Pre-sell packages of services & track use

Packages has been one of our most popular requests, which means we’re over the moon to announce its release today. Being able to sell packaged up services at a cheaper price is great in itself — but being able to track when these services are redeemed makes this feature essential!

This project has been a labour of love and we were fortunate to have a group of enthusiastic businesses who happily tested different versions of this feature. The resulting feedback was detailed and thoughtful, and contributed directly to the killer result we have today.

So, let’s get into it :)

What are these “packages”?

Packages is the ability to bundle up a single service or a collection of services which can be sold at a fixed (and often cheaper) price. For example, your business might want to sell:

• 10 x  massage sessions
• 20 x sessions of any kind of service
• A mixture of 10 x haircuts, 5 x colours and 10 beauty treatment sessions
• 100 minutes of physiotherapist time

Pretty much any combination you like as the possibilities are endless! In addition to choosing services and numbers of sessions (or minutes), you can also set a price and how long the package is valid for.

Now that you know what they are, let’s get into the details.

I want to create a package today!

Great! In Timely, head to Setup > Packages and click the Add package button. From here just follow your nose or even better, read this short help article which provides a step-by-step guide.

Once the basic details are added, choose which services to include and the number of sessions. Add as many as you like including an “Any service” option which can be redeemed for — you guessed it — any service.

How about selling them to my customers?

This would be handy so head to the Customers page, find a customer and select the new Packages tab.

Next up, click the Add packages to customer button, search for the package you want and click Save.

And, you’re all done — well almost! At this point you can change any part of this package to suit your customer. The other cool thing is that you can sell packages directly from the calendar or from an invoice just like you can with products.

Again, check out this amazingly helpful guide to step you through the process and answer some burning questions I know you have.

One of my customers has bought a package so now what?

Once your customers have bought a package they can be used to not only redeem against appointments but actually help add services to appointments.

To do this, create a new appointment and search for a specific customer. If the customer has any valid packages to redeem then a package icon will appear to the right of their name.

Simply click this to reveal the services they can redeem against then check them to add each one automatically. No sweat!

My customer wants to redeem a package

Everyone loves a good story of redemption and packages is a good one. The key point to note here is that packages are redeemed when appointments are marked as completed.

This means as soon as an appointment with services that match a package is completed, a new pop up will appear listing those services.

Check the relevant services and click the Apply button and that’s it! Timely will then automatically reduce the number of visits (or time) from the remaining sessions for that customer. The new package icon will also display on the calendar, appointment pop up and invoices — like this:

            

Don’t take my word for it, take a peek at this helpful guide that explains all.

Tracking packages and redemptions

The last (and equally as important) aspect of packages is the ability to track use by customers. Since it’s useful to see how all the activities described so far looks from a business perspective, we’ve added some reports too.

To track how many sessions a customer has left, or if they have any valid packages, etc. then head back to the Customers page, find the customer and select the Packages tab. From here you can click the View usage link to get a quick overview or click the package name to get more detailed information.

After a few packages have been sold and redeemed then you can head over to the Reports page to check out the two new package related reports: Package redemption and Customer package details. These detailed reports combined with the new packages section of the Sales report will give an instant overview of package use for your business.

For example, here’s what the Customer packages detail report looks like:

There is a lot more detail to tracking customer use and reporting so make sure to read through this handy help guide.

Okay, what about classes?

Great question! Right now classes are not included in this feature but they will be very soon.

The reason for this is that we need a way to record when customers attend classes so that a package can be redeemed. The good news is that we’re building this new function right now and as soon as it’s done, classes will be incorporated into packages.

This is getting long, can we wrap it up?

We are delighted to release this comprehensive feature to everyone as it’s just so powerful, flexible and ultimately great for business. This blog post skims over a lot of detail so I definitely encourage you to read through these help guides. Once you’re ready,  jump onto Timely and have a play.

Finally, if you have any feedback about packages, feel free to add a comment to this blog post. Happy selling!