Updated Mar 14, 2024
After creating a scheduler template, you can customize your scheduler further. One of those customizations involves setting limits to how many appointments get booked.
In a scheduler template’s Advanced tab, four main settings impact appointment intervals:
Prevention
Buffer time
Increments
Appointment details
This article describes how to use these settings to control your appointment availability.
⛔ Heads up! The settings listed in this article monitor appointment availability based on the brand owner’s calendar only, not multi-users.
Prevention
Set a number to stop clients from booking within a certain number of hours of an appointment time. This is helpful so that you don't get last-minute appointments.
For example, typing in 24 will remove all available time slots that are within 24 hours of the current time, so your client can’t book those appointment times.
Buffer time
Create windows of time between time slots that are blocked off. This is helpful so you have padding between appointments if it runs long or for travel time between appointments.
You can add a buffer before an appointment, after the appointment, or both.
⛔ Heads up! Buffer times stack together, which means that 15 minutes before and 15 minutes after an appointment will result in a total of 30 minutes being blocked off.
For example, let’s say you have an appointment from 1:00-1:30. If your scheduler shows time slots every 15 minutes, the scheduler will show availability for 12:00 and 2:00.
Increments
Choose which start times are displayed. This helps manage the times that appointments can start.
The available appointment start times shown to clients are based on the scheduler availability you set in the Basic tab.
By default, the scheduler will show appointment start times in 30 minute increments. This would show available appointment times as:
9:00
9:30
10:00
If you wanted more time slots, you could decrease the increments to 15 minutes. This would show available appointment times as:
9:00
9:15
9:30
9:45
10:00
Appointment details
Appointment details allow you to set limits on appointments. By default, there are no limits.
There are two types of appointment limits you can set:
Set a limit on appointments per day
Set a limit on appointments per scheduler
After reaching the limit, clients who try to schedule an appointment with you will receive an error message and can’t book an appointment.
👋 Here’s a tip… If a client books an appointment but then cancels, the scheduler will reopen appointment times for other clients.
Set a daily limit on appointments
The setting Allow maximum # appointments per day restricts the maximum amount of appointments scheduled in one calendar day. This helps limit how many appointments get booked in one day.
⛔ Heads up! This number is specific for each scheduler template. For example, if you allow 3 appointments for “coaching calls” and 5 appointments for “initial intake”, then you could have up to 8 appointments in one day.
Limit how often the scheduler is used
The setting Allow this scheduler to be used # time(s) restricts the number of appointments booked using the specific scheduler template after the max is reached. This is helpful if you are offering a promotion.
For example, if you offer free calls to the first 5 clients who book an appointment, set the max bookings to 5. After the first 5 appointments are booked, the scheduler will not allow more appointments.