A vaccination day without appointments has a queue at 7 AM and an empty clinic by 2 PM. With booked slots, families arrive spread across the day, and your team works at the pace it can keep.
The work is in sizing the day correctly. Your limits are the vaccinators' time and the space where people wait, not the size of the crowd. This guide covers both, then the setup, forms, walk-ins, and records. Which vaccines to give, to whom, and when is for your doctors to decide.
Size the day by your vaccinators
A slot is the time a vaccinator spends with one person: the screening check, the shot, and the record. Time a few real visits before you decide, and count only the vaccinator's part.
Here is an example with made-up numbers. Each visit takes a vaccinator 15 minutes, and two vaccinators work 8 AM to 12 PM. That is 16 slots each, 32 for the morning, before any break. Give each vaccinator a 15-minute break and it is 15 slots each, 30 in all. Plan the break in now, or it comes out of the last families' time.
Size the waiting area separately
If your doctors want people to wait after their shot, that wait happens in a chair, not with the vaccinator. Don't add it to the slot, or you will book far fewer people than your team can see. Count chairs instead.
In the example above, two people finish every 15 minutes, which is eight an hour. If your doctors set a 30-minute wait, about four people are waiting at any moment, plus everyone who came with them. A parent with two children takes three chairs. Use your doctors' figure, not this one.
Fit the service to your booking grid
Online booking offers start times on a fixed grid. If the visit doesn't match it, slots go unused all day without anyone noticing.
In Onsuki, start times run every 15 minutes, 30 minutes, or 1 hour from midnight, set once in Booking Controls for all your services. Say a visit takes a vaccinator 10 minutes and your grid is 15 minutes. Clients can book 9:00 and 9:15, not 9:10, so each vaccinator sees four people an hour online instead of six. Either set the service to the grid and use the spare minutes for records, or let your team fill the gaps: when they book from the calendar, they can start a booking the moment a vaccinator comes free.
Set up each vaccine as a service
- Add a service for each vaccine, named the way a parent would search for it, with a Total Duration that matches your slot.
- Choose the vaccinators who give it under Staff. Clients only see times when one of them is free for the whole visit.
- Check that each vaccinator's working hours cover the day.
- In Booking Controls, set Advance booking to open the day early enough, turn on Require a phone number, and turn on Email a reminder the day before.
Ask for a mobile number at booking so you can reach families quickly if the day changes. See Appointments.
Book the next dose before they leave
Some vaccines need more than one dose. Treat each dose as its own appointment, on the date your doctor sets, and book it at the counter while the family is still there. A date booked today is far easier to keep than a date someone has to remember to book.
Your team books the next dose from the calendar like any appointment, and the client gets a confirmation email for it, so the date is in writing.
Get screening forms done at home
A screening and consent form filled in at the door takes minutes, and a few minutes is a large share of a 15-minute slot. Move it to the night before.
- Build a form with the screening questions your doctors want answered and a signature at the end.
- Require it for the vaccination services, Every appointment, so each dose has its own answers.
- Check each morning which forms are still waiting, and send those families the link on Messenger or Viber.
Onsuki puts the form link in the confirmation email and sends a reminder about 24 hours before if it's still not done. A booking's form closes when the visit starts, so anyone who arrives without it fills it in on your tablet. See Forms.
Decide how you take walk-ins
Some people will come without booking. Decide before the day how many you can take, and never ahead of people who booked.
With Walk-ins turned on, Onsuki's Walk-in panel lists who can take someone and when, such as "Now" or "In 12 min", soonest first. One tap books them into that time, around the families who booked. If nobody is free today, the panel shows the next times, and you can book one on the spot.
Record every dose
Before the family leaves, record what was given: the vaccine, the lot number and its expiry, the site, and who gave it. Give the family their own record too.
On the Clinic plan, Onsuki's Charting records the product on the visit's entry with its lot number and expiry read from your stock, signed by the provider. A treatment plan can count in doses, such as Dose 2 of 3. For the habits behind good records, see how to keep patient records.
