A sight test needs the room and the optometrist together. A frame collection needs neither, and a diary that cannot tell them apart spends the practice’s scarcest half hour on a five-minute job. Picktime knows the difference, so customers book what they actually need from a page of your own.
Blu VisionBook online
Sight test30m · Test room$65.00
Contact lens teach30m · Paige$55.00
Frame collection10mBook
Next free9:40 AM11:20 AM3:30 PM
Booked online
11:04 PM
While the shop was shut
Deposit
$16.25
25% on the sight test
Room and optometrist
Both free
Or the test is not offered
Every one of these protects the half hour in the test room, which is the only thing in the practice that genuinely cannot be doubled up.
One room and one optometrist decide how many sight tests a day holds. Picktime books both together and offers a test only when both are free. A collection, which needs neither, does not eat into them.
Sight tests, contact lens fittings and teaches, aftercare checks, collections and adjustments, each with its own length and price. Customers pick one at any hour instead of ringing a shop that is shut.
A test is every year or two and the gap is where customers are lost to the shop down the road. On the paid plans you book the next one before they walk out, with every test, fitting and collection they have had sitting under their name.
Every branch keeps its own opening times, its own staff and its own booking page, and every appointment across all of them shows in one week, so an optometrist covering two shops is reading one calendar.
A sight test can only be booked with an optometrist and a dispensing appointment only with a dispensing optician, so services are attached to the team members who actually take them rather than to whoever is free. Each person keeps their own hours, which is what makes a locum work properly: somebody in on Thursdays appears on Thursdays, their tests are bookable on exactly those days, and nothing offers a Tuesday test the practice has no one to do.
A customer moving or cancelling their own appointment from the confirmation puts that half hour straight back on the booking page, where somebody who wanted a test this week can take it. On the paid plans, people who found nothing free join a waiting list and are offered the slot when it comes back, so a cancellation at nine in the morning does not have to be an empty test room at eleven. Nobody behind the counter has to notice, ring round or work back through a list of names to make that happen.
Twenty to three on a Thursday. There is one customer at the dispensing table deciding between two frames, another standing behind them waiting to collect, and the phone going on the counter. Whoever answers it stops doing the thing they were doing. Whoever does not answer it loses whatever was on the other end.
Meanwhile the test room has been empty since half past nine, because the eleven o’clock cancelled that morning and there is no way for anybody who wanted a test this week to find out that half an hour came free.
Picktime moves the booking off the counter. Customers pick the appointment they actually need from a page of your own, the room and the optometrist are held together, and a slot that is given back goes to the people waiting for one.
Sight tests, contact lens fittings and teaches, aftercare, collections and adjustments, each with its own length and price. Ten minutes and half an hour are different appointments and should look like it.
Attach the test room to the tests and nothing else, put each service against the people qualified to do it, and on the paid plans write the questions the booking form has to ask before somebody sits down.
The booking page is a link, so it goes on your site behind a Book Now button, on your Google Business profile, and behind a QR code in the window for somebody standing outside a shop that shut at half five.
On the paid plans the things you always end up asking at the counter can be asked on the booking form instead, in your own words: when they were last tested, what they are wearing now, whether they are in lenses or glasses, whether they drive, whether anything has changed since the last prescription, and anything the test itself has to account for. The answers arrive attached to the appointment rather than being written on a card while somebody waits, so the half hour in the test room is spent on the test. It also makes a contact lens teach possible to prepare for. You know which lenses before they arrive rather than after.
The free plan is a plan, not a trial. There is no date at which it stops, no card to add, and nothing that quietly turns off in a fortnight.
An appointment lands in the calendar the practice already has open, and the paid plans sync it both ways, so it moves there when it moves here. Payments run through a provider you already use, and the booking page sits behind a Book Now button on your own site and on your Google Business profile, where most people looking for an optician start.
Picktime runs in a phone browser as well as on the machine behind the counter, and there are iOS and Android apps, so somebody on the shop floor can move an appointment without walking back to the till.
Picktime is free optician scheduling software built to make the day-to-day of a busy practice simpler, so less of it goes on paperwork and more of it goes on the people in front of you.
It takes online bookings around the clock, sends an email notification on every booking, keeps a complete customer database, holds every team member on their own working hours and breaks, raises invoices and manages several store locations from one account.
Automated reminders, recurring appointments booked in advance, your own booking questions, service-specific links and discount codes are on the paid plans.
Connecting your Picktime account to Google, Apple or Outlook calendars is what stops the scheduling mistakes: a team member with something personal in their own calendar has those times hidden on the online booking page automatically. A customisable booking page can be shared to your website, your social profiles and your Google Business profile, and with a booking widget and a QR code alongside it, customers can schedule from anywhere at any hour.
Online booking forms collect the details that matter when the appointment is made, including readings, current prescription and particular requirements, so glasses and contact lenses can be prepared accurately and the visit itself runs smoothly. Payment tools handle the money, and the mobile app keeps the schedule with whoever is on the floor.
That depends on which half of the job you mean. A practice management or EHR suite is built around clinical records, dispensing and claims. A booking system is built around the diary. Picktime is the second: an online booking page, the test room held with the test, customer records and several stores in one calendar, free to start, with no card. An ophthalmology practice booking a named machine as well as a room and a clinician is a step past that, and ophthalmology scheduling is the page for it.
Picktime’s free plan covers a booking page of your own, the test room booked with the appointments that need it, an email notification the moment an appointment is booked and a record for every customer, with no end date and no card required.
Yes, at any hour. Your booking page lists each appointment with its real length, and only offers a test when the room and an optometrist are both free, so what somebody books at eleven at night is a slot that genuinely exists.
Yes, and this is the main thing the practice gets out of it. A collection or an adjustment is its own service with its own length, and it is not attached to the test room at all, so it never takes a half hour the optometrist needed.
Yes, on the paid plans. The booking form asks whatever you need before the appointment (when they were last tested, what they wear now, whether anything has changed), and the answers arrive attached to the booking rather than being written down at the counter.
Yes. Each store keeps its own opening hours, its own staff and its own booking page, and every appointment across the branches shows in one calendar, so somebody covering two shops in a week is reading one diary rather than two.
Yes. Book the repeat while they are still with you and it sits in the diary (with a reminder attached, on the paid plans), which is a great deal more reliable than hoping somebody remembers two years later that they were due.
Chairs and surgeries Check-ups on a recall, longer treatments, and a surgery that can only hold one.
See dentist scheduling
Consultations Booked consultations running alongside a counter that never stops being busy.
See pharmacy scheduling
Appointments in store Personal appointments booked into a shop floor that is also serving everyone else.
See retail schedulingFree forever for one practice. No card, no trial clock, and your booking page can be live before the shop shuts.
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