Appointment
Appointment in ERPNext is used to schedule and manage meetings between your organization and prospective customers. It provides a structured way to book, assign, and track customer interactions with Leads or Opportunities while ensuring that appointments are organized and assigned to the appropriate employees.
Appointments help sales teams maintain a consistent follow-up process by recording meeting schedules, customer details, assigned representatives, and related CRM records in a single document.
Every appointment can be linked to an existing Lead or Opportunity, making it easier to track customer interactions throughout the sales pipeline.
Example
A prospective customer wants a product demonstration. The sales team schedules an appointment with the customer, automatically assigns an available sales executive, and links the meeting to the customer’s Lead. After the meeting, the sales executive can continue the sales process by creating an Opportunity or Quotation.
Prerequisites
Before creating appointments, ensure the following records are configured in ERPNext:
- Appointment Booking Settings
- Holiday List
- Employee
- Lead
- Email Account
How to Create an Appointment
Follow these steps to schedule an appointment:
- Go to Home → CRM → Sales Pipeline → Appointment.
- Click New to create a new Appointment.
- Select the scheduled date and time for the meeting.
- Enter the customer’s contact details such as name, email address, and other required information.
- In the Linked Documents section, select an existing Lead if one already exists.
- If no Lead is selected, ERPNext can automatically create a new Lead using the customer information entered.
- Review the appointment details and save the document.
This ensures every customer meeting is properly recorded and connected to the CRM workflow.
Note
When an appointment is linked to an existing Lead, the sales team can continue managing all future communication and sales activities from the same Lead record without creating duplicate customer information.
Creating Appointments through the Website
ERPNext also allows customers to schedule appointments directly through your website using the appointment booking page.
During online booking, customers:
- Select their preferred appointment date.
- Select an available time slot.
- Enter their contact information.
- Submit the appointment request.
After submission, ERPNext checks whether the customer’s email address already exists as a Lead in the system.
- If a matching Lead is found, the appointment is automatically linked to that Lead.
- If no matching Lead exists, the appointment is marked as Unverified and an email verification request is sent to the customer.
- Once the customer confirms the email address, ERPNext automatically creates a new Lead and links it to the appointment.
This process helps prevent duplicate leads while ensuring that only verified customer information enters the CRM system.
Appointment Features
Automatic Employee Assignment
ERPNext can automatically assign appointments to employees based on the configuration in Appointment Booking Settings.
The system evaluates available agents and assigns the appointment to the employee who:
- Is available during the selected appointment time.
- Has the fewest appointments scheduled for that day.
- Is listed as an available booking agent.
Automatic assignment helps distribute appointments fairly across the sales team while reducing manual scheduling effort.
Business Benefit
Balanced appointment allocation improves employee utilization, reduces scheduling conflicts, and ensures faster customer response times.
Email Verification and Confirmation
When an appointment is created for an email address that does not already exist in the CRM database, ERPNext automatically sends a verification email.
After the customer confirms the email address:
- A new Lead is automatically created.
- The appointment is linked to the newly created Lead.
- The sales team can continue the customer journey from Lead to Opportunity and eventually to Quotation and Sales Order.
Email confirmation ensures that customer information is verified before it becomes part of your sales pipeline.
Key Summary
Appointments in ERPNext provide an organized way to schedule customer meetings, automatically assign employees, create or link Leads, and verify customer information. By integrating appointment scheduling with the CRM workflow, businesses can streamline customer interactions, improve response times, and maintain complete visibility throughout the sales process.
