Troubleshoot Your Appointments Availability
With Square Appointments, you can maximize your online booking availability by adding staff hours, blocking extra time or adding a Fake-It filter so your clients can book with ease. If your online booking site isn’t displaying available time slots as intended, there are a few places you can check to find out why.
Check Staff Availability and Hours
Make sure the staff members’ hours are enabled for the date/time in question from your online Square Dashboard:
Click on Customers > Appointments > click Staff.
Click on the staff member you wish to review or update.
Click Manage Staff Locations.
Update the availabilities for each day and each location and click Done.
You can always edit staff availabilities as a one-time change or recurring schedule from the Calendar tab of your Appointments dashboard.
Availability per day can be split into separate time slots by selecting the + sign next to each completed time slot. For example, under ‘Edit Availability’, next to the relevant date and time, click + and enter another open and close time. Click Done.
Check Staff Calendar for Existing Appointments or Personal Events
Check if the staff member has an existing appointment or personal event blocking that time slot. Events being imported from a synced Google Calendar may block availability and must be removed from the Google end to make the slot available.
If a personal event was created from the Appointments calendar, unchecking the Block Time box within the event details will make this slot available for online booking.
Check Service Settings for Blocked Time
Check if the appointment prior to the time slot in question has had extra block time added to it. Block time is enabled in the service settings, and can be disabled on a per-appointment basis from the appointment details.
Any block time enabled for a service is added to the service duration. For example, a 1-hour service with 10 minutes of block time creates a 70-minute slot.
Check Your Online Scheduling Preferences and Scheduling Policy
Online scheduling settings determine which time slots are displayed as available and when they can be selected. Go to Settings on your Appointments dashboard to check:
- According to service duration: splits your availability into time slots that match the duration of the service. For example, 20-minute services will split your available time into 20-minute slots.
- On the quarter hour: displays available slots on the quarter hour. For example: 3:00, 3:15, 3:30, 3:45.
- On the half hour: displays available slots on the half hour. For example: 3:00, 3:30, 4:00.
- On the hour: displays available slots at the top of the hour. For example: 3:00, 4:00, 5:00.
This setting asks that clients book a minimum amount of time in advance, from one hour to one week. If appointments must be made one day in advance, the client must book at least 24 hours before the start of the appointment.
This setting prevents customers from booking too far in advance, which comes in handy if you don’t know what your schedule will look like a few weeks/months out. For example, clients can only request an appointment within a week of the service date and time.