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Setting how soon or how far in advance clients can schedule
Setting how soon or how far in advance clients can schedule

New Appointment Policies: lead time and the future

Matt Tucker avatar
Written by Matt Tucker
Updated over a week ago

Schedulista provides online appointment scheduling software for your business or organization to allow your clients to book with you 24/7.

Various scheduling policies allow you to set when clients will see appointment times to book with you. Setting lead time and how far in the future clients can schedule appointments will adjust how soon and how far in advance clients can book with you online.

Contents:

How soon: Setting new appointment lead time

Lead time is the minimum amount of time before the next available appointment time appears in the scheduler.  This is helpful to create a gap to prevent a client scheduling an appointment you are not prepared for.

(1) On the web app: Go to Settings > Scheduling Policies

On the mobile app (version 7.3 and above): Tap on Scheduling Policies under the Configure section on the Settings tab

(2) Scroll down to the New Appointment Policies section

(3) Below the question "How much lead time do you require for new appointments?," select the desired length of time

Note: You can select as short as 30 minutes prior to an available appointment time or as long as 14 days. You also have the option of no lead time so that clients can schedule an appointment at any point up to the available appointment time.

(4) On the web app: Click Save at the bottom of the page

On the mobile app: Tap Save at the bottom of the page, then tap on Done at the top of the page to return to the Settings tab

Examples

With a 4-hour lead time, if a client were scheduling at 7:59 am, the earliest a client would see an appointment time for the same day would be 12:00 pm.  At 8:00 am, the 12:00 pm appointment time would no longer be available. If a client visited at 10:21 am, the earliest appointment time they could see on that day would be 2:30 pm.

With a 24-hour lead time, and with availability between 9:00 am to 5:00 pm, a client scheduling at 6:00 pm on Monday would not see available appointment times for the next day.  The next earliest available time they would see would be Wednesday at 9:00 am.

How in advance: Setting how far in the future clients can schedule appointments

How far in the future sets how far out clients could see available appointment times in the scheduler. This is a rolling setting: each day advances another day in the future.

(1) On the web app: Go to Settings > Scheduling Policies

On the mobile app (version 7.3 and above): Tap on Scheduling Policies under the Configure section on the Settings tab

(2) Scroll down to the New Appointment Policies section

(3) Below the question "How far in the future can clients book appointments online?," select the length of time into the future that appointment times will be available for clients to schedule.

Note: You can select as short as 1 day into the future up to as long as 3 years. Settings by weeks assume 7-day weeks; 2 weeks is 14 days, 4 weeks is 28 days, etc. Settings by months assume 30-day months; 2 months is 60 days, 6 months is 180 days.

(4) On the web app: Click Save at the bottom of the page

On the mobile app: Tap Save at the bottom of the page, then tap on Done at the top of the page to return to the Settings tab


keywords: policy, policies, new, appointment, scheduling, lead time, how far, future, availability, times

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