How to Build a Booking System | Part 1 of 3

Scheduling meetings is a vital part of many businesses, so it's no surprise that software like Calendly has become very popular in the online world. Calendly, a scheduling software, syncs with your personal calendar and allows others to schedule time with you if they have your personal link. Many people use a free version of Calendly and enjoy the benefits of eliminating those pesky back-and-forth emails, trying to schedule a time that works for all parties involved.

Less frequently used are some of Calendly's more advanced features. Paid subscriptions to Calendly include fancier options like integration with Zoom (screensharing software), accepting payments at the time of booking via Stripe or PayPal, and even creating teams of people available to take meetings. This suite of options makes some incredible things available, so I set out to demonstrate all this in a step-by-step video. In fact, there are so many moving parts that this is merely part 1 of 3 videos on this topic!

In Part 1, we need to start with a way to structure and organize all of the scheduled meetings in a database (Airtable). It's great to have a Calendly link to an event, but if your team doesn't have a way to organize and store this data, you'll get lost before you even begin. So, we set out by establishing the proper database architecture in this video.

Once we establish the best structure, it's time to jump into Calendly to create this team-based event. We explore how to build this event using a Round Robin event type - this is where the next available team member is automatically assigned to the event. This option allows us to have multiple team members available, and Calendly is smart enough to automatically assign the event to the next in line. We also set up our event to require payment at the time of booking via Stripe integration.

That's as far as we get in this video, but check for Parts 2 and 3, soon. In those posts, we'll be discussing the automations to build for this system and also how to create a portal for your team to log-in! Once you've built out this system, you will be amazed how seamless the finished product is - and most importantly, how much time you save from not having to schedule all these meetings by hand!