About Calvo

Nobody should write “does 3pm work?” twice

Calvo is booking software for clinics, studios and consultants. It was built after watching a front desk spend eleven messages to schedule one 45-minute assessment. The software now does those eleven messages, and the front desk does the assessment.

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The problem

A Thursday slot should not need a thread

Service businesses lose appointments in the gaps between messages. The client suggests 3pm, the practitioner is at 3pm with someone else, the reply arrives at 9pm, and by morning the slot has gone to nobody.

The cost is rarely dramatic. It is a quiet Tuesday at 10:30 that stays open because the person who could fill it was in a session when the message came in. Calvo was built to close that gap, and only that gap.

Principles

Four rules the product is checked against

Each one has turned a feature down at least once.

01

The client never makes an account

Choosing a service, a day and a time takes one screen. An account is a reason to abandon a booking, so the page does not have one.

Test: a first-time visitor books in under a minute.

02

Busy and free, nothing more

Calvo reads whether a block of time is taken. It never opens an event title, a note or an attendee list, because it has no use for them.

Test: remove the event title and the product still works.

03

Policies run the same way every time

The cutoff for rescheduling and the refund rule are set once and applied identically, including on the Friday when applying them by hand would feel awkward.

Test: two clients, same situation, same outcome.

04

The slot goes back on the page

When a client releases a time, it reappears as bookable straight away. An empty slot that nobody can see is the whole problem in miniature.

Test: a cancelled 10:30 is bookable before the cancellation email lands.

Short version

It fills the slot. You keep the appointment.

Plans start at $119 a year for one calendar and one booking page.

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How it is built and supported

Boring on purpose where it counts

Calendars are the one thing a booking tool cannot get wrong, so the sync layer is the most conservative part of Calvo. It checks, then checks again just before a booking is confirmed.

Support is an inbox at help@trycalvo.com. A person reads it, and that person has used the product to book their own dentist.

Double-checkAvailability is re-read at the moment of confirmation, not only when the page loads.
Read-onlyCalendar access is limited to busy and free. Event contents stay where they are.
Time zonesTimes show in the client's zone and are stored in UTC, so a Sunday-night change of clocks moves nothing.
CutoffsThe reschedule deadline is enforced by the server, not by hiding a button.
An inbox, not a botQuestions about setup, calendars or deposits go to one address and get answered by someone who knows the product.

Where it is going

What is next, in the order it is being done

Direction rather than dates. Each item is held until it works on a Monday morning with a full diary.

  1. NOWIn progress

    Fewer taps to reschedule

    The reschedule link is being trimmed so a client can move an appointment from the SMS in two taps rather than four.

  2. NEXTUp next

    Better no-show reading

    Utilization and no-show views that separate the client who forgot from the client who was never reminded.

  3. LATERUnder consideration

    Waitlists that fill themselves

    When a slot is released, clients who asked for that day are offered it first, in the order they asked.

Your calendar, read for you

Open Tuesday. Booked by Tuesday.

Choose the plan that matches the number of calendars Calvo needs to read, and publish the page before lunch.

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