Book an appointment

Appointments can be easily booked at your location through the Turvo platform. Below are the steps that you take in order to book an appointment. If you need to set up your schedule, see our How to set up an appointment schedule article for more information.

Protip: Visit the Public Scheduling article in order to collaborate with your carriers and streamline your scheduling operation.

Booking a single appointment

Step 1:

Navigate to a location, either by hovering over the left navigation and clicking Locations to see all of your locations, or by searching for the location in the global search bar.

Step 2:

Select the location that you are scheduling for. If you have multiple locations, each location will have a unique schedule.

Step 3:

Select the Schedule tab from the location summary page. This is where you will be making/editing appointments for that location.

Step 4:

Choose the open slot/reservation that you want to book an appointment for. If you are unfamiliar with the types of slots/reservations, review the understanding appointment schedules article.

• Appointments can be booked on open slots or open reservation slots. Reservation slot types include:

• Appointments cannot be booked on closed slots or confirmed appointments

Click on the slot to open up the appointment card where details about the appointment are entered.

Note: Locations can be configured to use Orders or Shipments to book appointments. Tenants are configured to Orders by default, but reach out to your Turvo representative if you’d like to update to Shipments. Locations configured to use Shipments to book appointments will have a Shipment field instead of the Orders. Both the Shipment and Order fields are restricted to display orders and shipments that have a stop at the selected destination.

Step 5:

Enter in the appointment details under the Book tab. The details included on the appointment card include:

• Links: Entities from Turvo (orders, shipments, accounts) that are associated with the appointment. Information will populate after completion of booking.
• Recurring appointment: Only used in recurring appointments. More information on recurring appointments can be found below.
• Carrier: Enter the carrier’s name or SCAC code that will be carrying the shipment. If a carrier has more than one SCAC code, select one.
• Equipment ID: Input any trailer or container numbers associated with the appointment.
• Order(s) or Shipment included in the appointment
  • Orders: Enter the orders that are part of the appointment. To enter order numbers, start typing the order number and click the correct order from the drop-down. To learn more about orders, review our How to create an order article.
    • Note: If there are multiple orders, they must be entered in order of their stop sequence (For outbound appointments, the first order to be delivered should be on the tail of the truck and the last order on the nose. For inbound appointments, the first order to be delivered should be on the nose and the last order on the tail).
    • The stop sequence can be rearranged by clicking and holding the double arrow icon that appears when you hover over an order. You then drag the order to its desired spot. You can also delete orders by clicking on the x icon next to the order

• • Shipment: Enter the shipment that is part of the appointment. To enter shipment numbers, start typing the ID and click the correct shipment from the drop-down. To learn more about shipments, see our How to create a shipment article.
• Direction
  • • Inbound: Orders or shipments being delivered to your location.
    • Outbound: Orders or shipments leaving your location.
• Type
  • • Live: The carrier is staying at your location while the orders or shipments are loaded. Once loaded, the driver leaves.
    • Drop: Carrier drops a trailer at your location and leaves while the orders or shipments are loaded.
• Services: Choose the type of service needed in order to load the orders or shipment.
  
  • • Note: If an appointment is booked on a special services reservation, only special services will be available in the drop-down. The same logic is applied to standard services reservations - only standard services are available for standard services reservations. For information on configuring special services for a location, see Understanding appointment schedule details.
• Notes (Internal): Any special comments that you want to make on this particular appointment, such as late fees or special handling instructions. Coworkers with access to Turvo will be able to see those instructions.
• Special Instructions: Instructions from the carrier that they want to communicate with your facility.
  • • Note: This field only populates if the appointment was originally booked through public scheduling with instructions.
• People: Individuals that are involved with this appointment. This can be internal or external contacts. These are sourced from your contacts tab on the location summary page.
• Email contacts: Check this box in order to send the appointment details to all the email addresses associated with the People entered previously.

Protip: You must enter an order or shipment # and choose the appointment type to create a single appointment. All other details can be entered post booking.

Step 6:

Click BOOK on the bottom right corner of the appointment card. If this is greyed out, you are missing necessary information to complete the appointment.

