Real availability

The times a customer is offered are not a grid of your opening hours. They are worked out from everything Bookables knows about your day, which is what makes online booking safe to leave switched on.

What goes into a slot being offered

Your business hours. The outer boundary. Nothing is offered outside them. See Business hours and availability.

Date overrides. Holidays and odd days beat the weekly pattern.

Existing bookings. Anything already on the calendar takes its time out of the pool.

The service duration. A ninety minute job needs a ninety minute hole, not a ninety minute start time in a sixty minute gap.

Travel time. For work at the customer's address, the drive is accounted for. A slot is only offered if you could realistically get there from wherever you already are, and get to whatever is next.

Who can do it. Only staff assigned to that service count, and only when they are free.

Resources. If the service needs a room, a machine or a second person, that has to be free too.

Territory rules. The customer's area can carry its own lead time and its own hours.

Why this matters

Most booking software offers a grid and leaves you to sort out the mess. That works until it does not, and the day it does not you are apologising to a customer at 3pm on the other side of town.

Because availability here is computed from your real constraints, a customer cannot book you somewhere you cannot be.

Lead time

Set a booking lead time per territory to stop people booking you for twenty minutes from now. It is the amount of notice you need, and slots inside it are not offered.

When there are no slots

If nothing fits, the customer is not shown an empty calendar and left to guess. Where the service supports it they can send a request instead, and you come back to them.

What is next

Next: Appearance and content.