In this article:
- What Scheduling Limits Are
- Default Scheduling Limits
- Scheduling limits for specific calendars or groups of appointment types
- Scheduling Limits and Group Classes
What Scheduling Limits Are⚓
Scheduling limits are settings that control when clients can book or edit appointments. Scheduling limits control:
- How far in advance clients can book appointments on your scheduling page.
- Whether or not clients have access to reschedule or cancel their own appointments.
- How far before a booked appointment clients can reschedule/cancel.
- How often appointments will be offered on your scheduling page.
- Whether or not clients are able to edit intake forms after scheduling.
There are two types of scheduling limits:
- Default scheduling limits affect your entire account.
- Scheduling limits for a specific calendar or for a group of appointments on a calendar only affect that calendar or group of appointments.
Some limits can be set in both the default scheduling limits and in the limits for specific calendars or groups of appointment types. In those cases, the limits on the specific calendar or appointment type group will override the default limits.
Default Scheduling Limits⚓
What they control
These limits apply as a default to all calendars and appointment groups. In cases where they conflict with a limit for a specific calendar or appointment group, Acuity will defer to the setting for the specific calendar or appointment group.
General Scheduling Limits
These settings allow you to control:
- How far in advance of an appointment clients can schedule, reschedule, or cancel appointments.
- Whether clients can reschedule their own appointments.
- Whether clients can cancel their own appointments.
- Whether clients can edit intake forms after submitting and, if so, whether there’s a cutoff for edits as the appointment approaches.
Start Time Intervals
You can set the interval at which appointments can start, or you can opt to have Acuity calculate it for you automatically.
If Acuity calculates this for you, it will find the lowest common denominator of your appointment durations (the largest number that can be divided into all of the appointment durations). So, if you have a 20-minute appointment type and a 10-minute appointment type, Acuity will offer slots starting every 10 minutes. If you have a 20-minute appointment type and a 15-minute appointment type, Acuity will will offer slots starting every 5 minutes.
Make Me Look Busy
This is a feature that can hide some open time slots from clients. Click here to learn more.
Minimize Gaps
This feature clusters appointments together, to avoid holes in your day. Click here to learn more.
How to edit default scheduling limits
- Go to Business Settings > Availability.
- In the top section of the page, click on the button that says Edit Default Limits.
- Make the changes you want.
- Click Save Limits.
Scheduling limits for specific calendars or groups of appointment types⚓
What they control
These limits apply only to the specific calendar or appointment group where you find them. For that space, they override default scheduling limits.
Minimum and maximum lead time
These settings control when clients are able to book with you. They take the form of two sentences:
- DO NOT ALLOW CLIENTS TO SCHEDULE FEWER THAN [] hours in advance and more than [] days in the future.
- DO NOT ALLOW CLIENTS TO CANCEL OR RESCHEDULE APPOINTMENTS LESS THAN [] hours in advance.
Appointments per time slot
This controls double booking. The number of appointments that you enter here will be the number of appointments that Acuity will allow to happen at the same time for this calendar or group of appointments.
Maximum appointments
This controls how many appointments total can be booked for this calendar or appointment type group. The limit must be set separately for each calendar or group. You can limit appointments by number per day or week or by hours per day.
How to edit specific scheduling limits
- Go to Business Settings > Availability.
- Find the calendar or appointment group you want and click Edit Availability/Limits.
- Click the Client Scheduling Limits tab at the top of the page.
- Make the changes you want.
- Click Save Limits.
Scheduling Limits and Group Classes⚓
The Scheduling Limits to control Appointments Per Time Slot and Maximum Appointments do not apply to group classes, as group classes have specific settings and are offered at specific times.
These limits only apply to regular appointment types.