How can I stop Online Booking from creating gaps in my appointment calendar? (Smart Booking)

This guide will explain what the Smart Booking setting does in your Online Booking Rules, and how to enable it.

What Does the Smart Booking Setting Do?

Smart Booking is a feature that minimizes gaps in your appointment calendar by limiting the available booking slots shown to clients in online booking and in the Appointment Planner.

When enabled, instead of showing every possible booking slot, your online booking and Appointment Planner will only offer availability if the new booking touches:

• the start of the day
• the end of the day
• the start or end of an existing booking
• the start or end of a staff break

The examples below show how availability is affected when attempting to book a 30-minute service. In the image below, all available slots are either at the start or end of a day, or are touching the start or end of an existing appointment or staff break.

The image below shows the same calendars, but displays the slots that will be unavailable despite the staff having availability.

Trade-Off When Using Smart Booking

It is important to keep in mind that, because the Smart Booking system is more selective, fewer slots will be shown online for clients. However, those slots are of higher quality and help keep your schedule optimized.

Enabling Smart Booking

To enable Smart Booking, go to Manager > Settings > Online > Booking Rules > Change Smart booking to Yes, and click Save to finish.