This guide answers common questions about how to manage and customize your online appointment booking settings in Practice by Numbers (PbN), including patient restrictions, appointment approvals, clustering, and availability rules.
How can I block certain patients from booking online appointments?
To prevent specific patients from booking online, go to the Online Appointment Booking tab and open the Filtering page. You can restrict online access based on the following criteria:
Tags (e.g., Blocked, VIP Only, New Patient Only)
Insurance type
Failed Appointments history
Service Codes
Patients who meet these blocked criteria will not be able to complete online booking. Instead, they’ll receive a message instructing them to call the office directly.
When is an appointment booking request denied?
An appointment request is denied when:
The practice manually rejects the pending request.
The requested appointment conflicts with availability settings (e.g., falls outside configured hours or dates).
The patient falls under a blocked category as described above.
To deny a request, navigate to the Schedule > Pending Appointments, where you can manually decline incoming online requests.
How can I approve appointment requests from patients?
You can approve online appointment requests in three places:
Schedule > Pending Appointments
Action Needed Center > Appointments
Directly from your notifications bar
Once approved, the appointment will be confirmed in the patient’s view and calendar.
What are conflicted appointments?
Conflicted appointments happen when two patients attempt to book the same time slot (e.g., due to a timing overlap or a sync delay). In these cases:
Only the first submission is accepted.
The second patient receives an email notification informing them that the time slot is no longer available, prompting them to try again.
How does appointment availability work?
You can manage how soon and how far in advance patients can book appointments, as well as how frequently time slots appear:
Soonest Appointment Available: Set a buffer before a patient can book—defined in hours or days (e.g., 2 hours or 1 day).
Farthest Appointment Available: Limit how far into the future appointments can be scheduled (between 1–12 months).
Appointment Time Interval: Choose how often booking slots appear—either every 10 or 15 minutes. This setting controls how frequently time options are displayed to patients, but does not affect the actual length of the appointment.
For example, if you select 10-minute intervals, a 60-minute appointment might appear available at 9:00, 9:10, 9:20, etc.
If you choose 15-minute intervals, available start times would show at 9:00, 9:15, 9:30, etc.
More frequent intervals (10 mins) give patients more flexibility and can help fill small schedule gaps. Less frequent intervals (15 mins) simplify the booking experience and reduce the number of visible choices.
You can also fine-tune availability by:
Restricting booking to Provider Time Availability
Syncing with your PMS schedule, so online booking reflects your current provider and practice hours
Using PMS schedule blocks to reserve specific times for certain visit types (e.g., hygiene or new patient visits)
These settings help ensure online availability stays aligned with your internal scheduling setup while offering patients a streamlined and accurate booking experience.
