Cliniko setup guide

Connecting Cliniko to SandoAssist, and the Cliniko-side settings that most affect whether your bot shows real, correct availability.

For the general Settings page fields (Services, Practitioners, Opening hours, etc.), see the Settings page guide. This page is specifically about the Cliniko connection itself.

Step 1 — Get your Cliniko API key

In Cliniko: Settings → Integrations → API Keys → generate a new key.

Treat this like a password — anyone with it can read and write your Cliniko data through the API.

Step 2 — Connect it in SandoAssist

In the dashboard, go to Settings → CRM Integration:

Set Practice management system to Cliniko.
Paste your API key into Cliniko API key.
Set Region to match your Cliniko account — the region your Cliniko account is hosted in:

Region	Value
UK	`uk3`
Australia	`au2`
USA	`us1`
Canada	`ca1`
Europe	`eu1`

You can confirm your region from the URL you use to log into Cliniko, or from Cliniko's own API documentation for your account.

Leave Base URL blank unless Cliniko has specifically assigned your account a custom API endpoint — the region setting already points to the right default URL.

Step 3 — Mock mode vs Live mode

Mock mode (on by default) — no real calls to Cliniko. Safe for testing your bot's conversation flow without risking real data or real bookings.
Live mode (off) — real calls to Cliniko: real availability, real appointments created for real patients. Only switch this on when you're ready to go live.

Step 4 — Test the connection

Click Test connection. This confirms your API key and region are valid before you save anything.

Step 5 — Sync your services and practitioners

Once connected (and in Live mode), use Sync from Cliniko on both the Services and Practitioners sections of Settings. This pulls your real appointment types and practitioner list directly from Cliniko into SandoAssist, so the bot only ever offers things that genuinely exist and are bookable.

If Cliniko and your Settings drift apart later, a warning banner appears on the Practitioners section telling you exactly what's different — sync again to fix it.

The most important Cliniko-side setting: Online Bookings

Cliniko only returns real-time availability for a practitioner + appointment type combination that has Online Bookings enabled for it, specifically:

Online Bookings must be switched on for your account generally (Cliniko → Settings → Online Bookings).
Each practitioner must be individually enabled for online booking.
Each practitioner must be linked to each appointment type you want them bookable for.

If a practitioner isn't enabled this way, Cliniko simply won't return times for them — SandoAssist handles this gracefully (real availability for every other correctly-enabled practitioner still comes through), but that one practitioner won't show real slots until this is fixed on the Cliniko side. If every practitioner is missing this configuration, the bot falls back to suggesting generic weekday 9–5 slots rather than real Cliniko availability, so patients aren't left with nothing — but this is only ever a fallback, not what you want long-term.

If a practitioner or service never seems to have real availability, this is the first thing to check in Cliniko itself — it's almost always an Online Bookings configuration gap, not a SandoAssist connection problem.

Opening hours still apply

Even with a live Cliniko connection, SandoAssist filters out any slot that falls outside the Opening hours you've set in SandoAssist's own Settings page. If real Cliniko availability isn't showing up during hours you expect, double check your Opening hours in SandoAssist match your actual Cliniko business hours.

Multi-practitioner clinics

The bot checks every one of your practitioners' real availability, not just the first one that happens to have a free slot — so a patient asking for “any practitioner” genuinely sees availability across your whole team, not just whoever the bot checked first.