The CoachAccountable Blog

It’s a real simple theme with today’s new version of CoachAccountable: the addition of TWO new integrations, MS Teams and Google Meet.

These virtual meeting platforms join the ranks of (long-supported) Zoom, enabling CA to now create virtual meeting rooms for your Appointments within these two in the exact same fashion.

The setup for all of this lives in the new Settings >> Appointment Config >> Virtual Meetings area:

You can go down the line, connecting (or not!) like 1-2-3.

Here you can connect any or all of the now-supported virtual meeting providers: Zoom, MS Teams and Google Meet.

Connecting works like connecting the respective calendars: a quick bounce over to either the Microsoft or Google side of things (to be told CA wishes to have permission to create these meetings on your behalf), and you clicking to grant as much.  Takes less than 60 seconds, closer to 5 if you’re already logged in and a quick reader.

(Important caveat: the MS Teams API is ONLY supported for Work and Business accounts with Microsoft.  If you have a Personal account, neither CoachAccountable nor any other app is allowed to create MS Teams meetings for you.)

Once connected, you’ll find suitable options for each of your Appointment Types in the Preferences tab:

You can also set these preferences for a given Appointment Type when editing that type.

When scheduling an Appointment of a type that supports several choices, you (and your clients!) will be given the option to choose the preferred one:

Same deal when clients schedule as part of an Offering, too!

Like with Zoom meetings, the join link for MS Teams meetings and Google Meets display in-app with Appointments, automatically when it’s upcoming and soon to be relevant, or with a click of the calendar icon when looking further ahead:

Sharing Connections

This one goes out to all the CA power users in the house, namely those who maintain multiple accounts for operating in different contexts.  I see you!

There’s… let’s charitably call it a “quirky” thing about connections between one app and another (such as connecting Zoom to a CoachAccountable account): Zoom (and some, but not all others) will go out of its way to prevent multiple connections to the same app.  Namely if you connect to a second account, Zoom will immediately and deliberately sever/invalidate the first connection.  This is well-documented for Zoom, but this is not unique to Zoom nor to CoachAccountable.

To get around any such issue for all three providers, there’s now a way for the owner of a given connection to share that single connection with others (including him- or herself in a separate account).

To do this, click the “Connection sharing…” button for a given connected provider and you’ll see the following:

Click that copy button and you’re on your way!

The share token is the key: with it, another user (or yourself in another account) will be able to add and use that connection too.

And for you as the owner, if the share token ever falls into the wrong hands, you can click the “Change this share token…” link to rotate it to something else.  You will also see a list of any users with whom your connection is presently shared, with controls to rescind that sharing whenever desired.

And that’s all there is to it!  Connect your providers, choose which Appointment Types should have which types of meetings, and schedule as usual.  CA does the rest by setting them up, and making it super easy for both you and your clients to find the join link in notifications, reminders, synced calendar events, and in-app displays.

Usually I’d pack more into a .point release, but with this pair of integrations being far and away the most consistently requested integrations, I’m delighted to honor these requests sooner rather than later.

Enjoy!

If you’re coaching multiple people at a company, you’re likely already using CoachAccountable Companies. And if you productize your coaching into packages, you’re probably taking advantage of CoachAccountable Engagements. Now you can also put Companies into Engagements, in order to:

• Automatically invoice the Company on a regular basis
• Track how much of a package the Company has used
• Distribute the allocated appointments evenly over all coachees at a Company

Let’s take a look.

» Continue reading “Introducing Company Engagements”

With CoachAccountable Engagements, you can allow only certain clients to book appointments within a package, and with Offerings you can let prospective clients book an Appointment Type that established clients can’t see (and vice-versa).

Emma, Chief Organizational Officer at Action Edge Business Coaching, asked about yet another level of appointment access customization:

Is it possible to restrict which clients are able to book a certain appointment type?

For example, we do 15-30 minute check in calls with employees of some of our clients. We don’t want all our clients to be able to access that. Is there a way to specify who can see this within the appointment types?

