it to yourself." And another that says just maybe

49:22 just to you that says, "We are available." And then you can start um you could also send them, "Hey, I'm available. Here's a link to schedule an appointment." Uh that would be another option, too. But I don't I think I I I like the idea of just starting the process of evaluation and fleshing out right away. Don't wait for the appointment. Hey, I'm here. Yeah, you're ready.

49:40 Let's do this. Yep. I love that. Well, thanks for the support. I'll get up with you guys later. Okay. I appreciate it. Anybody else have thoughts, comments, um, thanks for joining us. Um, feedback on the session, you know, anything you want to see in terms of topics or format. We're all ears. Um, you know, so let us know. Feel free to send a note afterwards or chat from within your account. Um,

50:06 and yeah, I think we've got a lot of opportunity around the calendar stuff. Um, in terms of the syncs, other calendars, you know, Microsoft Office 365 is a thing, although it uh, you know, not as it's not used nearly as much by our customers. I think Gmail, you know, or Google calendar is by far the most popular. Um, great job, Matt. I really appreciate it. Um, availability's come a

50:30 long way at checkerry. Um, so yeah. Awesome. Well, thanks for taking the time and the effort and the interest to make sure we all have it together. So, I appreciate it. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Have a good night, everybody. Good.