How to add travel time in Square Appointments

The short answer: can Square Appointments add travel time?

Square Appointments has no setting called travel time. It has two tools that do the job. The first is extra time after a service. Square's service guide lists it for Square Appointments Plus and Premium, and the US guide also lists Square Plus and Premium. The second is a personal event that blocks time on your calendar. Square lists personal events for Free, Plus and Premium.

Square also knows that some businesses travel. In its appointment settings, one choice for where you accept appointments is in person at your client's location. The settings guide doesn't mention travel time, a service area or distance, and we couldn't find a Square help page that describes working out a drive between two addresses.

So the answer is yes, you can add travel time in Square, and you decide how many minutes. Use the guide for your own country and plan, because plan names differ a little between the UK and the US.

• Square's appointment settings guide: UK
• Square's appointment settings guide: US

Step by step: block travel time in Square Appointments

Start with the service rule if your plan has it, then add personal events for the journeys that don't fit the rule.

One warning from Square's own wording. Processing time is a block of time during the service that customers can book online. That suits a product that needs to sit while you start another car at the same address. It does not suit a drive. For travel, use extra time or a personal event, which keep the time closed.

• Extra time, on Plus or Premium: in Square Dashboard, open Items & services, then Items, then the Service library. Choose the service.
• Switch on Block extra time after appointment, which adds extra time at the end of the service. Save. In the Point of Sale app the same switch is called Block Extra Time.
• A one-off drive, on any plan: go to Appointments, then Calendar. Click the time you want to protect and choose Create.
• Change the event type to Personal event. Give it a title, such as Drive to next job.
• Switch on Block time, so customers can't book over it. Without this, the event is only a note. Set the start and end, pick the staff member and save.
• Use the same personal event for the drive out before your first job and the drive home after your last one.
• Open your booking site on a phone and check that the first time offered after a job comes after the block.

• Square service settings and plan access: UK
• Square service settings and plan access: US
• Square's personal event steps: UK
• Square's personal event steps: US

What a fixed block can't know

Here is an example with made-up distances and drive times. A mobile detailer does a 90-minute maintenance detail and blocks 30 minutes of extra time after it. Three different customers book the next slot.

The block is about right for the middle journey and wrong for the other two. A day of short hops like the first row leaves 22 minutes unused after every job. One journey like the third row makes you 14 minutes late, with a customer watching the clock.

Personal events fix this for one day at a time. You look up the drive, then stretch or shrink the block by hand. It works, and it is one more job to do for every booking. If a job moves, the block has to move with it.

• Choose a gap using your own journey records

When a fixed block is enough

A fixed block suits a lot of detailers, and Square's payment tools may be worth more to you than a cleverer diary. Stay as you are if most of these are true.

Two more settings in Square help here. You can choose to accept or decline each booking request yourself, which gives you a chance to check the address. And you can set how far in advance clients must book, from one hour to four weeks.

• You do two or three long jobs a day, so a spare 20 minutes rarely costs you a booking.
• Your customers are in one town or one cluster of estates.
• You group areas by day, such as north on Mondays, and keep to it.
• You already check each address when a booking comes in, and you don't mind adjusting a block.
• Square takes your payments, and you would not want to move them.

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When to use address-aware booking instead

The fixed block stops being enough when your area is wide, when your days are full, or when you are building personal events for most bookings. Then the customer's address needs to shape the times they are offered.

CalMov works that way. The customer enters their address first, and CalMov only offers times you can reach, allowing for the journey before and after each job. On Pro, drive times come from the roads, with expected traffic, and you can add a travel charge by distance or drive time bands. You can set a service area by distance or drive time.

Be clear about the plans. On the free Lite plan, CalMov uses a fixed travel gap that you set, the same idea as Square's extra time. Road-based drive times are on Pro, at £22 a month at the founder price and £29 as standard ($29 and $39 in the US), with a 14-day free trial and no card.

CalMov is not a till. It doesn't replace Square's point of sale. A CalMov booking can be paid at the appointment, so you can keep taking cards with Square and use CalMov for the booking link. Lite and Pro are for one person, so a business with several vans is better served by Square's staff calendars today.

• CalMov for mobile car detailers
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• CalMov plans and prices in the US

Moving a job: check the drive again

Rain, a customer running late, a job that overruns: detailing days get rearranged. Each move changes the drives on both sides of the job.

In Square, extra time moves with the service, but it is still the same fixed number. A personal event doesn't move by itself. After you move a job, look at the address before and the address after, and edit or delete the blocks you made by hand.

In CalMov, you drag the job to a new time on the calendar, and it checks that the new time fits, including the drive. The calendar shows the drive time between jobs and the drive back to base.

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Checklist to set it up either way

The groundwork is the same in any tool: know your real journeys, close the time properly, and test as a customer.

• Record a week of real gaps: packing the van, driving, parking and setting up.
• In Square: choose in person at your client's location in the appointment settings.
• In Square: on Plus or Premium, switch on Block extra time after appointment for each package. On Free, plan to use personal events.
• In Square: add personal events, with Block time on, for the first drive out, the drive home and any long journey.
• In Square: keep processing time for work that really leaves you free at the same address.
• In CalMov: set your service area, minimum notice and booking window. On Lite, set your travel gap. On Pro, drive times are worked out for you.
• In either: book a test job from a near address and a far one, on a phone, with your longest package.
• In either: look again in a month. Count late arrivals and wasted gaps, then adjust.

• Compare the wider booking and payment tools