Courses, cancellations and a diary of their own
A manual therapy practice has an unusual shape: one practitioner, one room, an hour per client, and a course of five or six visits spread over two months. Every gap in that shape is an hour nobody else can use.
The gaps come from three places. The course that stops after visit two because nobody booked visit three. The late cancellation that leaves an hour empty. And the shared diary where every practitioner sees every client, which is uncomfortable for the clients and unnecessary for the practitioners.
Book the whole course on the first day
Set the course once at the desk as a standing booking — weekly or fortnightly, so many times — and every visit lands in the diary as its own booking, each with its own reminder. A week that clashes is reported, never forced into somebody else’s hour. The client moves one visit from their own link if they need to, and the rest stay put.
Clients keep the dates they can see. Put the last visit of the course in the diary on the first day.
Make a late cancellation cost something
- A deposit on the first visit, kept if the client cancels inside your cancellation window.
- A card saved at booking, and a no-show fee taken from it when you mark the visit as a no-show.
- Reminders before each visit — on Telegram first, by SMS where Telegram does not reach.
Say what the policy is before the client pays, on the booking page, not after they miss the hour. A policy the client agreed to is rarely argued with.
A diary of their own
Set each practitioner’s role to record scope “Own only”, and they see their own clients and appointments and nobody else’s. Reception can book and take payments for everyone, with reports, payroll and settings closed.
Be precise about one thing: notes live on the appointment, so anyone who can open a visit can read its notes. “Own only” is what keeps a practitioner out of a colleague’s clients; it does not hide notes from reception.
What Setvos is not
It keeps notes, signed consent and a contraindications field for your work. It is not a medical records system, it makes no diagnosis and it records no treatment plan. A practice licensed as a medical one needs records software of that kind as well.