The scheduling algorithm
Decide which times customers are offered — how many options per day, how strictly you filter on driving time, and what changes when you adjust them.
Your schedule decides when someone could work. This page decides which of those moments your customer actually sees. Nothing here changes who can be booked or how long an appointment takes — that lives in duration and availability.
How a time becomes an option
For every day, Schedulinq runs the same five steps. The settings below only make sense once you know where each one takes effect.
Collect the possible times
Your staff's working hours produce every moment the appointment would fit. Nothing is selected out yet.
Give each moment a score
Every moment gets a score between 0 and 1. That score is mostly travel efficiency: how well the moment connects to the appointments before and after it. A small bonus is added when there is already an appointment nearby that day, and something is taken off when the moment splits a free block in two with nothing useful left in either half.
Filter out the weak ones
Anything below a certain score is dropped. That line is what Cutoff strictness sets.
Narrow it down to a few options
What is left is reduced to the number in Options per day, spread across the working day: the day is divided into that many bands, and the best-scoring option in each band survives.
Rescue empty days that are close
If a day within the next week ends up with nothing, but did have a workable moment, the best one is shown anyway. Further out it is not: an empty week is the signal to look later.
Include driving from the office
Include driving from the office
Default: onCounts the drive from your business address to the first appointment of the day, and the drive back after the last one.
Switch this on if your people start at the office: the first and last times of a day then move inward to leave room for those drives, so your customer is never offered a time you cannot actually make. If your people leave from home, that travel is not yours to plan and you switch it off — otherwise you give away room at the edges of the day that genuinely exists.
Fill direction
Fill direction
Default: No preferenceDecides whether offered times are spread across the day or pushed against one end of it.
On a day that is still empty this does more than the on-screen description suggests. With No preference your customer gets several moments spread across that day. Choose Start of day or End of day and an empty day collapses to a single moment, flush to the beginning or the end. That is exactly what the setting is for — the rest of the day stays free for work you schedule yourself — but it also means your customer has less to choose from.
Options per day
Options per day
1 to 10Default: 3How many times a customer is offered on a single day, across all your staff.
More options means more choice for the customer, but also more of your day that can be given away. Fewer options keeps the day flexible for work you still have to schedule yourself. Three works for most businesses: enough choice to book, little risk of your day filling up in one go.
It is a ceiling, not a promise. A short day, a long appointment, or a day that is already fairly full leaves room for fewer — and that is fine: three usable times beat eight that get in each other's way.
Cutoff strictness
Strictness
Default: MediumThe minimum score a moment has to reach to be shown at all.
This is the most noticeable control on the page, and the only one most businesses ever need to touch. Strict only shows times that fit tightly against what is already booked: less choice for the customer, but short drives and full days. Lenient shows almost everything: your agenda fills faster, but you drive more. Medium sits in between and is where you start.
If customers are seeing too few times, move it one step more lenient before you touch anything else. If you are driving too much, one step stricter.
Gradual cutoff for near-future slots
Gradual cutoff
Default: onLets the line above move with how far away the date is.
On: the bar is lower for the next few days and climbs to your chosen strictness over about fourteen working days. That fills next week's gaps while leaving room further out for appointments that fit the route better. Off: the same strictness everywhere, whether it is tomorrow or three weeks away.
The worked example on the page
Below the toggle, Schedulinq converts the chosen strictness into something tangible: how many minutes of driving an appointment is still allowed to cost.
Set the strictness to Strict and both numbers visibly drop:
Switch the gradual cutoff off and one limit remains, applied everywhere:
What is not on this page
When too few times show up, the cause is more often somewhere else than here:
- How long an appointment takes and who may perform it — on the appointment type itself.
- How soon and how far ahead customers may book — under Online booking → Booking rules.
- Who works when — under Team → Schedule.
- How far you drive — under Company → Service area.
The full search is described in duration and availability.
Frequently asked questions
I changed something and see no difference. First check whether there were any times to filter at all. If nobody is rostered or the appointment type is not bookable, no setting here will change that. And if you adjusted Fill direction on a day that is already busy, a small or invisible effect is normal.
Customers only see one time per day. Almost always Fill direction: set it back to No preference.
Dates further out have fewer options than next week. That is Gradual cutoff, and it is intended. If you want the same amount of choice everywhere, switch it off.
Which setting should I change first? Strictness. One step more lenient or stricter does more than all the other controls combined, and it is easy to undo.