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How a mobile shop works
How a mobile shop works

For businesses that travel to the customer for appointments.

Alan Wong avatar
Written by Alan Wong
Updated over a week ago

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With a mobile shop, customers are required to enter their address when booking and the system will factor in travel times to and from appointments.

Area centre

Instead of setting a public address within Settings > My Business, you add an 'area centre' that you travel from and to for appointments. This should be in the middle of the area that you want to serve (rather than your home address) - e.g. if you live in the suburb of a city but want to serve the whole city, then the area centre should be in the middle of the city.

You can configure:

  • Maximum travel time: The system calculates the distance in duration from the area centre to the customer's address, which they must enter in order to book:

    If the customer is too far away (i.e. exceeds the maximum travel time), they are shown:

  • Skip travel time from/to the area centre for the first/last customer: Say your working day starts at 09:00 and a customer is situated 10 minutes away, if this setting is:

    • Unticked (i.e. do not skip travel time): The first and last slots on your schedule are greyed out to the customer to factor in travel times:

    • Ticked (i.e. skip travel time): The first and last slots on your schedule are bookable as these travel times are excluded from your working day:

Travel time

Travel time is calculated using the distance on roads, rather than live traffic data (which is complex and non-applicable to future appointments).

If appointment Y is booked after appointment X, the system will factor in the travel time from location X to location Y, rather than X -> Area Centre -> Y.

Within Settings > My Business, you can edit the staff record to adjust the travel time factor which multiplies travel time to account for traffic:

The default is 1.3 to allow some margin as 1 equals 'traffic-free'. You would set this higher if based in a city as it would take longer to travel a distance, and also if there are local roadworks/diversions that would consistently impact your journeys etc.

Manual booking

There are two ways that an admin can schedule an appointment:

  1. 'Next Available Appointment' tool: On the Timetable, click the grey [Options] bar below the staff member's name and select Next available appointment:
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    Make sure to select the relevant day:

    The system will factor in travel time to determine the timeslot, provided the customer has an address on record - please check when booking.
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  2. Select any timeslot: Simply click on an available slot on the Timetable. Note that you will need to manually factor in travel time, unlike with the 'Next Available Appointment' tool.

Changing to or adding a mobile shop

We can help with this! If you are on a standard shop model and want to add or change to a mobile shop, please contact your Account Manager or email support@nearcut.com / support@bookinbeautiful.com for assistance.

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