HOW TO: Master Your Schedule with Poppy’s Calendar & Scheduling Assistant

Kylie Punke

Let’s Make Scheduling Simple

Who needs three different planners, a shared Google calendar, and your assistant manager’s memory to keep your bridal boutique running? Not you—not anymore. Meet Poppy’s Calendar and Scheduling Assistant, your new scheduling sidekicks. 

At Poppy, we know and understand the daily struggles and challenges that arise with scheduling which is exactly why we’ve worked to create a user-friendly, simplified, synced, and of course, color-coded, scheduling system for our users. Here’s how Poppy helps you go from double-booked to perfectly balanced.

The Poppy Calendar: Your Central Command

The Poppy Calendar is your all-in-one go to for daily operations—it’s likely the first thing your team checks when clocking in for the day. We’ve designed the Poppy Calendar to be flexible and adaptable to your needs. 

What You Can Expect from the Poppy Calendar:

• View by workday, appointment type, or room
• Toggle your calendar by day, week, or month to get the perspective you need on your schedule
• Color-coding of appointments by associate 
• Option to hide/show cancelled appointments with one click
• Pending appointments appear on the calendar with a striped pattern for easy identification 
• Transparent visibility into team workload & scheduling
• Ability to book appointments even on closed workdays (if permissions allow)
• Quick-edit features: reschedule, add notes, change details on the fly  

When setting up your store calendar, you have the power to not only select locations but to also assign appointments to those locations—think bridal suite 1, bridal suite 2, front desk, pickup room, calls/meetings, etc. This feature keeps everyone in the loop with what’s happening when and what’s happening where.

Also in calendar setup, let Poppy know your store hours so that we can take over your booking accurately and seamlessly. Your calendar will reflect your open hours, your closed hours, and your special hours—only automatically accepting appointments within those perimeters. Booking requested outside of those perimeters will be added to your pending appointments list for you to review and accept or deny on an individual basis. From your Poppy Calendar, simply click ‘Pending Appointments’ to check for appointments that have not yet been accepted by your store. 

Poppy also populates a waitlist for you directly within the Poppy Calendar—this allows your customers to add themselves to a waitlist for days when your store is fully booked. To view customers on your waitlist, simply click ‘View Waitlist’ from your calendar.  

Everything you need to keep your bridal store running smoothly is right here—organized, visually pleasing, and ready to go.

Poppy’s Scheduling Assistant: Smart, Guided Booking

Let’s be real, Poppy’s all about making things easier for you as a bridal store owner—you’ve got enough going on. Using Poppy’s Scheduling Assistant is just one way to book appointments through Poppy, don’t worry we’ll break down the others later. 

What we love about the Scheduling Assistant is that it lives within your Poppy Calendar aka the place that you spend a good portion of your time in already. Use the Scheduling Assistant to create new, edit existing, or see the list of available appointments for a specific appointment type. It’s essentially your step-by-step guide to seeing what’s available and when. 

What You Can Expect from the Poppy Scheduling Assistant:

• “Wizard-style” flow to guide through scheduling steps with minimal clicks
• Start by selecting the desired appointment type to see relevant options first
• Filter available slots by location to match your physical boutique setup
• Suggest alternate days and/or times if the preferred slot is taken
• Ability to confirm right away or send a notification to confirm later
• Add custom notes (e.g. who will attend, wedding date, details) to personalize the booking
• Filters only show available dates, times, and rooms relevant to that appointment type
• Add to the waitlist in one click if an appointment isn’t available

Utilizing Poppy’s Scheduling Assistant is a great way to view availability and book appointments quickly without the fear of double-booking. 

3 Ways to Schedule Appointments in Poppy

1. Use the Scheduling Assistant 

• Best when you want to let Poppy narrow options for you
• Automatically filters unavailable slots and shows relevant choices

2. +Add New Appointment

• For cases where you already know your availability or need flexibility
• You can override default restrictions, allow overlapping, or book on atypical days

3. Online Appointment Booking (Self-Service)

• Embed booking form (iframe) on your website
• Let brides pick times that work for them
• Customize booking form fields (so you collect the info you need)
• Set rules: e.g., charge for cancellations, limit booking days, etc.

Best Practices and Pro Tips

Trying to get the most out of your Poppy Calendar? Here are some of our best practices and pro tips for our users:

• Assign associates to appointments and use color coding to see who’s doing what
• Input team shifts directly into Poppy for a clear view of daily coverage
• Encourage your team to use notes fields (guest count, notes, etc.) to personalize service directly from the calendar
• Leverage the “alternate times” suggestion feature to reduce back-and-forth
• Keep your “+ Add New Appointment” flexibility for special exceptions
• Enable online booking to lower barrier for brides and reduce manual booking load
• Ensure permissions are set appropriately so only admin users can override closed days

Why It All Comes Together (What You Gain)

The short answer is you have nothing to lose but so much to gain—just to name a few: less manual scheduling, fewer conflicts, and more time back in your day. From bridal store owner to your newest stylist hire, it’s essential for everyone to have clear visibility into team workloads and daily operations to run a well-oiled machine. 

Plus, your brides will notice the difference too. Not only will their customer experience be improved, but it will be more personalized. Talk about all around wins! So consider this your official invite to step away from the chaos and let Poppy bring order to your day.

Ready to take the stress out of scheduling? Schedule a demo or jump right in with our Get Started form.