Managing Staff Across Multiple Branches? How to Simplify Location-Based Bookings
When people work at different branches on different days, the booking setup has to know who is where. Here is a plain way to map the rota into bookable times, let customers pick their branch first and keep travel days realistic.
The simplest way to manage location-based bookings for staff who rotate between branches is to treat each person-and-branch pairing as its own bookable diary: a booking type for that branch, open only on the days that person is rostered there, with travel time blocked between sites. Customers choose the branch first, then see only the people and times genuinely available at that address. Most of the mess comes from one shared link that tries to cover every branch at once.
This guide is for owners and practice managers with two to five sites and a team that moves between them. It sits alongside our guide to staff scheduling and rostering, which explains the difference between a roster and bookable hours. We will be upfront too: Calenix has no dedicated branch or location feature, so below we show the honest setup that works with separate booking types, availability rules and calendar blocks.
What does a branch-based booking setup actually need to know?
Every branch booking answers three questions at once: which address, which person and which time. Problems start when your booking tool only knows two of them. A physio who works in one town on Mondays and another on Tuesdays looks free all week to a tool that cannot tell the two days apart, so a customer books the wrong town or the wrong day.
Write the rota as a person-by-branch grid
Before touching any software, draw a simple grid: staff down the side, branches across the top, and the days each person works at each branch in the cells. Add start and finish times, because a person who drives to a second site after lunch is only bookable there from mid-afternoon. This grid becomes the single source of truth. If it does not exist on paper, no tool will invent it for you.
One booking type per branch, per person or team
Because there is no branch setting to lean on, the branch lives in the booking type itself. Create a booking type such as Initial assessment, Riverside branch and set its availability rules to the days and hours that person works at Riverside. Their Initial assessment, High Street branch type gets the other days. Each type carries its own address in the location details, its own buffers and its own booking questions. On the Free plan you have one booking type, so this approach realistically needs the Individual plan for one person covering several branches, and the Professionals plan when several staff share a branch through round robin.
Customers pick the branch before anything else
Ask the branch question first, on your website or a short page with one button per branch. Each button leads to that branch's booking link. This is clearer than a dropdown halfway through a form, and it means the times a customer sees already belong to the right address. A service booking page or landing page with a short line per branch (address, parking, days open) works well here.
Travel between branches is time, not a gap
If someone finishes at one site at 12:30 and starts at another at 14:00, the 90 minutes in between are not free. Block that travel window as busy in their Google Calendar or Outlook so the connected calendar removes it from every booking type. Buffers on each booking type help with turnaround between customers, but the drive itself is better as a calendar block because it applies across all branches at once. Our explainer on how calendar sync prevents double bookings covers why this matters.
Who owns what: branch manager or central admin
Decide early who can change what. A sensible split: central admin owns the booking type templates, naming, questions and confirmation wording; branch managers own the rota and request changes to availability; each staff member owns their own connected calendar and keeps personal commitments in it. On Professionals, admin-managed team templates let the central admin keep the standard parts consistent while availability is adjusted per person.
Why branch confusion costs more than it looks
A wrong-branch booking is rarely just an apology. The customer drives 40 minutes, finds a locked door or a different practitioner, and either waits, leaves or rebooks somewhere else. Meanwhile the slot they should have filled at the right branch sat empty. One mistake wastes two appointments and some goodwill.
Rotating rosters also hide quieter problems. Staff end up with back-to-back bookings at two sites with no time to drive, so they start every afternoon late and apologise all day. Reception staff at one branch cannot see who is coming to the other branch, so they phone each other to check. And when the rota changes, someone has to remember to change the booking setup too, which is easy to miss in a busy week.
Illustratively, if a practice has three wrong-branch or impossible-travel bookings a fortnight and each appointment is worth A$95, that is A$285 a fortnight in disrupted revenue before counting staff time spent sorting it out. The fix is mostly structure, not software: a clear grid, a branch-first booking path and travel blocked as busy.
Getting this right also makes staff calmer. When the setup mirrors the rota, people stop checking their phones at red lights to see whether someone has booked them into the wrong town. If you are still deciding how team calendars should connect, our page on team calendar sync explains shared availability without exposing private diaries.
What a clear branch booking setup gives you
Right address every time: customers choose the branch first, so the times they see already belong to that site.
Realistic travel days: drive time blocked as busy stops impossible back-to-back bookings across towns.
Fewer phone calls between branches: each branch's bookings sit in clearly named booking types.
Rota changes in one place: when someone swaps a day, you update one booking type's availability rather than guessing.
Clear ownership: central admin, branch managers and staff each know which part of the setup they look after.
Honest confirmations: every confirmation names the branch address and parking, so nobody drives to the wrong town.