Introducing client-specific appointment access settings!

This is perfect if you, like Action Edge, have different types of coaching clients, where only some clients should have access to a particular type of appointment. Another great fit is coaches who have different levels of access (i.e. higher-paying clients get longer sessions), different areas of coaching, or even different locations (perhaps in-person meetings can happen, but only for certain individuals nearby).

Let’s take a look.

» Continue reading “Customize Client Access to Appointment Types”

One of the great things about working at CoachAccountable is that we each have built-in coaching at our jobs. To that end we’ve each got a client account under the other’s coach account (meaning John is a client of Morgan, and Morgan is a client of John). As you might imagine, that comes with a lot of material; specifically, we’ve got roughly billions of Whiteboards for collaboration (company culture, easy-access links to our reviews on Capterra and Google, etc.). That means I often need to search for a particular Whiteboard.

And here’s Sho to show us a new idea!

When Shorombo Mooij, a life and health coach from Holland, suggested folders for Whiteboards, I heartily agreed and added the task to our weekly Morgan’s the Boss session. Thanks to John’s quick work, Whiteboard folders now exist!

Here’s how to use them.

» Continue reading “Organize Your Whiteboards with Folders”

If there’s one thing that’s been made crystal clear to me over 6 years of providing an online coaching platform, it’s that people generally seek (and indeed, crave) having a single system that does EVERYTHING.

“An all-in-one solution” is a bit of a cliche, often an unattainable ideal.  But I don’t fault folks for wanting it, especially in a piece of software they use to run their coaching business.

Introducing CoachAccountable Offerings, a big step towards CA being that all-in-one unicorn for coaches.

Offerings started as the answer to a question we commonly get:

CoachAccountable’s scheduling system is great for my existing clients, but how can prospective clients use it to book with me?

For a quick, 3-minute video on how to set up Offerings, check out this article. Or continue reading below for the step-by-step and story!

» Continue reading “Offerings – Sell Your Coaching from your Website”

Until now, you’ve been able to accept coaching client payments via Stripe. Today we’re pleased to announce that your clients can now also pay via Square!

As in the case with Stripe and Authorize.net, clients can pay your invoices directly inside the online coaching platform, rather than going to an external site.

Setup from within the CoachAccountable system is easy. Just navigate to Settings >> System >> Client Invoicing Config.

Here, select Square as your online payment processor.

Look at that big beautiful Square!

If you’re not logged in to Square, you’ll be directed to the Square login page.

This one should look pretty familiar!

If you are logged in, you’ll skip right over that one and see this next. Square will make sure you want CoachAccountable to have some permissions.

Please say yes – don’t make us get down on one knee!

And voila! The connection with CoachAccountable is complete.

CELEBRATE!! You WIN! Go get that money!

Now your money is going right into your Square account.

What Does This Payment Integration Cost?

It’s free on our end! CoachAccountable doesn’t take any cut of your payments. The only fees are what Square charges you.

Conveniently Save Card Information

As in the Stripe and Authorize.net payment process, your clients can have the system store their credit card information for future use. That makes those automatically recurring invoices a snap and takes them off your mind!

But is it secure? Yep – CA is just a pass-through. Just like coach subscription information, we never keep card details (other than what’s needed to identify the card for the client, such as the last 4 digits and expiration), but instead use a unique token. Square adds yet another PCI-compliant way of taking your customers’ payments through our online coaching tool.

Were you hoping for Square integration in order to sign up for your free 30-day trial of CoachAccountable’s coaching tool? Hop on board today!

Recently, Henk from Business Doctors in South Africa asked about printing from CoachAccountable. While this wasn’t possible in most of CA, John realized that the option to print would be useful for all, especially those with executive coaching clients who potentially have a “higher-up” to report to in a meeting where paper is required.

Now, you have a couple ways to print from the app.

» Continue reading “Printing Right From Your CA Online Coaching Platform”