How can you avoid double-booked appointments?
Only free times are offered, and a request holds its time from the moment it’s sent.
Running your business
Overlapping appointments are one of the most frequent headaches of a schedule kept by hand. 4appointments cuts them down by offering customers only free times and by holding a time as soon as a request arrives.
The public booking page works out free times from each provider’s weekly schedule, exceptions and blocks, and from the bookings that already exist. A time that’s taken with the same provider isn’t offered. Different providers can, of course, be booked at the same time.
A booking request holds its time even while it’s pending, so a second customer can’t take the same slot while you’re still deciding. If two people try to take the same time at once, only one succeeds and the other sees a message that the slot was just taken.
In the service settings you can set a pause, labeled “Interval (min)”, which is added after bookings, for example for cleanup or preparation. It applies to bookings made on the public page, not to bookings your team enters. When your team creates a booking, the system checks the provider’s availability, overlaps and busy blocks imported from external calendars through ICS links, which refresh about every 15 minutes. There’s no two-way sync.
To take yourself off the calendar, add a block or an exception under “Availability”. A pending request that nobody confirms or rejects is canceled automatically about an hour after the end of the requested time, which frees the slot again, so it pays to check your pending list regularly.
What to remember
- ✓Only free times are shown to customers on the public page
- ✓A pending request holds its time until it’s confirmed, rejected or expires
- ✓Pauses after bookings leave room for prep, and ICS links can bring in busy blocks
Common questions
What if two customers book at exactly the same time?+
Only one request gets the slot. The other customer sees a message that the slot was just taken and can choose another time.
Can I block off a time slot on the calendar myself?+
Yes. Under “Availability” you can mark a provider as blocked for a period, such as a break, a holiday or an internal meeting, and it won’t be offered to customers. Group sessions with several participants aren’t supported: each booking takes one slot with one provider for one service.
More guides for you
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