Appointment settings

This is where you stop bookings you can't fulfil before they ever reach your calendar — and where the controls that quietly shape your whole booking page live. A few of them are easy to miss but change everything customers see, so this page is worth a proper look.

Each setting is a row. Click a row to open its panel, change what you need, and click Save — every panel saves on its own, and changes only ever apply to new bookings, never the ones already on your calendar.

Open in app: Booking settings

Decide every booking yourself before it confirms

By default bookings confirm instantly and drop onto your calendar. To check each one first, open Booking Approval and turn on Manual Approval — new bookings then go to your requests list instead.

Set How long do you need to respond? (1 hour up to 48 hours), then choose what happens if you run out of time: Auto-cancel (recommended — a stale request frees the slot) or Auto-approve (the booking confirms without you). This timeout is the part most owners forget to set, then wonder why old requests vanish overnight.

Fix "customers can't book soon enough" — or too far ahead

Open Booking Windows & Limits. Two separate settings decide how soon a customer can book, and either one can block a same-day booking on its own:

• Minimum booking notice — how far ahead a booking must be made (for example, 2 hours).
• Same-day booking cutoff — a clock time after which same-day bookings stop entirely (for example, after 2pm, no more bookings for today). Set it to No cutoff to allow same-day bookings right up to your notice limit.

If customers complain they can't book today, it's almost always one of these two. The same panel also sets how far ahead customers may book and a per-customer limit on open bookings.

These limits are enforced at booking time, not just on the calendar. When a customer books through the online funnel, the mobile app, or via the AI assistant, the server checks minimum notice, same-day cutoff, advance window, per-customer limit, blackout dates, and buffer time before confirming the booking — even if the customer navigated to the slot via a deep link or the page sat open for a while. Bookings made directly by an owner or staff member (from the schedule or admin tools) are not blocked by these limits.

Control the exact times customers see

Still in Booking Windows & Limits, the Time slot interval is the hidden lever behind your booking page. It decides the start times on offer — set it to 15 minutes and customers see 9:00, 9:15, 9:30; set it to 30 and they see 9:00, 9:30. A wider interval gives a tidier page and fewer awkward gaps; a tighter one fills your day more densely. Most businesses never touch it and don't realise they can.

Buffer time between appointments adds an automatic break after every booking — handy for cleanup or notes — without you blocking it by hand.

Let last-minute bookings run past closing

By default a booking can't be made if it would finish after you close. Turn on Flexible end times and a late booking is allowed to run over — then Maximum overtime minutes (15 to 60) caps how far past closing you'll let it go. This is how you catch the 5:45pm walk-in for a service that ends at 6:15 without leaving the slot un-bookable. It's off by default, so if you want those bookings, you have to switch it on.

Show a notice or ask for extra info at checkout

Open Custom Information Sections to add blocks of text that appear at the very end of the booking flow, just before the customer taps confirm — parking directions, a deposit reminder, a policy they should see. You can add up to five; each has a title (up to 100 characters) and body (up to 2000), and you can reorder them with the up and down arrows. Because they sit on the confirm step, they're the last thing a customer reads — use them for the one thing you don't want missed.

Set drop-off timing (drop-off businesses)

If your Service Model is Drop Off, an Earliest drop-off row appears inside the same Booking Windows & Limits panel, right beside Time slot interval and Buffer time between appointments (it's hidden for appointment businesses — switch the model first if you don't see it). It sets how early before their service a customer may drop off — the pet then waits until it's its turn. Choose one option: Just before service, 1 hour before, 2 hours before, 4 hours before, or Any time after we open (the widest, and the most common grooming setup).

Customers pick their drop-off time from the same time-slot grid as regular bookings, and each option shows an Est. ready by time below it. Behind the scenes the booking engine holds the pet and starts the service as soon as a spot is free, so the ready time stays as tight as possible — it never pads the wait just to fill the window. A wide window means early droppers wait for their turn, which is expected. The buffer between services isn't affected by this setting.

