This Week in Small Business Tech: Smarter Booking, Scheduled Forms, and Easier SMS Testing
What Changed This Week (and Why You Should Care)
Every week, our platform gets updates. Most of them are technical. But a few directly affect how many jobs you book, how fast you respond to leads, and how smoothly your automations run. Here are the three that matter this week.
1. Your Booking Calendar Just Got Smarter About Working Days
What changed: A new "Count available days only" toggle on your booking calendar.
Why it matters: If your business is closed on weekends (or runs a non-standard schedule like Mon/Wed/Fri), your online booking used to show blank calendars on Fridays. A customer looking to book would see nothing available and bounce.
Now the system skips your off-days when calculating availability. If you offer a 2-day booking window and someone visits on Friday, they'll see Monday and Tuesday, not a blank screen.
Bottom line: Fewer confused customers. More booked appointments. Zero effort on your end once it's toggled on.
2. Forms and Surveys Can Now Auto-Open and Auto-Close on a Schedule
What changed: You can now set exact start and end dates for any form, survey, or quiz.
Why it matters: If you run seasonal promotions, event registrations, or limited-time offers, you used to have to manually turn forms on and off. Miss the deadline? Leads keep coming in for an expired offer. Awkward.
Now you set the window once: when it opens, when it closes, what visitors see before and after. Done. The form handles itself.
Use cases for contractors and service businesses:
- Spring AC tune-up specials that auto-expire May 31
- Event registrations that close the day before
- Seasonal coupon forms that stop accepting after the promotion ends
- "Book before Friday" flash offers that literally can't be booked after Friday
3. Testing Your SMS Automations Just Got Less Annoying
What changed: The test phone number field now has a country flag picker (like you see on most modern apps).
Why it matters: Before, testing an SMS workflow required typing your number in full international format (+1-330-555-1234). Get it wrong? Error. No explanation. Just "invalid number."
Now you pick your country from a dropdown, type your number the way you actually dial it, and hit send. Small change, big time-saver when you're testing automations.
4. Capture Guest Phone Numbers on Calendar Bookings
What changed: When someone books an appointment and adds guests, you can now collect phone numbers for each guest (not just name and email).
Why it matters: If you run group consultations, family appointments, or multi-party meetings, you now get complete contact info for everyone in the room. Each guest automatically becomes a contact in your CRM with their phone number attached.
More complete data. Better follow-up. No extra steps.
What This Means for You
None of these require you to buy anything new. They're already in your system. You just need to turn them on.
If you're a Five Arrows client, we'll handle the configuration for you during your next check-in. If you're not, and you're curious how systems like this work together to capture and convert more leads automatically, grab 15 minutes on our calendar.
