We’ve all been through the excessive back-and-forth plethora of emails trying to find a common date and time for a group of people to meet. An email gets sent to a group of people, and everyone’s email inbox gets jammed full of the ‘Reply to All’ responses. As the meeting coordinator, you spend too much time trying to schedule a date and time that is convenient for everyone. Whether you’re a small business owner trying to schedule a meeting with several clients, coordinating a committee meeting for a volunteer group, or trying to get friends together for a game of cards, consider using a meeting scheduling solution.

Features to Consider

Before you decide on which type of meeting scheduling system to invest in, consider the following:

• Calendar integration: Do you want your appointments to integrate with one or multiple (e.g., work, personal, team member, etc.) calendars?
• Type of appointments: Do you need meetings of different lengths (30, 60, 90 minutes)? Will your sessions be online, in-person, or both?
• Number of meetings: How many appointments do you book in a typical month?
• Reminders: Do you want the appointment scheduling system to send reminders to you and invitees? If so, when and how often?
• Users: Are you the only user, or will you have other team members using the system?
• Payments: Will you be accepting payments for your appointments? Do you need to integrate the meeting scheduling app with a payment processor (PayPal, Square) or your bookkeeping software?
• Multiple bookings: Do you want your clients to be able to book multiple appointments at once (e.g., daily, weekly, monthly sessions)?
• Other integrations: Will you need the meeting scheduling app to connect to your CRM, video conferencing system (e.g., Zoom, MS Teams), website, social media pages, etc.
• Ease of Use: Is the software intuitive and easy for you to use?
• Cost: Is the price reasonable for the features you need?

Meeting Scheduling Apps

Several online systems can help you schedule meetings with one person or multiple people. Doodle and WhenisGood enable you to propose several dates and times to multiple participants inside or outside your organization, across calendars and time zones. Send an email to invitees with the meeting survey link, and participants indicate their availability. When everyone has responded, choose the date and time when most of the invitees are available. Finally, send an email to set a firm meeting date. Both services are free of charge, and registration is not required. However, more features are available (and no ads) if you opt for the paid versions.

There are a few other meeting scheduling solutions available. Calendly and 10to8 have free options with limited features, but you can still create a professional-looking landing page where clients can book appointments with you. It will even send them reminder emails to reduce “no shows.” The paid plans offer more options such as multiple appointment types, locations, integrations with calendars and other apps but are still reasonably priced.

Bookafy and YouCanBookMe only have free trial periods, after which you must pay for the service. However, their paid plans – even the lowest tiers – offer excellent features for the price.

Whichever system you choose, it will be an end to scheduling nightmares, and booking appointments with clients and colleagues will be sweet dreams!

Do you have questions on how to improve your productivity and reduce your stress? Learn more about our workplace presentations or contact Out of Chaos for more information.

Image by rawpixel.