Your receptionist's backup, for the calls they can't get to

A front desk is one person, and the phone rings while that person is doing the other nine parts of the job. Most callers who hit voicemail don't leave one — they ring the next practice. Nobody did anything wrong; there was one pair of hands.

The usual answer is a second receptionist, or a temp when the first one is off. That's a wage, a roster, and someone who has to learn the system before they can take a call. Giday is the other answer: it already knows your hours, your services, your people and your diary, and it only takes the calls your receptionist can't.

Your phone company has a setting for this. Calls ring at your desk as normal; if nobody has picked up after a set time — about twenty seconds on most Australian lines, adjustable on some — the call diverts to Giday and Verity answers in your name. Your receptionist answers everything they can. Giday gets the rest.

The exact codes for Telstra, Optus, Vodafone and NBN phones are in the divert guide. The ring time is the carrier's setting, not ours, which is why we say "about twenty seconds".

A backup that books into a different calendar from your receptionist would sell the same slot twice. Giday reads your calendar before it offers a time, so anything your receptionist has booked is never offered, and it publishes its own bookings as a feed your receptionist sees in Google, Outlook or Apple Calendar. If you have several practitioners, each can have their own hours and their own feed, and callers can ask for a person by name.

That needs your calendar to be one Giday can read: Google, Outlook, Apple, or practice software that publishes a feed (Cliniko, Power Diary and Halaxy do). It's included on the Steady plan and up.

Some practice systems don't publish a calendar feed and don't open their booking API to anyone outside a partner programme — Best Practice and MedicalDirector, the two big GP systems, are the main ones. Giday can't book into them, and we'd rather say so than book blind.

For those practices there's a second mode, one switch on your settings page: booking requests. Verity still answers every overflow call. Instead of booking, she takes the request — who, the best number, what the appointment is for, when suits them, how urgent — tells the caller the practice will confirm the time shortly, and sends it to you at once by SMS and email, flagged as a booking request. Your receptionist adds it to your system in a minute when they're free. Nothing can be double-booked, nothing has to be learned by a temp, and the caller never hears voicemail.

Verity answers in your business name and never claims to be a person. For a medical, dental or allied-health practice she runs in restricted mode: nothing clinical discussed, nothing clinical written down, no advice, the audio not kept. For a law firm she is built never to give legal advice. The full version of each is on the medical, dental and law firm pages.

A receptionist on the award minimum costs $26.97 an hour — the Level 1 rate under the Clerks – Private Sector Award from the first full pay period on or after 1 July 2026, per the Fair Work Ombudsman's pay guide for that award (read 11 October 2026). That's about $205 for a 7.6-hour day before super and on-costs. One day a week of cover is roughly $890 a month; two days, about $1,780. A temp through an agency costs more again, and has to be shown the system first.

Giday's Steady plan, which includes the calendar read that keeps one diary, is $99 a month. Starter is $49. It's there every day — the sick ones included — and it already knows your hours, your people and your diary.

Every plan answers 24/7 with no after-hours surcharge. Starter $49, Steady $99, Busy $199, Flat Out $399 a month, GST included, month to month, no lock-in.

Sixty minutes of call time on us, for a week. Card up front, nothing charged, and the clock doesn't start until your receptionist's backup answers its first call. Set the divert, go to lunch, and see what came in.