Quick Start: Your First Booking

This tutorial walks you through the fastest path to getting a real booking in Driive. By the end, you'll have created an appointment type, shared a booking link, seen what your customers experience, and managed the appointment on your kanban board.

Time to complete: Under 10 minutes.

What you'll need

• A Driive account (see Creating Your Account if you haven't signed up yet)

• Completed onboarding (see Onboarding Walkthrough)

If you already completed onboarding and created an appointment type during that process, you can skip to Step 2: Share your booking link.

Step 1: Create an appointment type

An appointment type defines a service your customers can book. Let's create one now.

1. In the sidebar, go to Setup > Appointment Types.

2. Click the New Appointment Type button.

3. Fill in the basics:

   • Name — Choose something customers will understand, like "Roof Inspection," "AC Service Call," or "Free Estimate."

   • Description — A sentence or two explaining what the service includes. This appears on your booking page.

   • Duration — How long the appointment typically takes (e.g., 1 hour).

4. Assign a team that can handle these type of appointments.

   • Select Existing - Select an exisiting team -OR-

   • Create New - Name your team and add anybody who can do these appointments.

5. Click Create to create the appointment type.

Keep it simple for now. You can always add booking questions, configure buffer times, and fine-tune settings later. The goal right now is to get your first booking flowing.

Step 2: Share your booking link

Every appointment type gets its own booking link that you can share with customers.

1. Go to Setup > Appointment Types and find the appointment type you just created.

2. Click the Copy Link button next to it.

3. The booking URL is now on your clipboard.

Ways to use this link:

• Paste it into a text message to a customer

• Add it to your website as a "Book Now" button

• Include it in your email signature

• Share it on social media

• Send it in a follow-up email after a phone inquiry

Tip: Open the link in a new browser tab (or an incognito window) to see exactly what your customers will see.

Step 3: Walk through the customer booking experience

Let's see what your customers experience when they click the link. Open the booking link you just copied in a new tab.

What the customer sees:

1. Appointment details — Your appointment type name, along with your company logo and brand color.

2. Contact information — The customer enters their name, email, and phone number.

3. Booking questions — If you configured any custom questions (e.g., "Describe the issue," "Upload a photo"), they appear here.

4. Service Address — The address where the service will take place.

5. Date and time selection — A calendar showing your available time slots based on your business hours and existing appointments. The customer picks a date, then chooses from the available times.

6. Confirmation — The customer reviews their booking details and submits the request.

Go ahead and submit a test booking using your own info. This will create a real appointment in your Driive account so you can see the next steps in action.

Step 4: View the new appointment on your kanban board

After the test booking is submitted, head back to your Driive dashboard.

1. In the sidebar, click Manage > Scheduling (or click Home).

2. You'll see the kanban board with your new appointment in the Scheduled lane.

3. Click the appointment card to see the full details:

   • Customer name, email, phone, and address

   • Requested date and time

   • Appointment type

   • Answers to any booking questions

   • Lead score (if configured)

The appointment is in the Scheduled status and the customer will have received an email and SMS text confirmation.

Step 5: Complete the appointment

Your test booking is already scheduled — the customer picked a time, and the appointment is confirmed on your calendar. Now let's walk through the rest of the lifecycle, just like you would with a real job.

Once the job is done: Drag the appointment card to the Completed lane, or open it and click Mark Complete.

Auto-Complete. Appointments will automatically be marked completed 24 hours after the appointment end date. So you don't have to worry about moving every appointment over and your board stays clean

That's it — you've just walked through the entire Driive appointment lifecycle.

You're up and running

In under 10 minutes, you've:

• Created an appointment type for one of your services

• Generated and shared a booking link

• Experienced the booking flow from your customer's perspective

• Managed an appointment from request to completion on the kanban board

Recommended next steps

Now that you've seen the basics, here's where to go to get the most out of Driive:

Have questions? Check the Key Concepts and Glossary for definitions of any terms you're unsure about.