This guide covers how to set up and use online bookings, embeddable referral and intake forms to review and queue incoming referrals with the screener and waitlist, helping you easily find clients for booking when a calendar slot opens up. These features are most powerful when used together.
However, you don't have to use all of these features together - a solo practitioner with a small caseload might only need online bookings, while a busy clinic taking lots of referrals will get the most out of using them together. Simply start with what you need now.
⚠️ Before using any feature in this guide, make sure you've already set up your services, locations, appointment templates, availability, and notifications. Online bookings and embeddable forms will produce errors or a poor client experience if the underlying setup isn’t ready. See Setting up splose as an account owner or admin.
Online bookings
Online bookings is the most common starting point and works on its own. If you also take referrals, see how it fits into the full intake pipeline at the end of this guide.
Online bookings let clients schedule appointments with you directly from a booking page, without you needing to be involved. Once set up, your booking page is available 24/7 and reflects your real-time availability.
What you need before turning online bookings on
Online bookings depend on several things being configured first. All of the following must be in place before you enable it:
✅ Services, locations and practitioners added and linked
✅ Practitioners must have their availability set and locations must have their online bookings hours set on the Online bookings page in Settings
✅ Appointment templates attached to services (so that confirmations send when a booking is made)
⚠️ If the above are not set up, clients will encounter errors or be unable to complete a booking. Be sure to set up the above before contacting support.
📌 Notifications and online bookings are configured in different places but depend on each other. If a client books online and the appointment template for that service doesn’t have a confirmation notification enabled, they will not receive a confirmation email. Before going live, verify that each bookable service has an appointment template attached with confirmation notifications turned on.
Create an online bookings page
With the settings outlined above configured, you're ready to create a new bookings page. To create a new bookings page, go to Settings → Online bookings → + New booking page.
With your page designed, configured and published, you can share a link to it or embed it within a page on your website. Simply go to Settings → Online bookings, Edit the bookings page and go to the Share tab to copy the relevant URL or code. Then add it to your website, email signature, or anywhere you want it.
See the guides below for in depth set up steps:
Additional things to set up:
Cancellation policy - displayed to clients at the time of booking
Appointment terms - any conditions clients agree to when booking
Lead time - minimum notice required before a client can book
Online payments - if you use Stripe, clients can pay a deposit or full amount at the time of booking
Let clients cancel or reschedule their own appointments
Once online bookings are live, you can let clients cancel or reschedule their own appointments without calling or emailing you. This keeps your calendar current with no admin on your side, and you stay in control of the rules.
You can decide whether clients can cancel, reschedule, or both; how much notice they must give before making a change; which cancellation reasons they choose from; and who gets notified when a change is made.
Turn it on from Settings → Online bookings. See the guide below for in depth set up steps:
💡 Be sure to set a notice period that matches your cancellation policy, so self-service changes can’t undercut the terms clients agreed to at the time of booking.
Tracking where your bookings come from (optional)
If your practice runs ads or wants to understand how clients find and book you, you can add Google Tag Manager to your booking page and your embeddable forms.
This lets you track bookings and form submissions as conversions, measure ad performance, and see how patients move through your booking page. It’s an advanced, optional step - most practices don’t need it to get started.
Embeddable referral and intake forms
Embeddable forms let you collect referrals and new client information through a form on your website or via a shareable link, helping you avoid any manual data entry. When a form is submitted by a client, splose automatically creates a new client profile and routes the referral into your screener or waitlist.
📌 Embeddable forms are different from standard forms. Standard forms are for existing clients already in splose - usually attached to an appointment template so intake or consent forms go out automatically when a booking is made. Embeddable forms are specifically for new clients coming in from outside - they create a new profile on submission, and the form type can’t be changed after creation.
Setting up embeddable forms
Build your form by going to Settings → Automation → Form → New embeddable form. The form builder works the same way as standard forms - you can add questions, sections, conditional logic, and branding (logo, colours) to match your practice’s look.
Once the form is built, go to the Share & Automate tab to publish it and configure what happens on submission - if the new client automatically created is added to the waitlist directly or to the waitlist screener for triaging, what tags should automatically be applied to the client and what notification communications should be sent.
⚠️ The form must be set to Published before it will work publicly. Don’t share the link until this is done.
Waitlist and screener
The waitlist gives you a structured queue of clients waiting for services - and the screener gives you a review step before they get there. Together they help you manage demand without losing track of anyone.
Tags
Make sure your Waitlist Tags are set up before you start using the screener and waitlist. They let you track what is needed to manage your waitlist such as priority or where each client is in your intake process, e.g. ‘Initial contact’, ‘Documents received’, ‘Ready to schedule’ - and filter the list accordingly.
The screener
The screener is your first filter. When a client submits an embeddable form with the screener enabled, they land here for review before being added to your active waitlist - if accepted. You can accept or reject each referral, and send a customised response email either way. Accepted clients move to the waitlist; rejected ones are archived but can be restored.
The waitlist
The waitlist is where accepted clients sit until they’re booked. You can add clients manually as well as via the screener. Each entry captures the client’s preferred service, practitioner, location, and availability, which splose uses to suggest matches when a calendar slot opens up.
Using the two together
The most efficient flow is: embeddable form on your website → screener review → waitlist → calendar match.
When a slot becomes available, open that time in your calendar and splose will show you waitlist clients who match, sorted by how long they’ve been waiting. Book directly from there and the client is automatically moved to closed for that service.
💡 By default, practitioners only see clients they have appointments with. If a practitioner needs to see a referral before it’s booked, create a support activity under their calendar to establish the link, then archive it if it’s not needed.
How these features work together
💡 Not every practice will need to use all of these features. A solo practitioner with a small caseload might only need online bookings. A busy multidisciplinary clinic managing high referral volumes will benefit from the full pipeline.
For practices that want a fully automated intake pipeline, the recommended setup is:
Build an embeddable referral form and embed it on your website
Enable the screener so new referrals are reviewed before entering your client list
Set up the waitlist with tags that reflect your intake stages
Configure online bookings so clients can self-book once accepted and contacted