Rooms are the physical spaces where appointments take place. Heltio treats them as a bookable resource: it makes sure two appointments do not land in the same place, and it counts how long each room stands empty.
A site with a single room does not need this. Two rooms and three people seeing patients needs it immediately.
How to do it
Choose the room mode
The Room settings card has a Room mode with three values:
- Disabled — Rooms are not tracked. Appointments are assigned to practitioners only. This is how a single-room practice works.
- Dedicated — Each practitioner has their own room. Booking a practitioner auto-assigns their room.
- Shared — Rooms are shared. When creating an appointment, you select or auto-assign an available room.
The mode decides everything that follows. With Disabled, the rest of this page does not apply and the room view switch does not appear in the calendar.
Add the rooms
Add room opens a form: Name, Short name (shown in narrow calendar columns), Description, Colour, Capacity, Floor, Service types, Amenities and Default practitioner.
Amenities is a ready-made list — Treatment table, Gym equipment, Ultrasound, TENS, Laser, Mirror wall, Parallel bars, Traction table, Whirlpool, Private, Wheelchair accessible.
Service types narrow down what may be booked into that room. An empty field means All service types. You change the order of rooms in the list and in the calendar by dragging the handle.
Decide how a room gets onto an appointment
Three switches under the mode:
- Auto-assign rooms — Automatically assign a free room when creating an appointment. A room assigned this way carries the Auto-assign label on the appointment.
- Allow appointments without a room — Allow creating appointments when no rooms are available (with a warning). Turned off, it means that at full occupancy the appointment will not be created at all.
- Show room in communications — Include room name in SMS, email, and WhatsApp messages to patients.
Work in the room view
In the calendar the Room view switch replaces the columns of people with columns of rooms. The view shows a single day, because there are usually more columns than there are practitioners. An appointment with no room sits in the Unassigned column.
Dragging an appointment into another column changes its room — a successful move is confirmed with Room updated.
Check the utilisation
The Room utilisation report calculates Occupancy, Peak hours, Avg. utilisation and points out the Busiest room and the Emptiest room. It is your argument in a conversation about renting another space — or about giving one up.
When something goes wrong
Room is already booked at this time
What this means: The chosen room has another appointment at that hour.
No rooms available — appointment created without a room assignment
What this means: Auto-assign found nothing free, and **Allow appointments without a room** is enabled.
A room with this name already exists
What this means: Room names have to be unique within the practice.
The selected room is not part of this clinic.
What this means: The link points to a room from another practice — usually after switching sites in an open tab.
Failed to delete room
What this means: The room is linked to existing appointments.
Who has access
Clinic Admin ReceptionistCreating, editing and deleting rooms, and changing the mode, is a matter for the administrator and the owner. Reception and practitioners see the rooms, pick them on an appointment and work in the room view, but do not change the definitions. The Room utilisation report requires the reports permission.
Related
- Calendar — the room view switch and moving appointments between rooms.
- Service catalog — where the service types that narrow a room come from.
- Practice profile — the details of the site these rooms belong to.
Related features
Calendar — week grid and list view
The main working screen of the practice: a full 24-hour grid across the week, a switch to the appointment list, filters, drag-and-drop rescheduling and time blocking.
Adding an appointment
How to book a patient: click an empty spot on the calendar, or use the New Appointment button. What the warnings about a busy slot and about working hours mean.
Service catalog
The list of what the practice sells: name, duration, price and VAT rate — with the option of a different price or a different duration for a specific person.
Clinic profile
Logo, photos, description, opening hours and contact — everything a patient will see about the clinic in the Heltio finder. Plus the checklist that stops you publishing an empty page.