What is a Recurring Meeting?
The recurring meetings feature allows clients to book the same meeting every week at the same time. For example, a therapist might want to see her patient at the same time once a week for the next six weeks. Another example is someone taking guitar lessons once a week for the next eight weeks.
When a client opts for a meeting to be a Recurring meeting then the client is asking for how many weeks they want the meeting to recur. If the client wants to recur the meeting 8 times then the next eight slots for the same day of the week and for the same time are pre-booked for this client.
Note that for paid meetings, just because the client has booked the meeting for the next eight weeks it doesn't mean that the client's card will be charged for the eight weeks. The client will not be charged for the upcoming eight weeks. Rather the client's card will be charged 48 hours before the meeting is scheduled to start.
The future time slots are reserved so that others can't take those slots but they are not booked since those slots have not been paid for. We call it pre-booking because the payment is still pending. When the payment is made for a pre-booking, then pre-booking becomes a confirmed booking.
How to enable the Recurring meetings feature
By default, this feature is not enabled. You need to follow the following steps to enable it.
* Click on your meeting link.
* Click on the Configure tab.
* Click on the Recurring meetings card.
* Enable Recurring meetings.
When is payment charged for recurring meetings?
When a client makes a Recurring meeting the client is asked to provide credit or debit card information. We store the card info in Stripe.
Stripe gives us a token. neetoCal uses that token to bill the client when converting a pre-booking into a confirmed booking.
The client's card is charged 48 hours before the free cancellation period ends. Let's assume that a client pre-books a meeting for Oct 5 at 3 PM. Let's take that 5 hours of free cancellation is allowed. It means the free cancellation ends on Oct 5 at 10 AM.
neetoCal will first attempt to charge the card 48 hours before the cancellation. It means on Oct 3 at 10 AM, neetoCal will attempt to charge the card.
What happens if payment fails for pre-booking?
If payment fails, neetoCal promptly emails the client about the payment issue. The email would have a link to make the payment using any other card. Once the client makes the payment, the booking is confirmed, allowing the scheduled meeting to proceed as planned.
However, if the payment remains unresolved neetoCal will keep emailing the client until the free cancellation period is reached. When the free cancellation period is reached, neetoCal will cancel this pre-booking, and that time slot will be open for someone else to schedule a meeting.
How is recurring handled for free meetings?
For free meetings, if a client opts for recurring bookings, no payment-related information is necessary. The confirmation of the current meeting and all the subsequent recurring meetings relies solely on the user's availability. As soon as the client books the meeting, all the recurring meetings for which the user is available will be confirmed.