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Configuring Practitioner Bookings and Resource Use

Understand which scheduling controls Zanda offers, and how to shape and monitor practitioner workload and room usage

Practices often look for a ceiling: a maximum number of sessions a practitioner takes in a month, or a maximum number of times a room or piece of equipment is used. Zanda manages workload a different way, through controls over when a practitioner is bookable, who is allowed to create appointments, and reporting that shows how heavily each practitioner is booked.

Zanda has no per-period booking quota: nothing caps how many appointments a practitioner schedules in a month, or how many times a resource is used. What you can do is shape when a practitioner is bookable, control who is allowed to create appointments at all, and monitor booked volume after the fact.

In this article:

Is there a monthly limit on appointments or resource use?

Zanda has no per-period booking quota, at any level of the account. No setting limits the number of appointments a practitioner can have in a month, or the number of times a Resource Item (a room, a piece of equipment, or any other bookable item) can be used.

Workload is managed through the controls below instead, together with the report that answers the question behind most of these requests: how heavily is this practitioner actually booked?

What you can control instead: practitioner bookings

Availability

Availability shapes when a practitioner can be booked, rather than how many times. Times marked as available appear in white or a custom color on the calendar, and unavailable times appear in grey, so your team can see at a glance when a practitioner is not scheduled to work. Availability blocks also control which slots clients see in the Client Portal: ticking Clients can book online for a block opens it to client self-booking, and leaving it unticked keeps the block available for your team to book manually while hiding it from online booking.

Treat availability as a guide rather than a hard block. Your team can still schedule an appointment during greyed-out hours when they need to, and those hours still count as booked time in reporting.

To set this up, go to User Menu > Account Settings > Team > Availability. For the full walkthrough, see Setting Up and Editing Availability.

Permissions

Permissions control who can create appointments, rather than how many each person creates. Leaving Edit Appointments disabled for a user gives them read-only access to the calendar, with no appointment panel, so they can view the schedule without adding to it. See User Permissions For Practitioners for the full permission list.

Session Packs

Session Packs cap sessions per client, not per practitioner. The Maximum Units in the Pack value on a session pack template sets how many sessions, hours, or how much money a single client's pack covers, so it limits what one client can draw down. It has no effect on how many appointments a practitioner schedules overall. See Setting Up Session Pack Templates and Using Session Packs.

What you can control instead: resources

Two rules govern how a Resource Item can be booked, and they are the only two:

  • One appointment per time slot. A Resource Item can only be allocated to one appointment per time slot, which prevents the same room or item being double-booked.
  • Location scope. A Resource Item is assigned to a location, and that location determines which appointments the item can be allocated to.

Beyond those two rules, a Resource Item carries no counter, allowance, or usage quota, so there is nothing to configure that would limit how often a room or item is booked over a week or a month. For the full detail on allocating and managing resources, see Managing Resources for Appointments and Setting up Resources.

How to monitor how much a practitioner is booked

When the goal is to keep a practitioner from being over-booked, the practical path is to measure the load and adjust availability or rosters in response.

The Practitioner Utilization Report compares booked hours against available hours for each practitioner, by location, over a date range you choose. That gives you the utilization percentage per practitioner, so you can see who is running hot, who has capacity to spare, and where to adjust. Find it under Reports > Practice > Utilization.

Master users have access to this report by default. Other users need the Access Practice Dashboard permission to open it.

For the full breakdown of the metrics, filters, and how the calculations work, see Practitioner Utilization Report.

How to monitor how rooms and resources are used

Zanda reports do not include a Resource column. Reports > Clients > Appointments and the Appointments table in Reports > Activity carry no room or Resource Item field, and the appointment export under Tools > Data Export does not include one either. The Practitioner Utilization Report measures practitioner hours rather than room use, so no report lists which room each appointment was booked into.

The calendar is where you check room allocation:

  1. Open the Calendar and set the view to the day or week you want to check.
  2. Select the filter icon in the calendar toolbar to open the Filter panel, then expand the Resources section.
  3. Tick the checkbox next to your rooms group (for example, Rooms) to select every item in it, then select Apply.

Appointments with one of those rooms allocated stay fully colored, and appointments with no room allocated are faded, so the gaps stand out on the calendar. Because a Resource Item is assigned to a location, ticking the items for one clinic keeps the check to that clinic's appointments.

Two things to keep in mind:

  • Tick items from a single Resource Group at a time. Selecting items across two groups narrows the view to appointments that carry a match from both groups.
  • The filter has no "no resource" option, and leaving every box unticked matches every appointment. The faded appointments are how you spot the unallocated ones, so this is a visual check rather than a list you can export.

If you need the allocated room as data alongside each appointment, the Zanda Public API returns the resources allocated to an appointment. The API is in beta and its testing group is closed to new sign-ups, so register for the next phase under Help Menu > Beta Program. See Zanda API for what the API covers.

A note on the Starter plan appointment allowance

The Starter plan does carry an appointment allowance, which sometimes gets mistaken for a per-practitioner cap. It is a different thing. The Starter plan covers up to 1,000 client and group appointments over the lifetime of the account, counted for the whole account from the date the account was created, rather than reset each month and rather than applied per practitioner. It comes with the plan and is not something configured in your account settings. Every other plan includes unlimited appointments.

You can review your account's current appointment count under User Menu > Account Settings > Practice > Subscription. For plan details, see Understanding Zanda Subscription Plans.

Frequently Asked Questions

❓ Can a practitioner be booked outside their availability?

Yes. Availability is a visual guide, so your team can schedule an appointment during greyed-out hours when needed. Those appointments still count towards Booked Hours in the Practitioner Utilization Report, which is why a practitioner's utilization can exceed 100%.

❓ Can the same room be booked for two appointments at the same time?

No. A Resource Item can only be allocated to one appointment per time slot, so Zanda prevents that double booking automatically.

❓ Is there a report that shows which room each appointment is in?

No. Neither the reports nor the appointment export includes a Resource or room column. To check that appointments have a room allocated, open the Filter panel on the calendar, tick every item under Resources for your rooms group, and look for the faded appointments, which are the ones with no room.

❓ Do Session Packs limit how many sessions a practitioner delivers?

No. The Maximum Units in the Pack value limits what a single client's pack covers. It does not restrict a practitioner's total bookings.

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