If you checked the Email contacts box, then a box will appear with email addresses auto-populated. You can add additional emails as well as modify the subject and body of the email that is sent to the receiver.

While entering in appointment details and when you click BOOK, there are several validations and warnings that Turvo will inform you about to reduce appointment processing errors. Examples of these validations and warnings are:

• Duplicate order/shipment: Order entered is already on an existing appointment.
• Direction mismatch: Attempting to add an inbound order or shipment to an outbound reservation (or vice versa).
• Customer mismatch: Attempting to add an order or shipment to an appointment where the customer does not much the underlying rules for the reservation. For more information on the reservation rules, review the Understanding appointment schedules article.
• Drop carrier restrictions: Adding a carrier to a “drop” appointment type that is not on the approved drop carrier list for that location. Carrier cannot be added until added to the approved drop carrier list under location details.
• Appointment in past: Warning that the appointment being modified is a date in the past.
• Completed/Canceled shipment: Attempting to schedule an appointment for a shipment that’s already been completed or canceled.

Once processed, you will receive a confirmation on the bottom of your screen that an appointment has been booked successfully.

Final Step:

At the top of your appointment card, you will see a confirmation number for the appointment that was generated. Confirmation #’s are displayed here and on the slot that you chose to book the appointment on.

If using orders to schedule the appointment, you’ll also find the appointment confirmation number in the ID section of the Order’s Details tab:

As well as the Order’s Timeline once the appointment is booked. Any updates made to the appointment will also show on the Order’s timeline with the related “who, when, and what” information:

Note: If an appointment is deleted, the appointment ID logged in the ID section of the order's Details tab will automatically be removed. 

If using shipments to schedule the appointment, you can also find the appointment confirmation number in the Route > Location  section of the Details tab of the shipment.

What is a recurring appointment

Recurring appointments allow you to book several repeat appointments at once that have common characteristics. They are able to be booked for up to 8 weeks into the future. Recurring appointments are used in a couple of different instances:

• Appointments that happen at a regular frequency for a specific type of customer or carrier.
  • • Example: If you regularly receive shipments from the same party every Tuesday at 10:00 AM. You can create a series of appointments (including confirmation #s) that can be distributed to your carriers for public scheduling.
• The order that is supposed to be on an appointment is not in the system yet but you still need a confirmation # created.
  • • Example: A carrier shows up and is at your facility when the order they are picking up is not in your system. You know the order hasn’t been entered into the system but don’t want them to wait at check-in. You are able to book a single recurring appointment to create the appointment and keep the line moving.

Booking a recurring appointment copies over the fields that you have filled in for the initial appointment, with the exception of the Order field and its child fields (Pickup/Drop City and State, Pickup/Drop Date, and Equipment).

Booking a recurring appointment

Complete the same steps 1-4 as a single appointment. Once you get to Step 5, be sure to check the Recurring appointment box.

Then, select the day(s) of the week you want appointments on and how many weeks you’d like it to repeat. It is crucial to make sure that capacity is available for the time period you are trying to book recurring appointments for otherwise, you will receive an error.

For recurring appointments, confirmation #s are created for the entire series of appointments that you made. To find them in one consolidated place, go to the Timeline tab and locate the event on the timeline to view them.

Protip: Recurring appointments require the recurring appointment box to be checked and the type of appointment (live or drop) be selected. If you need to schedule a single appointment but don’t have order information yet, you can use recurring appointments and only have it repeat for 1 week. This will create a single appointment without the need for order information.

Modifying an existing appointment

To modify details on an existing appointment in Turvo, navigate to the existing appointment by searching the confirmation or order number in the Global Search bar.

Once you click on the appointment, it will pull up the appointment card.

From there, you can modify any appointment detail by clicking into the card and navigating to that field.

To reschedule an appointment, click on the Edit date & time field under the appointment date and time. It will populate a calendar that will show new appointment times based on the details entered on the original appointment. When a new time is found, click on the date/time slot and click SAVE.

Once all of your changes have been made, be sure to click UPDATE on the bottom right of the appointment card to save your changes.