 Mark Demicoli | Mark Demicoli 18 August 2010 07:19:10 PM PayPal is a convenient and safe online tool to request and send money to people and business online. It has grown so dramatically over the last few years that it has become commonplace for businesses to offer a PayPal payment option alongside Credit Cards. The nice little advantage of using PayPal, in terms of security, is that you are only giving your credit card details to PayPal and not to lots of people and businesses directly, or even to ClickBook. We like this fact because we don't have to handle any one's credit card details, which would be a major risk. We have just finished 'integrating' PayPal wtih ClickBook. What this means is that you can now request and receive pre-payment for appointments by barely lifting a finger. Customers only give their card details to PayPal and never to ClickBook. PayPal directly credits your account and 'voila',money in the bank. Step 1. The first step is to get yourself a PayPal account. Please visit PayPal.com for this task. Tip: Registering on PayPal takes minutes, however PayPal will take you through certain steps to verify who you are, by transferring random amounts (small number of cents) into your bank account. You will then have to tell PayPal what these numbers are. It is a very secure way of verifying who you are, so that when you come to transferring your money out of PayPal, the money will definitely go into your own bank account.
Step 2. The second step is telling ClickBook the email address you used to register on PayPal.com. To do this, visit the PayPal tab in your ClickBook Booking Center, and enter the email address that you used to register on PayPal. This field will default to your ClickBook email address, but does not have to be the same. 
Step 3 - Enable PayPal Select "Enable PayPal" and submit the form. We have now enabled PayPal, however, nothing is going to happen until we set up at least one Payment Rule.
Step 4. Payment Rules This is the fun part, and it can get a little tricky if we try to get too creative here. Payment Rules are designed to be as simple or as complex as you desire. In essence, Payment Rules allow you to set rules for specific services, entire locations, or a combination of both. So what rules are we talking about? Lets take a peek below. Here is the form that appears when you click "Add Payment Rule". Lets start with the basics. Julie Jones, our fictitious businesslady for the day, Julie wishes to request pre-payment for all services, simple as that. To do this, Julie sets up her PayPal details as above, and creates a single Payment Rule as shown below. Quite simply, Julie has named the rule "All Services" and has ticked the "Request full pre-payment" option. That's it!  Getting fancy You guessed, there are more tricks in this dog. A payment rule can be narrowed in focus, and told to behave slightly differently based on requirements. Lets take a look at the Locations & Services section in the above image. By default, this section is empty, which means that the Payment Rule applies to all services in all locations. We could however, decide that we only want to request payment for certain services or locations, or further, to request pre-payment for certain services and leave the status as PENDING (ie NOT Confirmed) until payment is made.
Example: Julie Jones offers some services which require a huge amount of effort to prepare for. No Shows can really drag down her bottom line for these type of services, so she decides that she requires full pre-payment for such services. To do this, she clicks the Add/Remove link in the Locations & Services section. The Service Selector pops up and Julie clicks on the desired service(s) and / or location(s).  Finally, Julie Jones selects the third option in the Rules section. This option instructs ClickBook that appointments for the service(s) selected are not Confirmed until payment is received. You will know when payment is received because PayPal will send you a receipt, one to the customer, and ClickBook will send you a final appointment confirmation. *Badabing*!  Interesting Fact
Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal went on to establish SpaceX, one of the most promising space travel startups in the world. On December 23, 2008, SpaceX announced that it had won a Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract, which guarantees NASA missions worth US$1.6 billion for resupplying the International Space Station, after the Space Shuttle retires in 2010. In 2005, SpaceX announced plans to pursue a manned commercial space program through the end of the decade. Mark Demicoli 15 August 2010 01:29:28 PMUnfortunately, we are no longer able to support and grow ClickBook on the current pricing model. Our new pricing model is designed to take ClickBook to the next stage, as we begin to implement our grand plans.
New Pricing effective September 1st ClickBook's new ClickBiz products come into effect on September 1st. The new products are based on a monthly subscription and include PayPal online payment integration for client pre-payment. We will be blogging about how to use the payment features separately, so please stay tuned. SMS pricing has not changed, however the new ClickBiz products *include* SMS messaging. This means that on any of the ClickBiz subscriptions, you do not have to purchase SMS credits separately. Separate SMS credit purchases still apply to ClickBook FREE.
ClickBook FREE ClickBook FREE will essentially be limited to one staff member and one location. Some other limitations also apply. Please visit here for details.
Existing SMS Credits Accounts with more than 25 SMS Credits can convert these credits into equivalent days of subscription on any ClickBiz product. Please visit the Account tab for details and instructions.
Donation Credits Those (wonderful) people who donated to ClickBook over the last month have been credited with SMS Credits equivalent to their donation. As above, these go toward your chosen ClickBiz subscription. We thank those who donated for seeing us through a really tough time!