For the full picture — recommended settings per business type, how the timing controls combine, and troubleshooting — see Drop-off scheduling and Earliest drop-off.

Require a card to hold a booking

Payment Protection lets you make customers save a card before they can book (the Require Card for Booking toggle), so a no-show fee is enforceable. It needs a connected payment account first; once connected, the panel shows the account status. The cancellation and no-show fees themselves live in Booking policies.

Pack your day so staff aren't sat idle

Open Day packing to tell the booking engine how you want your day to fill. Every customer's booking page already lifts a small Suggested times cluster (up to 3 slots) to the top of the list — position, not a star icon, is what marks them as best-fit. This setting controls what "best" means for your business and, optionally, narrows down the times shown on near-term days.

Day shape is the first choice:

• Front-load — customers are steered toward your earliest open times, so your day fills from opening. Good for businesses that want staff done and out by mid-afternoon.
• Back-load — customers are steered toward your latest open times, so the day fills toward closing. Useful if you take walk-ins in the morning and want structured bookings clustered at the end.
• Balanced — no time-of-day preference. The engine still recommends slots that keep the day compact (avoiding a lone 9am and a lone 4pm with nothing in between), but doesn't favour morning or evening.

The Concentrate on busy staff toggle steers new bookings toward staff who already have work that day. When it's on, another staff member's day stays free — good for businesses where a free staff member can take walk-ins, handle admin, or leave early.

Below that, a second control — How many times customers see — decides how hard to narrow the times shown on near-term days. It's a single strength scale with four options:

• Show all (off) — customers see every open time; nothing is trimmed.
• Light — near-term days narrow gently; customers still see most of your open times.
• Medium — the next few days narrow to a small handful of times; days further out still show everything.
• Strong — near-term days show just a few times, nudging customers firmly toward the slots you want to fill.

Each level sets its own curve of how many days out steering starts, how tight it gets, and how quickly it eases back to showing everything — you don't configure those directly. Picking Fine-tune (shown once a level above "Show all" is selected) exposes two knobs if you want to adjust the outcome:

• Fewest times shown — how many times appear at the tightest point (1–50).
• When to start narrowing — a slider from "as soon as a day gets its first booking" to "only once a day is nearly full", so quiet days can be left showing everything for longer.

What this does not do:

• It does not move or cancel existing bookings. Changing the level only changes which times new customers can pick from that point on.
• It is not a capacity or availability block. Your booking AI and staff can still book any feasible time — narrowed-out times are only hidden from the customer booking page, not from you.
• Your own schedule view is never filtered — only the customer-facing booking page is affected, regardless of which level is selected.

Tips

• Nothing applies backwards. Change a rule and only future bookings follow it — existing bookings keep the rules they were made under. To move them, reschedule by hand.
• Two settings block same-day bookings, not one: Minimum booking notice and Same-day booking cutoff. Check both.
• Booking limits are enforced at the moment of confirm, across all channels. A customer who lands on a slot via a shared link or the AI assistant gets the same rules as one on your booking page.
• Owners and staff are never blocked. Owner/staff bookings made from the schedule or admin drawer skip the window and limit checks — walk-ins and manual bookings always go through.
• Flexible end times is off until you turn it on — last-minute over-closing bookings simply won't appear otherwise.
• Time slot interval changes the customer's view instantly — widen it if your booking page feels cluttered with odd times.
• Turning the narrowing level back to "Show all" does not un-pack a day already shaped by it. Existing bookings stay; only future customer offers change.
• The Suggested times cluster always applies, even at "Show all". It lifts your best-fit slots to the top of the list by position — no icon marks them. Only "Light", "Medium", or "Strong" actually remove times from the customer page; "Show all" never hides anything.
• Day packing never affects your own view. Whichever level is selected, the schedule and all owner or staff booking tools always show every available time — only the customer-facing booking page is filtered.

Related

• Appointment calendar — where these rules play out on real bookings.
• Booking policies — cancellation deadlines, fees, and card capture.
• Appointment requests — your queue when Manual Approval is on.