With the ascent of daily deals companies, there has also been a rise of scheduling services that seek to help out local merchants that run the deals and find themselves overwhelmed by the results. Setster, one such appointment-scheduling company, has announced the release of a new API which will give daily deal providers the ability to offer integrated scheduling as part of the marketing package that they give to merchants.

“While daily deal sites and their promotional buyers are 100% web based, neighborhood service providers have no web based infrastructure in place to deal with the influx of appointments, communication follow up, even up-selling and future marketing,” said Setster CEO Edward Lujan in a statement. “The disconnect is painfully obvious.”

Following its purchase of OpenCal last year, Groupon recently rolled out its own free scheduling tool, Groupon Scheduler, which merchants can use to accept online bookings for deals. Lujan touts Setster’s API as a scheduling solution for deal companies that don’t have Groupon’s resources.

Daily deal companies using the API can integrate a scheduling function both onto their own sites and onto the merchants’ sites, so that immediately after a deal is purchased, the buyer is directed to schedule an appointment. The parameters of the appointments (time, and dedicated services) are set by the merchants, and can be made specific to the deal — allowing providers to set expectations and ensuring that the vouchers are redeemed.

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