The Batch Appointment Generator is a feature that will review client and recurring appointments from the previous tax year and create a new appointment in the current tax year's scheduler. Private appointments are excluded from the batch process, and you can set workday and holiday information that rolls forward OR backward to an available appointment date.


IMPORTANT: The Batch Appointment toolbar item is only displayed for the Admin and preparers assigned to an administrative security group. It should not if you updated the scheduler appointments that were updated using Last Year Data

 

Generating Batch Appointments


    1. Within the Scheduler click Batch, and click Generate Batch Appointments.
    2. Select the location for Use last year's appointments found on drive:  Only drives found to have the Drake Tax Software from the previous year installed are listed.
    3. Select the date range by using the default Begin Date and End Date, or enter your own date range.
    4. Identify the Days Available for Appointments. Checked days-of-the week indicate days that the office is open. When generating new appointments, appointment dates that fall on days closed are handled using the Appointment Date Criteria.
    5. Identify any other dates and holidays that the office is closed by adding them to Dates Not Available for Appointments.
    6. Choose your preference for handling appointment dates that fall on non-workdays or holidays. Roll back to first previous available date finds the closest date prior to the non-workday. Roll forward to the next available date finds the closest date after the non-workday.
    7. When all preferences have been selected, click OK to begin the Batch Appointment process.
    8. Appointments are created as defined in the steps above. When the process ends the Scheduler – Appointment Advance Report is generated. The report shows: a) the number of appointments that cannot be generated and an explanation, b) the number of appointments that had conflicts and duplicate appointments where created, and c) the number of new appointments. Immediately after the Summary section of the report, you will see detailed lists of each summarized item that has a value greater than 0 (zero).

 


Note

For the best report print results print the Scheduler – Appointment Advance Report in landscape orientation. To do this from the Report Viewer, go to Print > Page Setup and change the Paper Options to Landscape.


 

Undo the Batch generated Appointments


If appointments created by the batch process needs removing, use the Undo Batch generated Appointments.


    1. Within the Scheduler, click Batch Appts, and click Undo Batch generated Appointments.
    2. The application alerts you that this action will undo appointments previously made through the batch process.
    3. If you want to remove the appointments created by an earlier batch process, click Yes to continue.
    4. The appointments are removed from the current-year's schedule.