Limit when clients can book, edit, or cancel their appointments.
You can use scheduling limits to decide when clients can reschedule or cancel appointments. Scheduling limits control the following:
- How far in advance clients can book appointments on your scheduling page
- If clients can reschedule or cancel their own appointments
- How close to a booked appointment clients can reschedule or cancel
- Which time slots your scheduling page offers
- If clients can edit intake forms after scheduling
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.
Global scheduling limits vs calendar scheduling limits
There are two kinds of scheduling limits:
- Global limits - apply to all of Acuity.
- Calendar limits - apply to a specific calendar, or to a specific group of appointment types on a calendar if you’re using availability and scheduling limits by appointment type.
Some scheduling limits are available as both global and calendar scheduling limits. For these settings, the calendar scheduling limit will override the global scheduling limit, but only for that calendar.
Review the table below to learn more about each setting:
| Setting | Description | Global scheduling limit | Calendar scheduling limit |
| Minimum hours | Decide how close to the appointment time clients can book. | ✓ | ✓ |
| Maximum days | Decide how far in advance of the appointment clients can book. | ✓ | ✓ |
| Minimum time to cancel or reschedule an appointment | If clients can reschedule appointments, also decide how close to the appointment they can do so | ✓ | ✓ |
| Allow clients to |
Reschedule appointments: Decide if clients can reschedule appointments. Cancel appointments: Decide if clients can cancel appointments. Edit intake forms: Decide if clients can edit intake forms, and how close to the appointment time they can make changes. |
✓ | - |
| Start time intervals | Have Acuity choose appointment start times based on appointment durations, or set the timing yourself. If you show start times based on appointment durations, Acuity will use the largest number that can be divided into all of the appointment durations. To learn more, visit Controlling start time intervals in Acuity. | ✓ | - |
| Minimize gaps |
Automatically reduce gaps between appointment times and group appointments to avoid holes in your day. To learn more, visit Look busy and minimize gaps in Acuity. |
✓ | - |
| Appointments per time slot | Set the number of appointments that can happen at one time on this calendar or appointment type group. | - | ✓ |
| Maximum appointments | Set the maximum number of appointments that can be booked for this calendar or appointment type group. Choose to accept appointments until fully booked, or set a maximum per day or week. | - | ✓ |
Edit global scheduling limits
To edit global scheduling limits:
- Open the Availability panel: I log in with an Acuity account | I log in with a Squarespace account.
- Click Global scheduling limits.
- Make any changes to the global scheduling limits.
- Click Save.
Edit calendar scheduling limits
To add or edit scheduling limits for a specific calendar:
- Open the Availability panel: I log in with an Acuity account | I log in with a Squarespace account.
- If you have more than one calendar, click Edit availability/limits on one of them.
- Click Calendar scheduling limits.
- Make any changes to the limits.
- Click Save limits.
How limits work
Start times that don't leave enough room for the duration of the appointment will not appear. For example, clients can't book a 60-minute appointment when you only have a 30-minute window, and they can't book a 60-minute appointment that starts 30 minutes before you're done for the day.
The start time interval that you set determines which start times to offer your clients. On the scheduler, the first time you're available will appear, then add your start time interval to get the next start time, and so on.