Booking & managing appointments

Appointments are the foundation of the clinic's day. Every visit, booked ahead or walk-in, has an appointment attached, tying together the patient, the doctor, the chair and the treatment that follows.

Booking ahead

From the calendar or directly from a patient's profile, book a patient for a date, time and doctor, and optionally assign a dental chair. The booking form only offers slots when the doctor is actually working, based on their schedule. On arrival, the patient is checked in, which moves them into the Waiting Room queue.

Walk-ins

When a patient arrives without a booking, create a walk-in on the spot. CuspFlow creates the appointment, checks the patient in, and places them in the queue automatically. From there, walk-ins behave exactly like booked patients.

Online booking

Each clinic has a public booking link (turn it on and configure it under Settings → Online Booking) that you can share on your website, on social media or over WhatsApp. A patient enters what they need and picks a slot from the doctor's real availability.

• If CuspFlow recognises the patient, the phone number or email matches an existing record, the appointment is confirmed automatically and appears on the calendar.
• If it doesn't, the request goes to a Booking Requests card on the Reception dashboard. Staff review it and Confirm or Decline. Nothing is added to the calendar or the patient list until someone confirms, and confirming sends the patient an email with the details.

An unrecognised contact is never turned into a patient record automatically, a real person always reviews new patients first.

The calendar

The calendar shows every appointment for the day or week, laid out by time and doctor, and updates live as bookings change. When several doctors are working, it shows a side-by-side column per doctor; provider filter chips let you show or hide each doctor's column.

Statuses

Appointments move through:

• Scheduled → Checked-In → Completed
• plus Cancelled and No-Show

Cancelling frees the slot. No-shows are marked manually to keep reporting accurate. Any booking can be rescheduled.

Emergencies

Flag an appointment as an emergency so the patient is highlighted and prioritised in the waiting room.

Reporting

Every appointment a patient has ever had stays on their profile, and appointment data feeds reports on patients seen, doctor workload, no-show rates and busy periods. See Reports & analytics.