** Special Offer ** Until September 1st, we are offering a special 25% DISCOUNT to accounts that upgrade to any ClickBiz 6 month subscription. This offer is valid for 2 installements, each worth 6 months. That is, a total of 12 months subscription at a 25% discount. Mark Demicoli 12 August 2010 09:31:44 PMA special callout to Texans this month, as we have just brought online new servers in that big old bastion of independence! We hope you've noticed the improvement in the speed of ClickBook thanks to our friends over there at ThePlanet.com. On the front line (ie. you) we know how important it is that ClickBook 'just works', and works fast. It is our sincere aim to maintain a high level of responsiveness and reliability. This is our pledge, and we hope that you savage us if we lower the new standard. Also coming this month, and you *certainly* asked for it, is online client payments, direct to your PayPal account. If you don't have one already, we highly recommend that you get yourself an account with PayPal.com - the world's premier online payment system. PayPal is a great payment tool that lets your clients pay for their appointments online. We're confident that you're going to love how ClickBook works with PayPal! Stay tuned for more announcements this week. Mark Demicoli 31 July 2010 11:50:34 PM What we are seeing is totally unprecedented. For hundreds if not thousands of years, we took for granted the normal social process of acquiring services. If you needed new horse shoes for your trusty (if not smelly) 4-legged utility vehicle, you would pop down to your blacksmith on the way back from the market and place your order (yes, not so long ago we drove around on horses). In the last century, it became a 100 times more convenient to book your services, as the telephone became commonplace. In the last 15 years, the process of booking flights and hotels has transformed as well. Once upon a time, your travel agent was the bee's-knees in terms of all the information and commerce you needed to get you to Africa and back. My, how that's changed? Anyone been to TripAdvisor.com? Is tradition dead? We don't know. But we do know that standard, boring procedures are becoming the new thing to take for granted, in the form of automated internet services. You guessed it, we're talking about ClickBook and online scheduling. If you are reading this, and it appears that you are, you are likely to be at the leading-edge of the new trend. That's right, you're a 'maven' !! Go and tell your friends. In our effort to bring you the best in this new trend, we hope that your new online scheduling tool has changed the way you work, and hopefully, your life is somewhat easier, please comment! The diatribe aside, we want to use this blog post to inform you of a neat new feature. If you check your preferences in the Advanced Settings section, you will see a new option called "Vet new Clients", which gives you a new option to confirm the veracity of new clients that come from the internet. Let us know what you think. There are a heap of new features coming soon. If you thought ClickBook was already cool, wait `till you see what we're working on! Now. get away from your telephone, and focus on your work!  Mark Demicoli 31 March 2010 08:08:55 PMWe are pleased to announce that normal SMS reminder & notification function are now fully restored for North American customers, and normal SMS accounting has been reinstated on these accounts. From the feedback we've received, the SMS functions are perhaps the most important from a customer perspective, and we are taking steps to prevent such an outage, as explained in the last blog post. We're also pleased to announce that many new enhancements are coming in the month of April. These include: * Service Providers will be able to make appointments with each other * Normal 'customer' accounts will be able to upgrade to Service Provider accounts, while maintaining all of their current personal appointments * Cancellation of appointments will include a 'comments' box so that a reason or comment can be entered. * "Last Client Note" and any notes marked "important" will appear automatically on the final booking screen when service providers enter new appointments, giving a 'heads up' of what happened at the last session. * Printing of schedules will be enhanced Happy Easter, and stay tuned! Mark Demicoli 15 March 2010 07:51:24 PMThe recent SMS outage to North American destinations proved to be a major inconvenience to many customers. In this post, I wish to explain what happened and what we've now done to prevent such a long outage from happening again. What happened? Some two weeks ago, a small minority of Clickatell's customers engaged in sending thousands of inappropriate SMS messages, resulting in Clickatell being banned from many major telecommunications networks. The nature of the problem was so severe, that they are still struggling to reconnect to all major networks. This has taught them a lesson, and us likewise. High in our awareness is the importance of the trouble-free availability of ClickBook.net to our customers. In our online help, we make it clear that there are always risks associated with using any technology, however some basic diligence goes long to outweigh the risks with the many benefits. A serious problem with your internet connection, for example, would mean that you could not access your schedule in a timely manner. Being fully aware of this, we have a feature that sends you a daily email with your forthcoming appointments. This is one measure that helps to mitigate such outages. In addition, we always recommend that customers download their appointments on a regular basis, via the Account tab. However, even these two measures could not have prevented the SMS outage which was completely out of our control. What we've done. While we never expected such a long outage from our SMS provider, the experience has been an important one, and we have taken steps to increase reliability in future. As a result of this event, we have now engaged the services of a second SMS provider, to whom we can switch in a moment's notice, should this