You can offer appointment windows to your clients by limiting available start times and customizing your communications. For example, you might let clients choose the two-hour window during which their service technician arrives.
Note: Later appointments won’t shift if earlier appointments end sooner than expected.
Step 1 - Create appointments for your time windows
To create an appointment type for your time window:
- Create a new appointment type.
- Choose an appointment name and description that clearly describes the appointment type as a time window. For example, you might name your appointment type Two-Hour Delivery Window, and your description might be Your technician will arrive within the window you choose.
- Set the appointment duration to match the length of the time window you want to offer in minutes. For example, for a three-hour window, set it to 180 minutes.
- Instead of setting your availability as time ranges that you’re open, list out the specific times that time windows can begin. For example, if you offer three-hour windows from 8 AM to 5 PM, enter 8 AM, 11 AM, 2 PM.
Step 2 - Communicate your time windows
To update Acuity’s communications to your clients to reference your time windows:
- In the Customize appearance panel, update the scheduling instructions at the top of your scheduler to let clients know that they’re booking time windows, not specific appointment times.
- Update your confirmation message to state that the client has chosen a window during which their appointment will begin.
Customize your automated email notification templates The default templates are tailored for appointments with fixed start and end times. Edit all your templates to reflect that these are windows for when the appointment will begin. In particular, look for the %time% tag, which inserts the appointment start time.