Features
Appointment scheduling with fixed and flexible booking
Compare Bookibles fixed appointments and reviewed requests, service capacity, duration, start intervals and calendar sync. Includes a printable planning worksheet.
Bookibles lets customers select a fixed appointment time or send a flexible request for the business to review. Set weekly hours, occupied duration, start intervals and optional capacity for each service. Capacity protects that service; it does not assign a shared practitioner or room across your menu.
By Bookibles Editorial Team · Reviewed by Bookibles Product Team · Updated
What you can control
| Control | What it does | What to check |
|---|---|---|
| Booking type | Fixed slots offer a date and start time; flexible requests collect details for coordination. | Choose a request when timing or suitability needs review. Date-only and time-only options also exist for workflows that do not need both. |
| Acceptance | Auto-accept confirms eligible submissions; turn it off to review pending bookings. | A pending fixed-slot booking can still occupy limited service capacity. |
| Service duration | Sets the interval occupied by an appointment. | Include the time that must be unavailable. Hiding duration on the public page does not create a separate internal duration. |
| Time-slot interval | Sets the spacing between offered start times. | A 30-minute interval does not shorten a 60-minute appointment. |
| Limit bookings per slot | Limits overlapping bookings for that service when enabled. | It does not reserve a practitioner or room across different services. |
| Weekly hours and breaks | Define recurring availability and periods that should not be offered. | Leave sufficient time for the last appointment to finish within the window. |
| Closures and custom dates | Change business availability for a particular date. | Check every affected service; this is not a service-only event calendar. |
| Service custom schedule | Constrains a service with its own recurring weekly windows. | Use deliberately non-overlapping windows when one person provides several services. |
| Google Calendar | On Pro and above, imports selected busy time and exports eligible dated bookings. | Imports and updates are asynchronous; Google-side edits do not reschedule a Bookibles booking. |
Duration and start intervals answer different questions
Duration answers “how long is this appointment occupied?” The start interval answers “how often may an appointment begin?” Bookibles has one configured duration, even when its public display is disabled.
Fictional example: a 60-minute appointment with a 30-minute start interval initially offers starts such as 9:00, 9:30, 10:00 and 10:30 when the schedule allows. With the service limit set to 1, a saved 10:00–11:00 appointment occupies the entire hour. Starts at 9:30, 10:00 and 10:30 conflict with that booking; 11:00 can remain available if the rest of the schedule permits it.
There is no separate per-booking buffer or processing-time allocation. Account for preparation and cleanup in the occupied duration, accurate schedule windows or breaks. Describe customer-facing treatment time separately in plain language when it differs from the time you need to keep unavailable.
Example 1: a predictable appointment
Fictional salon: a cut-and-finish service consistently occupies 60 minutes. The owner publishes accurate hours, uses fixed slots, enables Limit bookings per slot with a maximum of 1, and turns on auto-accept only when selecting an available time completes the real reservation process.
A customer selects the service and time, supplies their contact details and submits. Guest booking is supported. A successful auto-accepted submission is confirmed; another customer cannot use a prohibited overlapping allocation for that same limited service. If you turn auto-accept off, the submitted booking starts pending and needs your review.
A displayed numeric price is a fixed service price, not a deposit or starting-price control. Bookibles does not collect the payment. If a consultation must establish the price, use a pricing-disabled service and explain the next step.
Example 2: a consultation request that needs review
Fictional independent skin studio: a new client is unsure which nonmedical appointment to choose. Publish a consultation request with pricing disabled, select flexible booking and turn auto-accept off. Explain what information is useful and when you normally respond.
The customer sends a request rather than reserving a displayed time. Review the practical details, check your actual commitments and agree timing through an appropriate contact channel before representing the appointment as confirmed. Keep sensitive health histories out of ordinary booking comments; a flexible request is not a clinical-intake system.
In-app messaging applies to eligible signed-in customer relationships. Guest and manual bookings use the contact details provided for that booking. Flexible requests do not automatically receive a dated reminder or reserve a practitioner while you negotiate timing.
Example 3: two services share one practitioner
Two separate services can each accept their own capacity-one booking at 10:00. Bookibles does not know those services require the same practitioner. Do not use a successful same-service test as proof of cross-service protection.
