Booking & Forms

Booking & Forms is where you set the rules for how appointments get booked, turn on public patient self-registration, and control the form patients fill in before they become a record. Find it at Settings → Booking & Forms (https://dentare.io/clinic/settings/booking).

What You'll Need

• Owner or admin access to your clinic's settings
• Pro or Network plan, if you want to enable the patient registration form (Free clinics see an upgrade card in its place)

Booking Policy

Five toggles control how flexible your calendar is. Each one saves the moment you flip it - there is no separate save button.

• Allow Patient Double-Booking - lets the same patient hold two overlapping appointments. Turn this on if you regularly book a hygiene visit and a consult back to back for one patient in different chairs.
• Allow Doctor Overbooking - lets a doctor hold multiple overlapping appointments. Turn this on for a doctor who squeezes in emergency walk-ins between scheduled patients.
• Allow Booking Outside Working Hours - lets appointments land before or after your posted hours. Turn this on if you take occasional early or late emergency visits. See Working Hours to set the hours this toggle measures against.
• Allow Booking on Non-Working Days - lets appointments land on days the clinic is normally closed. Turn this on for occasional Saturday emergency coverage. See Closures & Holidays for the days and dates this toggle measures against.
• Block Calendar Drag Outside Hours - the one restrictive toggle in the group. When on, staff cannot drag or select an event outside business hours on the calendar view. Turn this on if your team keeps accidentally dragging appointments into off-hours slots.

Public Registration

Public registration opens a self-service sign-up funnel: patients scan your QR code or open your link, fill in their own details, and land in your Registrations queue for review before they become a patient record. This is the settings screen for turning it on and sharing it - for printing, placement, and reviewing submissions, see QR Registration.

This screen is distinct from your booking page: public registration collects a new patient's contact details, while the booking page lets a patient reserve a time slot directly. See Book an Appointment Online for the patient-side booking flow.

Patient Registration Form

Once public registration is on, this section controls exactly what the form asks for and who hears about a new submission. It only renders on Pro and Network - Free clinics see an upgrade card here instead.

Required and hidden fields. Name, email, gender, blood type, and acceptance of your terms are always required and cannot be turned off. Check any additional field in the required-fields list to force patients to fill it in before submitting. Check a field in the hidden-fields list to remove it from the form entirely - a hidden field cannot also be required.

Classic vs. wizard layout. Classic renders the whole form on one page. Wizard breaks it into steps. Switching to Wizard shows a caution note: hidden fields can cause a step to be skipped automatically, so test the flow before patients rely on it. A Preview Wizard Form link opens the live form in your chosen layout so you can walk through it yourself first.

Who gets notified. Turn on Notify everyone on the team to alert every staff member on a new submission, or leave it off and pick specific team members instead. If neither is set, doctors are notified by default, falling back to admins if there are no doctors.

Emergency auto-event. When a patient selects "Pain / Emergency" as their reason for registering, this toggle automatically creates a pending appointment so the clinic can triage the request quickly instead of waiting for someone to review the queue.

Terms & privacy text. Edit the terms-of-service and privacy-policy text patients accept when they submit the form, one language at a time. Only your clinic's enabled languages show as tabs; a clinic with a single language sees a plain heading instead of tabs. Each edit saves when you click out of the editor.

Reset to defaults. The Reset to defaults button in the section header restores required fields, hidden fields, layout, and notification routing back to the clinic defaults.

Waitlist

Smart Waitlist fills a cancelled slot automatically by offering it to the right waiting patient instead of working the phones. On a plan that includes it, this section is a single link through to the waitlist manager. On Free, it renders as a locked upsell card instead, with a link to upgrade.

Google Booking

Google Booking currently shows as a locked preview card noting it isn't on your plan yet - there is nothing to configure until it becomes available.