AI booking for multi-location businesses

Booking for a business with several locations adds three problems to the single-branch version: working out which location the customer means, showing availability for the right staff at that branch, and giving each branch manager control of their own calendar without access to the others. Solve those and the customer experience is the same as a single branch, and the owner sees everything in one place.

Problem 1: which location

A returning customer usually means their usual branch. A new customer may not know you have three. The AI asks when it needs to ("We have offices on Main Street and at the Northgate mall. Which is closer?") and remembers the answer on the record. Every confirmation and reminder states the address, because a customer at the wrong branch is the most common multi-location no-show.

Problem 2: whose availability

Each branch has its own staff, hours and services, and some staff work at more than one. Availability has to be per location for hours and services, and per person across locations for their time. A stylist who is at Main Street on Tuesdays and Northgate on Thursdays should never be offered at both on the same day, and a service only offered at one branch should only be bookable there.

Problem 3: who sees what

The owner sees every branch and switches between them. A branch manager sees their branch: its calendar, its staff rotas, its time off, its numbers. They can manage their own staff's hours and appointments, and they cannot see or change another branch's, or edit the list of locations itself. A practitioner sees their own book. These are not just tidiness; a manager who can accidentally block a colleague's calendar at another branch is a support ticket waiting to happen.

One inbox, many branches

Conversations are usually shared across the business, because a customer who texts the main number is not texting a branch. The booking that results goes to a branch; the conversation stays visible to whoever handles the inbox. A branch manager can see the conversations about their branch's bookings; the owner sees all of them.

The owner's view

All branches on one screen, switchable to any one. Bookings, no-shows, missed calls and response times per branch, side by side. The point of the multi-location setup is that the owner can see which branch is running late, which one's reply rate has dropped, and which one needs another hygienist, without phoning each manager.

Adding a branch

New location: address, phone, timezone (appointments are booked in the branch's timezone, which matters when branches span time zones), hours, services offered, staff assigned, a manager invited. The AI starts offering it as soon as it has hours and staff. The customer-facing side needs nothing changed.

Frequently asked questions

Can one phone number serve all branches?

Yes. The AI asks which location when it matters and books accordingly. Some businesses prefer a number per branch so the AI already knows; both work.

Can a customer book at any branch?

If you allow it. Some businesses keep customers to their home branch; most let them book anywhere and note the location on the record.

What does a branch manager do about a double booking at their branch?

They see the overlap, the two customers, and can resolve it; the owner sees that it happened. Neither needs the other branch's calendar to do it.

What Frontiva does here

Frontiva's bookings compute availability per location from each staff member's rota, time off and buffers, in that location's own timezone, and every location gets its own public booking page. A database constraint refuses the second of two overlapping appointments for the same staff member. The owner switches between branches, a branch manager sees and manages only their own, and analytics can be filtered to one location. For the record side, see a CRM for multi-branch businesses.