For a suitable one-person workflow, publish cuts only from 9:00–12:00 and skin consultations only from 13:00–17:00. Check that each appointment finishes within its intended window. These service windows keep the published choices apart because you maintain the schedule, not because Bookibles allocates the person.
Reviewed requests are another option when you can coordinate each appointment manually. If clients must choose freely across simultaneous service menus while software protects shared staff, rooms or equipment, evaluate a resource-scheduling system before opening that menu.
Use Google Calendar with its timing limits in mind
On Pro and above, connect Google Calendar and select the calendars whose busy periods should affect date-and-time public availability. By default, this blocks services with capacity enabled and a limit of one. For other services, enable the connection’s additional option to block services that take more than one booking at a time; test the public result. Busy imports are scheduled every five minutes; worker delays and connection failures can extend the time before changes appear. Bookibles checks imported intervals when accepting a booking; it does not ask Google live at that moment.
Eligible dated bookings are written asynchronously to a dedicated Bookibles calendar, which is excluded from imported busy sources. Make rescheduling and status changes in Bookibles: editing its exported event in Google does not update the booking.
A new external event can arrive after a customer saw availability or after the booking was saved. Check connection health and review reported conflicts. Calendar sync supplements a correct service schedule; it is not immediate shared-practitioner protection.
Set up one service, then test the public result
The related setup guides below show the real service, weekly-schedule and booking-status controls with sample records.
- Set the business timezone, weekly hours, breaks and any dated closure before opening the service.
- Choose pricing, occupied duration, booking type, acceptance and capacity deliberately. Activate only the services ready for customers.
- Open the public page on a phone. Check its timezone, price, duration and first and last offered times.
- Submit a fictional test booking. Confirm the intended pending or confirmed state and the same-service capacity result.
- Test a different service that uses the same practitioner, then correct overlapping service windows or choose a reviewed workflow.
- Cancel the test booking and check that its allocation is released. Test any connected calendar separately after sync has completed.
Does this scheduling model fit your business?
| Suitable requirements | Requirements needing another system or separate process |
|---|---|
| A public service menu with guest booking and dependable appointment windows. | Automatic staff routing or shared room/equipment allocation across services. |
| One limited service, deliberately separated service schedules or manually reviewed requests. | A business-wide one-client-at-a-time rule across an overlapping menu. |
| An accurate occupied duration and straightforward time choices. | Separately allocated processing time, automatic buffers or multi-stage resource schedules. |
| Optional Google busy-time imports with understood delays. | Integrated payments, deposits, SMS or instant protection against every external calendar change. |
Scheduling questions
Can a pending request hold a slot? Yes. A pending fixed-slot booking can hold the applicable service allocation. A flexible request without a scheduled interval is a different workflow.
Does a shorter start interval allow more simultaneous appointments? It offers more potential start times. The duration and enabled service-capacity limit still govern overlapping bookings.
Can I hide the duration and reserve a different amount of time? Hiding duration affects display only. Configure the occupied duration honestly and explain the customer-facing appointment in the description.
Can I use this for one stylist offering several services? Yes, when deliberate service windows or manual review fit the operation. A separate service limit does not protect the stylist across an overlapping menu.
Appointment-planning worksheet
Print one copy for each distinct service. Complete the fields before sharing its booking link, then write the result of a public booking test. Use fictional records for the test and cancel them afterwards.
| Field | Your plan |
|---|---|
| Service name and public link | ________________________________ |
| Business timezone | ________________________________ |
| Booking type: fixed slot or flexible request | ________________________________ |
| Occupied duration and customer-facing description | ________________________________ |
| Start interval | ________________________________ |
| Per-service capacity | ________________________________ |
| Shared practitioner, room or equipment; coordination method | ________________________________ |
| Weekly/custom hours, breaks and dated exceptions | ________________________________ |
| Acceptance: automatic or manually reviewed | ________________________________ |
| Customer contact route and response expectation | ________________________________ |
| Test date, pending/confirmed result and observed slots | ________________________________ |
| Same-service, cross-service and cancellation test results | ________________________________ |
Bookibles · Reviewed
Source: https://bookibles.com/features/scheduling
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