How to set up location-based bookings for rotating staff in 7 steps
Draw the person-by-branch grid — List staff, branches and the days and hours each person works at each site, including part days. Agree that this grid is the master copy and who updates it.
Name booking types by service and branch — Use a fixed pattern such as Service, Branch (for example Initial assessment, Millicent). Consistent names make the right link easy to find for staff and customers.
Set availability per booking type to match the grid — Open each branch booking type only on the days that person is rostered there. A Thursday at one site should never appear on another site's link.
Connect calendars and block travel as busy — Each staff member connects Google Calendar or Outlook. Add travel between branches as busy events so they are removed from every booking type at once.
Add the branch address to location and confirmations — Put the full address, parking and entry notes in each booking type and its confirmation and reminder emails, so the email itself tells people where to go.
Build a branch-first page — Create one page or website section with a button per branch leading to that branch's booking links. Check it on a mobile, where most customers will tap it.
Make rota changes a two-step habit — Whenever the grid changes, the same person updates the booking type availability that day. Book a test appointment on each changed link to confirm.
Ways to handle a staff member who works at more than one branch
| Feature | How it works | Best for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Separate booking type per branch | Each branch has its own type with its own days, address and buffers | Regular weekly rotas | More booking types to keep tidy; needs a naming pattern |
| One booking type plus a branch question | Customer types or picks a branch in a booking question | Staff who can work anywhere on any day | Times shown may not match where the person actually is |
| Branch days blocked in the calendar | Busy events block days at other sites | Occasional cover at a second branch | Easy to forget; all-day events may not block, so check your settings |
| Round robin per branch (Professionals) | Several staff share one branch type and bookings are spread across them | Busy branches with two or more practitioners | Each member's availability must match their branch days |
| Phone or reception booking only | Branch staff book by hand from a shared diary | Very small or rare sessions | No after-hours booking; relies on one person knowing the rota |
Best practices for rotating staff across branches
Ask the branch question first, before service or person, on every page that links to booking.
Keep one master rota grid and give one named person the job of updating the booking setup when it changes.
Block real drive time between branches, plus a few minutes to park and set up.
Put the branch name in every booking type title and in the subject of confirmation emails.
State the time zone in confirmations if any branch sits across a state or time zone border.
Review each branch's booking links at the start of every month against the rota.
Give branch managers a short checklist for requesting changes rather than editing setups ad hoc.
Common branch booking mistakes
Using one booking link for every branch and hoping customers read the address in the confirmation.
Leaving availability open all week on a branch type when the person only works there on Tuesdays.
Treating travel as free time, so bookings land at two towns 20 minutes apart.
Letting each branch name its booking types differently, which confuses staff covering another site.
Changing the paper rota without changing the booking setup, or the other way round.
Assuming a tool has branch features it does not have; check whether your tool supports it before planning around it.
Example: a three-site physiotherapy practice around Mount Gambier
Take a fictional physiotherapy practice based in Mount Gambier, South Australia, with satellite clinics in Millicent and Penola. Five physios work for the practice. Two stay in Mount Gambier full time; three rotate. Before the change, every physio had one booking link, and the practice kept a separate spreadsheet of who worked where. Customers in Penola regularly booked a physio on a day she was in Millicent.
The practice manager drew the grid first. Priya works Millicent on Monday and Wednesday, Mount Gambier the rest of the week. Tom covers Penola on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, then drives back to Mount Gambier for afternoons. Hannah covers Millicent on Friday.
- On the Professionals plan, central admin created booking types named Service, Branch, such as Initial assessment, Penola and Follow-up, Penola, each holding the branch address and parking notes.
- Tom's Penola types open Tuesday and Thursday 8:30 to 12:00 only. His Mount Gambier types open from 13:30 on those days.
- Each rotating physio blocked the drive between towns as busy in Google Calendar: 50 minutes for Penola to Mount Gambier, 45 minutes for Millicent.
- The website's booking page now starts with three buttons, one per clinic, each listing which days it is open.
- Confirmation emails start with the clinic name and full address, followed by the time (in local South Australian time).
The illustrative maths: before the change, the manager counted about four wrong-clinic or impossible-travel bookings a month. At A$95 per appointment, each one put a slot at risk, so roughly A$380 a month was in play, plus the phone time to fix it. After a month on the new setup, the count fell to one, a booking made by phone that reception entered in the wrong diary. The practice did not need a branch feature; it needed the rota written into the booking types. When Priya swapped her Wednesday for a Thursday in November, the manager changed two booking types and ran a test booking from her phone that afternoon. For linking a single person's Google and Outlook diaries, see scheduling across Google Calendar and Outlook, and for the confirmation wording, what to include in an appointment confirmation email.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Branch bookings, sorted
Map your rota into booking links that send people to the right branch
Start on the Free plan to test one booking type and calendar sync, then add a booking type per branch and team round robin when your rota needs it.