Preventing double-booked appointments

Only free timings are offered, and a request holds its timing from the moment it is sent.

Managing your business

Overlapping appointments are one of the commonest headaches of a manually kept schedule. 4appointments reduces them by offering clients only free timings and by holding a timing as soon as a request arrives.

The public booking page works out free timings from each provider’s weekly schedule, exceptions and blocks, and from the bookings that already exist. A timing taken by the same provider is not offered, although different providers can of course be booked at the same time. Each booking takes one slot with one provider for one service; group classes with a capacity are not supported.

A booking request holds its timing even while it is pending, so a second client cannot take the same slot while you are still deciding. If two people try to take the same timing together, only one succeeds and the other sees a message that the slot was just taken.

In the service settings you can set a pause, labelled “Interval (min)”, which is added after bookings, for example for cleaning or preparation. It is taken from the service being booked and applies to bookings from the public page, not to bookings your team enters. When your team creates a booking in the panel, the system checks the provider’s availability and overlaps, and also the busy blocks imported from external calendars through ICS links, refreshed about every 15 minutes. There is no two-way synchronisation.

To take yourself off the calendar, add a block or an exception under “Availability”. A pending request that nobody confirms or rejects is cancelled 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.

Key points

  • ✓Only free timings are shown to clients on the public page
  • ✓A pending request holds its timing until it is confirmed, rejected or expires
  • ✓Pauses after bookings and busy blocks from an external ICS calendar leave room for preparation

Common questions

What happens if two clients book at exactly the same moment?+

Only one request gets the slot. The other client sees a message that the slot was just taken and can choose another timing.

Can I block a timing manually?+

Yes. Under “Availability” you can mark a provider as blocked for a period, for example a break, a holiday or an internal meeting, and it will no longer be offered to clients.

More guides

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