A client says nothing is available. Where do I look?

In order: is the salon open that day (Business hours, and Special days for that date), is anyone on the rota, is the service short enough to fit what's left, and is the stylist they picked the only one they'll see. Four checks, and the first two catch most of it.

Can online booking double-book a stylist?

No — and the Allow double-booking setting doesn't change that. It lets you stack appointments from the calendar; the public page always needs a clear run.

Why does a service need more room than its duration?

Buffers. A service can carry time before and after that keeps the chair blocked without appearing on the bill — the client sees 90 minutes, the diary reserves 105.

Can I stop bookings landing an hour from now?

Not with a setting. The page won't offer a time already past, but the next slot after that is fair game. If short notice is a problem, buffers and slot interval are the levers you actually have.

What is the waitlist?

On a day with nothing free, the client is offered Join the waitlist instead of a dead end. They leave a service, a preferred stylist and a way to reach them, and it lands with you rather than being lost.

The rules bookings follow

"Why is there nothing on Thursday?" is the question this page answers. The times a client sees aren't a schedule you maintain — they're worked out fresh on every request, from things you set for other reasons entirely.

The time step of the public booking flow: a scrolling strip of the next three weeks of dates, with the chosen day's free times grouped under Morning and Afternoon. — Everything on this screen is derived. Nothing here was configured for online booking specifically.

How a time gets offered

1
Is the salon open? Your business hours for that weekday set the outer bound. A Special day for that exact date beats the weekly row — that's how a bank holiday closes a Monday that's normally open.
2
Is anyone working? Each stylist's working hours are then trimmed to the salon's open window. Someone rota'd until seven in a salon that shuts at six is available until six.
3
Does the service fit? Starts are stepped by your slot interval, and a start only counts if the whole service finishes before the shift ends.
4
Is the chair actually free? Existing appointments and time blocks — lunch, training, time off — are subtracted, along with each service's buffers.
5
Is it in the future? A time that has already passed is never offered, even if the diary is empty.

Whatever survives all five is what the client sees, grouped into Morning, Afternoon and Evening in your salon's timezone, not theirs.

Buffers are your turnaround

A service can carry time before and after itself. The client is quoted the service length and charged the service price; the diary reserves the longer window. That's where colour processing, a tidy-up between clients, or a room that needs resetting lives.

Buffers are the closest thing to a "leave me a gap" control, and they're set per service — which is right, because a blow-dry and a full head of highlights don't need the same recovery.

Double-booking doesn't apply here

Settings → Calendar has an Allow double-booking switch, and it is easy to assume it loosens the booking page too. It doesn't. It only governs what you can do from the calendar, where stacking a client onto an occupied slot asks you to confirm first.

Online booking never offers an occupied slot, whatever that setting says. A client cannot squeeze themselves in. Squeezing people in is a judgement call, and it stays with the person who can see the whole day.

Three weeks, and no further

The date strip runs 21 days from today. It's fixed — there's nothing to configure, and nothing that lets someone book eight months out and then forget.

When a day is empty

Instead of a shrug, the page offers Join the waitlist. The client picks a service, optionally a stylist, and leaves their details. You get a real lead out of a day you couldn't have sold anyway.