Schedopia 1.4.2: Staff Logins, Editable Emails and One Timezone

A booking calendar is rarely one person’s job. The owner sets it up, someone on the front desk moves things around, three stylists want to know what Thursday looks like, and every customer needs to know exactly when to turn up. Schedopia 1.4.2, out now on WordPress.org, is built around those people.

Staff can log in and see their own day. You can write the booking emails in your own words. The Activity log records what happens in the back office, so “who cancelled this?” has an answer. And Schedopia now runs on your WordPress timezone, which fixes a bug that could offer customers a time that was already booked. That change comes first here, because it is the one to know about when you update.

Schedopia now runs on your WordPress timezone

Schedopia 1.4.2 uses the timezone set in WordPress under Settings → General for everything: availability, the booking form, emails, exports and every admin screen. Earlier versions kept a timezone of their own, and when the two disagreed, things went wrong. Times that were already booked could still be offered on the form, bookings made from the admin or by an AI assistant landed hours late, and events showed at the wrong time.

If your old Schedopia timezone differs from the WordPress one, a notice after the update asks which your business runs on, and nothing changes until you choose. Schedopia then adjusts existing bookings and events so they keep the times they were booked for, and a second notice lists any upcoming appointments that now overlap, so you can move or cancel one of each pair. If the two already matched, nothing changes.

Customers now see the timezone beside every booked time, on the booking form, in emails and on the manage-booking page, as in “7:00 PM (America/New_York)”. If your site uses a manual UTC offset such as UTC+6, Schedopia reminds you to pick a city instead, so daylight saving moves the clock when it should.

Admin dates no longer follow the timezone of whichever computer is looking at them, either. The bookings list, dashboard, Activity log, payments and customers all show WordPress time, and so do exports.

Staff can log in and see their own day

A Schedopia staff member can now have a WordPress login. Under Staff → Edit, Link existing user connects them to a WordPress account they already have, and Invite to log in emails them so they can set their own password. Schedopia asks you to confirm before the invitation goes out.

A Staff login sees only that person’s own bookings, calendar and customers. A stylist checks their Thursday without seeing the rest of the salon’s list, and you stop being the one who forwards the schedule. Staff members can have a photo now, too, shown on the booking form where customers choose who to book with.

The new-booking alert can also go to the staff member who was booked, as well as to you, so the person doing the work hears about it first.

Booking emails in your own words

Each of Schedopia’s five booking emails (confirmation, request received, cancellation, reminder and the new-booking alert) now has a subject and an opening line you can rewrite, under Settings → Notifications. Tags fill in the details: {customer_name}, {service}, {staff_name}, {date}, {time}, {business_name} and {reference}. A salon might open with “See you soon, {customer_name}” where a clinic would rather say “Your appointment is confirmed”. Send yourself a test email to see the result before a customer does.

The rest of the email, with the booking details, the calendar buttons and the cancel link, stays as it is, so a change of wording can’t lose the information customers rely on.

The Activity log now covers the back office

Schedopia’s Activity log used to record what AI assistants did. It now records the back office as well: bookings created, confirmed, completed, cancelled or marked as a no-show, payments recorded or refunded, services, staff, venues and events created, changed or deleted, and settings changes. When a booking is cancelled, the log keeps the reason and notes whether the customer was emailed.

Cancelling got a reason field to match, and a choice to email the customer or not. The booking drawer has a Record payment button, so a cash payment at the desk takes two clicks.

A faster start for new sites

Schedopia’s setup no longer has to be finished in one sitting. Exit at any step and you get a working start: your own staff profile, and Monday to Friday, 9 to 6, when no hours are set. A Getting started checklist on the dashboard ticks itself off as you add a service, set your hours, add the booking form to a page and make a test booking.

The setup wizard also picks up where you left off, starts with your site’s name and email filled in, lets you skip any step, and assigns teammates to the services they offer. Running it again never changes what you already have unless you edit it.

Smaller additions

• Venue addresses, shown on event cards and in confirmation emails.
• A cancellation policy link. The booking form’s agreement line can link to your policy or terms page, or you can turn the agreement off. Field labels, the agreement wording and the “request received” screen are editable in Design → Content.
• “Use my theme’s font” in Design, for headings and for text separately.
• Shortcodes by slug. [schedopia_booking service="haircut"] works as well as the id, and Settings → Shortcode lists every option.
• Clearer deleting. A category can be deleted while services use it (they become uncategorised), a seat tier can move its seats to another tier first, and a refused delete now says why instead of claiming success.
• Safer mode switches. Turning off appointments or events warns you about upcoming bookings and pages that still use them.
• Accessible seat maps. Screen readers announce each seat’s row, number, tier, price and whether it is free, and the admin seat planner works from the keyboard.

Fixes worth naming

• The booking form says why a time was refused, such as too soon, and sends the customer back to pick another.
• Editing a service no longer stops it following the business default buffers and capacity, and changing one field no longer resets them.
• A paused service can no longer be booked through the form, and a capacity of 0 is refused.
• Customers no longer see the owner’s WordPress username, such as “admin”, where a name should be.
• The setup wizard no longer gets stuck on the services step or brings back a “General” category you deleted.
• Add-ons no longer appear as bookable services in New booking, Categories or Staff.
• The seat planner shows your currency instead of $.

That is 7 of the 14 fixes. The changelog has all 32 changes in 1.4.2.

What 1.4.2 doesn’t change

Schedopia is still free, still self-hosted, and still keeps bookings and customer records in your own WordPress database. Some things are still missing. There is no online card payment yet (that is planned for Schedopia Pro), no SMS, and no customer accounts. The new logins are for your staff; customers still manage a booking from the link in their email, without a password.

Updating to Schedopia 1.4.2

Update from the Plugins screen as usual. Then spend two minutes on Settings → General in WordPress: that timezone now drives every booking, so make sure it is your city rather than a UTC offset. If the two timezones differed, Schedopia shows a notice with two buttons: keep the WordPress timezone, or set WordPress to the one Schedopia was using. Pick the one your business runs on; nothing changes until you choose, and either way existing bookings keep the times they were booked for. Then work through the overlap list, if one appears.

After that, open Staff and give a login to anyone who should see their own day.