Booking Rules & Policies
Go to Settings → Booking settings to adjust the items below. This page controls how your booking page accepts bookings and how much flexibility customers get afterward — it's separate from (but complements) Opening Hours, which decides which time slots are available at all.
Availability
- Accept online bookings: When off, no new booking requests are accepted (existing bookings are unaffected — only new bookings are blocked). Useful when you're temporarily fully booked, closed, or making system changes but don't want to take the whole page down.
- Public booking page: When off, the booking page is excluded from your sitemap and won't appear in search results, but the page itself remains directly accessible — customers who open the original URL just see a neutral notice that "This business isn't currently accepting online bookings — please contact them directly." It isn't fully hidden or removed. Use this when you're not ready to be indexed, not when you need to hide the page entirely.
INFO
When "Accept online bookings" is off, the booking page is still visible (unless "Public booking page" is also off), but the booking button appears disabled or shows a message that bookings are paused. The two toggles are independent — you can turn off just one.
Time rules
| Setting | Range | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum notice | 1–7 days | How far in advance a customer must book |
| Slot interval | 10 / 15 / 30 / 60 minutes | The display spacing between bookable time slots |
| Booking window | 7 days–3 months | How far ahead customers can book, must be greater than the minimum notice |
| Cancellation / reschedule deadline | Unlimited, 1–72 hours, 1 week, or not allowed | How close to the appointment start a customer can no longer reschedule or cancel on their own |
| Reschedule limit | 0 (unlimited)–10 times | Max number of times a customer can reschedule a single booking themselves |
| Daily booking limit | 0 (unlimited)–10 bookings | Max number of bookings the same customer can make per day |
How these settings interact
"Minimum notice" and "Booking window" together determine the range of bookable time slots customers see on the booking page. "Cancellation / reschedule deadline" is a separate, second threshold — even before the appointment day arrives, once you're inside this deadline, the customer's own reschedule/cancel buttons stop working (staff actions in the dashboard aren't affected by this limit).
Confirmation
- Auto-confirm bookings: When on, a booking is confirmed the moment a customer submits it, with no manual review needed. When off, new bookings sit as "Pending" until staff manually confirm them (see Confirm, Cancel & Reschedule).
- Auto-blacklist threshold: Once a customer's cumulative no-show count reaches this threshold (1–10), they're blacklisted automatically. Leave it blank to turn this off and rely entirely on staff manually blacklisting customers (see Handling No-Shows and Tags & Blacklist).
- Allow guest bookings: Lets customers book directly without registering a customer login account first.
- Allow multiple services per booking: Lets a customer select multiple services within the same booking (services are scheduled sequentially).
- Allow multi-slot bookings: Lets a customer book multiple slots at once (see Multi-Slot Bookings). Once enabled, you can also set:
- Max slots per booking (2–20, default 6)
- Multi-slot booking limit per customer (leave blank for unlimited)
- The window in days over which that limit is counted (1–365 days, default 30 days)
Reminders and follow-up
- Appointment reminders: You can set a "Reminder timing" (12 / 24 / 48 / 72 hours before the appointment) and an optional "Add a final reminder" (1 / 2 / 3 / 6 hours before). These are two fixed time slots, not an arbitrary list you can add more entries to. See Notification Settings for channels and content.
- Re-engagement reminders: When on, sends a reminder a set number of days after a booking is completed (7–90 days) to encourage the customer to book again. The message content is customizable.
Booking policy content
A free-text field displayed on the booking page (for example, cancellation policy, notes, or hygiene requirements). This is currently the only place to describe custom rules to customers in free text — there are no structured fields for this.
INFO
- If you want to collect a deposit at booking time, the only current option is to state that in the booking policy content above — the system itself doesn't enforce or collect a deposit.
- Buffer time before/after a service is configured in each individual service's settings (see Add Services & Pricing), not on this page.
Common Questions
If I turn off "Accept online bookings," does it affect bookings that are already confirmed? No. This toggle only blocks new requests from coming in — existing pending or confirmed bookings are completely unaffected, and staff can still confirm, complete, or cancel them as usual.
Can "Auto-confirm bookings" and "Allow guest bookings" be on at the same time? Yes, they don't conflict. With both on, an unregistered guest's submitted booking becomes confirmed immediately, with no chance for staff review in between. If your service needs a manual check (for example, confirming details by phone first), turn off auto-confirm.
If I change the "Cancellation / reschedule deadline," does it affect bookings customers already made that haven't hit the deadline yet? The new setting takes effect immediately, but whether a booking can still be changed is calculated in real time based on "how long until the appointment now." So as long as a booking is still outside the new threshold, the customer can still act on it; once it falls inside the threshold, even an older booking that used to be changeable gets blocked.
Can the auto-blacklist threshold and manual blacklisting by staff coexist? Yes. The automatic threshold is just an extra safety net — staff can still manually blacklist a customer from their customer detail page at any time; the two aren't mutually exclusive.
Is the daily booking limit counted per customer or per service? It's the total number of bookings the same customer creates that day, regardless of service.
Troubleshooting
- Customer says they can't find a time slot they want: First check whether "Minimum notice" or "Booking window" excludes that slot, then confirm Opening Hours actually has that time open.
- Customer complains they can't reschedule or cancel on their own: Check whether they're already inside the "Cancellation / reschedule deadline," or have hit the "Reschedule limit."
- Multi-slot booking options are greyed out or not visible: The "Allow multi-slot bookings" master toggle must be on first before the sub-settings appear.