Use the Diary to make appointments

What the Diary is for

The Diary is where you make your appointments. It keeps a simple list of the appointments and jobs you have coming up: who they are with, what they are for, and when. Every appointment sits on one screen with a status tag, so you can see what is ahead at a glance.

You can book customers or suppliers, mark on-site visits so Worklog logs the travel for you, and line up a day-before WhatsApp reminder to send in one tap.

Before you start

Make an appointment

1. Open the Diary.
2. Tap the + New button in the top right.
3. Choose the Appointment type — Customer or Supplier.
4. At Customer (or Supplier), start typing the name. If they are already in your contacts, pick them from the list. If not, just type the name.
5. Set the Date and the Time.
6. Leave the Status on Confirmed for a slot that is set, or switch it to Pending if it is only tentative and still to be confirmed.
7. Need more? Tap Add more details for a purpose, a price, how long it will take, a location, an on-site visit, a linked quote, notes, a repeat, or a day-before WhatsApp reminder. You can skip all of these. A price is what a customer appointment is worth, for the Diary report: it records no money, so log the payment in Banking or invoice it.
8. Tap Save appointment.

A new appointment is saved as Confirmed by default — or as Pending if you set it tentative — and shows up in your diary with the name, date, time and a status tag. If it clashes with another appointment at the same time, Worklog warns you before you save.

A worked example

1. Open Diary and tap New.
2. Type who it's with — say, Mrs Khumalo.
3. Set the date to tomorrow and the time to 10:30. The blue banner under the fields immediately shows the day and the 10:30 slot it will save.
4. Pick Confirmed if the slot is agreed, or Pending if it's only pencilled in.
5. Save. It appears under Tomorrow, and reopening it shows exactly the date and time you set.

On-site visits and reminders

• Turn on On-site / mobile visit and add the distance each way. When you first save a new appointment, Worklog logs the round trip — twice that distance — in the Travel Log at the SARS rate, so you do not have to capture it again. It happens only on that first save: turning it on later, or changing the kilometres, doesn't add or change a trip, so fix those in the Travel Log. Repeats don't log a trip.
• Open an upcoming appointment and tap Send WhatsApp reminder — the message is ready to send. This needs the customer's phone number saved on their contact. With the day-before reminder switch on, the appointment also shows in Needs you today the day before — tap it there to open the appointment and send the reminder. Worklog never sends it for you.
• When you save a new confirmed appointment for a customer whose number you have, Worklog offers Send WhatsApp confirmation: a short message with the date, time and place. Tap Done to skip it.
• Every WhatsApp message Worklog writes for you ends with your business name, so a customer who hasn't saved your number knows who it's from. If your business has no name yet, the button asks you to add one in Business Details first.
• When you make an appointment, set Repeat this appointment to Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly or Annually — or Other… for any other, such as every 2 weeks: type the number and pick weeks, months or years. Worklog adds the next 11 dates to your diary straight away. Each one is its own appointment, so you change or cancel them one at a time. A monthly one on the 29th, 30th or 31st uses the last day of a shorter month and goes back to its own day the month after.

Open an appointment and update it

Tap any appointment in the diary to open it. If you can edit the diary, it opens straight in its editor — titled Edit appointment — with the date, time and every detail ready to change. Teammates with view-only access get a read-only sheet instead: they can see the appointment and send a WhatsApp reminder, but not change it.

1. Tap the appointment you want — it opens in the Edit appointment editor.
2. Change any detail — the customer, the date and time, or anything under Add more details — then tap Save changes.
3. If it is still Pending and now firmed up, switch the Status chip to Confirmed and tap Save changes.
4. When the job is done, tap Mark complete. If the appointment has a price, Worklog then asks how it is being settled: Invoice it opens a new invoice filled in from the appointment, Log the payment opens Money in filled in the same way, Link one I already have lists that customer's newest invoices and payments (or anyone's, if you tap Show everyone's) so you can pick the one that covers it instead of making it again — it only links them, and a payment already linked to another appointment is greyed out; Already recorded is for money that is in your books another way (like the day's takings logged in Banking), and Not now leaves it for later.
5. If the customer did not turn up, tap No-show.
6. If the appointment fell away, tap Cancel appointment — it stays in your diary as a cancelled record.

The status tag changes to match: Complete, No-show or Cancelled. This gives you an honest record of what actually happened, including who keeps not showing up.

Good to know

• Your diary reads like an agenda: appointments are grouped by day under Today, Tomorrow and dated headings, soonest first, with past appointments below under a Past heading as a record.
• When the list gets long, use the search box to find an appointment by customer or supplier, service, purpose or its number (each one gets one, like BKG-2026-0012), and Show ▾ to see only one status (Confirmed, Complete and so on), only customer or only supplier appointments, or one stretch of time (this month, last month, this tax year) — and, once two or more people take bookings, who booked it. Supplier appointments carry a Supplier tag in the list. Search and Show look through past appointments too, so an old record is easy to find. Sort ▾ switches between the day-by-day diary order (the default) and a flat list by name — the customer's or supplier's, A to Z or Z to A — or by number.
• Under the list, 📄 PDF and 📊 CSV / Excel print the appointments as you have them — date, time, number, who with, customer or supplier, the service or purpose, status and price — with a total line that counts every appointment listed, cancelled and no-show ones included. What was completed and what was lost is the Diary report, under Scheduling Reports.
• The status colours help you scan: confirmed and complete show in blue, pending in amber, no-show in red, and cancelled in grey.
• Past appointments open and change just like upcoming ones — the only thing that falls away is the day-before WhatsApp reminder, which Worklog only offers while the date is still to come.
• To take an appointment off your diary entirely, tap the ✕ on its row and confirm Remove this appointment? This is different from Cancel: cancelling keeps it in your diary as a cancelled record, while removing drops it from the list.
• Once an appointment is Complete, No-show or Cancelled, the Mark complete, No-show and Cancel appointment buttons fall away. Those appointments stay in your diary as a record.