Booking interpreting assignments by the half day or full day

Sell in-person interpreting in half-day and full-day blocks rather than by the hour, and let clients book those blocks online. A half-day covers a meeting, a medical appointment or a notary signing with the waiting and overrun around it; a full day covers a conference, an audit or a site visit. Ask clients in the booking note for the setting, the language pair, the address and the documents you need to prepare. Then build your travel and preparation time into the blocks you open, not on top of them.

A one-hour meeting rarely takes one hour of your time. There's the trip there, the wait in reception, the meeting that starts late and runs over, the trip back. Between two hourly bookings in different parts of town, the rest of the morning is lost anyway. Clients booking by the hour also expect to pay for the hour, and the conversation about overruns happens on the spot, which is the worst moment for it.

A half-day block makes that time explicit. The client books a morning or an afternoon, knows the price in advance, and you know the rest of the morning is yours. It's also easier for them: they don't need to guess how long a signing or a hospital appointment will last.

On Book, each service has a name, a price and an optional description shown on your public page. Each slot belongs to one service, with its own start and end. Clients pick a service, then a free slot. With one place per slot, a booked slot is full and disappears from your page.

Lengths and prices are examples: set your own. If you work in several language pairs at different rates, name them in the service ("French–English, half-day") or create one service per pair. The client picks a service and a slot; one booking is one assignment.

The public booking form asks for first name, last name, email and phone, plus an optional note that you read in your new-booking email. Say in the description what the note should contain:

For confidential documents, ask for them by email, not in the note: the note is copied into the calendar file attached to the confirmation.

Decide where your blocks start: at the client's address or at your office. If you work across a wide area, say in the description which towns are included in the price and how travel further away is charged. Keep a gap between a morning and an afternoon block when they may be far apart; one option is to open only one block per day on days when you expect assignments outside town.

Preparation time isn't visible in a slot, but it's real: a technical meeting or a legal deed can take hours of terminology work. Say in the description that the price includes a set amount of preparation, or offer a preparation call as its own service.

A slot sits within one day, so a three-day conference is three full-day slots. The client can book the first day online and write the other dates in the note, and you book them into the other days from your calendar: first and last name are required, email and phone optional. Do it as soon as you read the booking, before someone else takes one of those days.

If an assignment moves, clients can't reschedule online: they contact you, and you move or cancel from your bookings list, then confirm the new date yourself, since Book doesn't email them about changes. Book doesn't take payments or send invoices; say in the description how you bill and your cancellation terms. Book costs €5/month, everything included: unlimited services and bookings, no commission, no contract.