Limit when clients can book, edit, or cancel their appointments

Customize your availability settings to help you manage booking windows and appointment changes.

You can use scheduling limits to set how soon or far in advance clients can book, if and when they can reschedule or cancel appointments, or edit their intake form answers. You can set account-wide limits, and limits for specific calendars and availability groups.

Also available: Use resources to limit bookings

Tip: Register for our webinar Preparing to book: Customizing and sharing your Acuity schedule where we'll teach you how to adjust availability and scheduling limits to get the most out of Acuity.

Set limits that apply to all calendars

Your global scheduling limits apply to all of your Acuity calendars, but they can be overridden by calendar-specific scheduling limits.

Your global scheduling limits control:

• How far in advance clients can book appointments
• If clients can reschedule or cancel their own appointments, or edit intake forms
• How close to the appointment time clients can reschedule, cancel, or edit intake forms
• How your appointment start time intervals are calculated
• Minimize gaps and look busy settings
• The time zone your appointment times display in on your scheduler

Edit global scheduling limits

To add or edit your global scheduling limits for all calendars:

1. Open the Availability panel and click Global Scheduling Limits.
2. Use the General, Start Time Intervals, Minimize Gaps, Look Busy, and Time Zone tabs to view or update different scheduling limits.
3. Click Save Changes.

Set limits for specific calendars

You can set different scheduling limits for each of your Acuity calendars, or for a specific group of appointment types. Calendar scheduling limits will override your global scheduling limits. 

Your calendar scheduling limits control:

• How far in advance clients can book appointments
• How close to the appointment time clients can reschedule or cancel
• How many appointments can be scheduled per time slot
• The maximum amount of appointments that can be booked on that calendar or group per day or per week

Edit calendar scheduling limits

To add or edit scheduling limits for a specific calendar:

1. Open the Availability panel. 
2. If you have more than one calendar or appointment group, click Edit Availability/Limits on one of them.
3. Click Calendar Scheduling Limits.
4. Make any changes to the limits.
5. Click Save Limits.

Set how far in advance clients can book appointments

You can use ‌global and calendar scheduling limits to control how many days or hours in advance clients can book appointments before the start time.

Prevent clients from rescheduling or canceling appointments

To turn off the option that allows clients to reschedule or cancel appointments, edit your global scheduling limits. For calendar-specific limits, set how far in advance clients can cancel or reschedule.

To disable the option for clients to reschedule, cancel, or edit forms on all calendars:

1. Open the Availability panel and click Global Scheduling Limits.
2. In the General tab, uncheck the box for Reschedule Appointments or Cancel Appointments.
3. Click Save Changes.

Set how far in advance clients can cancel or reschedule

You can use global and calendar scheduling limits to control how many days or hours in advance clients can cancel or reschedule appointments before the start time.

Control how clients edit intake forms after booking

Use your global scheduling limits to set when clients can edit their intake form answers, or prevent them from editing their answers after booking.

To prevent clients from editing their intake form answers:

1. Open the Availability panel and click Global Scheduling Limits.
2. Uncheck Edit Intake Forms.
3. Click Save Changes.

To allow clients to edit their intake form answers:

1. Open the Availability panel and click Global Scheduling Limits.
2. Check Edit Intake Forms.
3. Select Always allowed, even after their appointment, or select Allowed up to and set the number of hours before the appointment clients can edit their form answers.
4. Click Save Changes.

Set an appointment maximum per calendar or availability group

By default, clients can book appointments until there are no more times left. To set a maximum number of hours or appointments that can be scheduled per week on each calendar or availability group, edit the appointment maximum setting.

To set an appointment maximum for a specific calendar or availability group:

1. Open the Availability panel. 
2. Click the calendar name, then click Edit Availability/Limits.
3. Click Calendar Scheduling Limits.
4. Select Accept a max number of appointments, then check either Max hours per day, Max number per day, or Max number per week to set the amount of appointments.
5. Click Save Limits.