sort of thing happen ever again. In addition, we are now working on an automatic detection system which will inform customers by email when SMS messages are not delivered. That way, the system will give you the opportunity to contact customers manually (by phone or SMS) to remind them of their appointments. Details of this measure will be announced shortly. To reimburse the costs of undelivered messages, we have also stopped deducting SMS credits from all accounts for a two week period from March 18. Mark Demicoli 16 February 2010 05:17:00 AMIn his article "Online booking systems the sleeping giant for SMEs" Craig Reardon admits that his 6-year-old prediction of an Online Scheduling boom was 'wrong'. With contemporary focus largely on the darlings of IT that seem to sprout overnight like rare mushrooms, we think his prediction was a little premature, but hardly wrong. Since ClickBook's inception, quite a number of new startups have smelt the distant aroma of high-tech coffee and jumped on the bandwagon. To date, the fungi don't seem to have really sprouted. Many funded startups have been left scratching their heads and dusting off their business plans. As many of you reading this now probably realise, there is indeed a revolutionary change to day-to-day business for those who embrace the technology fully, but to date, the revolution itself has been rather subdued. Why hasn't online scheduling really hit the streets? We think there are number of key factors which will drive more of an evolutionary shift rather than one of a revolutionary nature. Key to this shift is the change in mentality that is to a great extent the domain of the always-online, privacy-shirking Gen-Y youngsters who are just now starting to become professionals. This generation and their progeny do and will demand absolute convenience in the years to come. Just like booking flights and internet banking, a human interaction is generally unnecessary and time consuming for many appointment-based services. A key factor in this mentality is the 'cloud' of information they now maintain and rely upon which is accessible all the time and from anywhere. Since email's heyday, there has been a progressive shift into 'the cloud' as people throw away physical records such as the appointment diary. We have no doubt that this trend will become permanent and accelerate in the next few years. So where is ClickBook now? The last 6 months have seen the first confirmed trend toward the real grass-roots takeup that we've been working toward. A real traction that is driven entirely by word-of-mouth, that Holy Grail of product marketing. According to Alexa.com, the important "Reach" measurement for ClickBook.net shows a beautiful trend developing:
 Evolution or Revolution? In Hindsight, that good old reliable foe of great visions, we see a revolution evolving. It won't happen overnight, but it will happen! Mark Demicoli 1 February 2010 09:48:27 PMWell, here we are well into the beginning of 2010, can you believe it? According to Arthur C. Clarke ( 2001), we were supposed to be running around in space eating faux caviar about 9 years ago. Unfortunately, most of us are still here on mother earth cutting hair, analysing peoples heads, training dogs, writing amazing online booking systems (!) and every other service under the sun. That's exactly why here at ClickBook, we're not building space capsules, but the most advanced online booking system in the world, Mars and even Jupiter (feel free to dispute that in the comments). As you may have noticed if you are a regular user, we've been quietly introducing new features to make appointment management a little easier. The Status box (normally the green "Confirmed" box) is now a context-sensitive entry-point to important tools available for that appointment (sorry about the geek-speak). Wherever you see the appointment status, you can click and perform key functions. These include: - Re-assigning appointments or TimeBlocks to other staff or resources - Copying TimeBlocks to other staff or resources - Cancelling appointments - Updating custom statuses Have we missed anything important? Let us know!  Mark Demicoli 23 December 2009 11:10:06 PMFirst of all, seasons greetings and we hope you've all had a stellar year, as we most certainly have. As usual, we've been quietly beavering away back here coming up with new features, and this year we've got a Christmas treat for our loyal fans. For years, ClickBook has provided your business with an effective booking system that provides many many benefits to your day-to-day operations. One of the less tangible benefits is the impression of professionalism it gives to your customers. However, the missing link that seamlessly ties ClickBook to your website and directory listings has long been missing, and we're pleased to say that it's finally here. The Book Now button or link will now open a mini window over the top of your website, so that appointments can be made without ever leaving your site. A recent forum post from Paul De Roo spurred us into action. A sense of humor goes a long way around here. Thanks Paul, and you don't have to look like a "tight @rse" any longer! To make it happen on your site, you will need to update the code that you had previously added to your pages. The How To on this follows. While signed-in to your ClickBook Booking Center, click on the Help tab and locate the instructions at the very bottom. There are two options, the Book Now button or a "Schedule an appointment" link. If you opt for the latter, you can alter the link text to your liking by modifying the part of the code after "title=" Here's what it looks like. Best wishes for the festive season from the growing ClickBook Team!  Mark Demicoli 4 December 2009 12:01:54 AM The all new Board admiring the Constitution at their first board meeting. From left :- Yours Truly, Reno Demicoli (32 years banking & risk management) and Michael Gaylard (35 years commercial law). Behind the camera is Adrian Cran of Corporate Outcomes Group - 'chief whip' of all things corporate and not a bad cameraman either. |
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