Booking rules
Decide when customers may book, how far ahead, and until when they can cancel themselves — and recognise when one of those rules is emptying your booking page.
Your appointment types decide what a customer can book. This page decides when. Four settings between them cut pieces out of your booking page: today, the far future, and the stretch just before an appointment.
The awkward part: none of the four shows you what it did. You type a number, click Save, and the page confirms only that it saved — not that you have just removed the next three available times. So this guide starts with which symptom belongs to which rule.
Six settings. The first four decide when booking is allowed; the last two change how the booking page behaves.
Customers see no times? Start here
Work through this table before you touch the settings themselves. The symptom almost always names the rule responsible.
| What your customer sees | Likely cause | Where to fix it |
|---|---|---|
| Today is never available, tomorrow is | Allow same-day bookings is off | Turn it on |
| Today only opens up late in the afternoon | Minimum booking notice is high | Lower the number of minutes |
| Today stays empty even though same-day is on | A notice of 1440 minutes is a full day | Lower it substantially |
| Nothing selectable beyond a few weeks out | Maximum booking range is low | Raise the number of days |
| Customers phone to cancel instead of doing it themselves | Cancellation & reschedule deadline is high | Lower it, or set it to 0 |
| No times at all, in any week | This is not this page | See Duration and availability |
Same-day bookings
Allow same-day bookings
Default: offWith this off, the earliest bookable day is always tomorrow — however much room is left in today's calendar.
This is the bluntest of the rules: it removes an entire day in one click. Use it if you never want same-day work at all, and otherwise reach for the booking notice below, which controls the same thing far more precisely.
Minimum booking notice
0 – 1440 minutesOnly appears once Allow same-day bookings above is on — with no bookings today, there is nothing for a notice period to apply to.
The minimum number of minutes between now and the next bookable appointment. At 120 minutes an appointment ninety minutes from now is no longer offered; three hours from now is.
This is how you give yourself travel and preparation time without closing the day entirely. Work backwards from the point in the morning when you know what your day looks like: set it too low and something lands in your schedule that you cannot physically reach in time.
Maximum booking range
Maximum booking range
Default: 365 daysHow far ahead customers may look. At 90 days the calendar on your booking page runs three months out and then stops.
Keeping it short helps when your rota is not fixed far ahead — it avoids bookings you will have to move later. Too short works against you for services people plan well in advance. Pick the period you would genuinely commit to today.
Cancellation & reschedule deadline
Cancellation & reschedule deadline
Default: 1 day0 = always allowedThe number of days before an appointment within which the customer can no longer cancel or reschedule it themselves. At 2 days a customer can move things up to two days beforehand; after that only you can.
This trades your planning against your phone. The higher you set it, the fewer last-minute cancellations you absorb — and the more often customers ring you because they can no longer do it themselves. Set it to 0 if you would rather people cancel than simply not turn up.
Email verification
Email verification
Recommended: onRequires a customer to confirm their email address with a one-time code before the booking is final.
This is the only brake on fake bookings. Without it anyone can book under any email address, including someone else's.
Switch it off and Schedulinq asks for confirmation first, naming two concrete risks. They are worth reading: the second is why this setting is on by default.
The two remaining settings
Compact booking group on cancel
Default: offOnly relevant when one customer books several appointments in a row. If one is cancelled, the ones after it shift earlier so no gap is left.
Useful for back-to-back blocks. Leave it off if your customers deliberately book at fixed moments — then a shifted appointment is more disruptive than a gap.
Let customers choose their specialist
Default: offAdds a step to the booking page where the customer picks who performs the appointment — or leaves it to Schedulinq.
Turn it on when customers have a standing preference. The cost is planning room: a customer who picks one person sees only that person's free moments, and therefore far fewer times.
Saving
Changes only take effect once you click Save. The button stays grey until something has actually changed.
Frequently asked questions
I turned same-day booking on but today stays empty. Look at the booking notice underneath it. At, say, 480 minutes today only opens eight hours from now — and past mid-afternoon nothing that late still falls inside your working hours.
Does the booking notice apply to tomorrow as well? Not in practice. It counts from now, and tomorrow is always more than 24 hours away — unless it is already late in the evening. For days further out it changes nothing.
Can I still schedule inside the notice period myself? Yes. All of these rules apply only to customers on the public booking page. You and your team schedule whatever is needed.
Why can my customer no longer cancel? The appointment most likely falls inside the cancellation deadline. You can still change or cancel it from the appointment itself.