Use Daily Booking Limit to Control the Volume of Appointments
Here is what you need to know:
This feature serves as an extension of the Service Availability settings within both the TIMIFY WebApp and the Branch Manager.
It is available to any customer who has purchased the Enterprise plan.
Article structure:
1. What is Daily Booking Limit
3. Daily Booking Limit in the Branch Manager
1. What is the Daily Booking Limit?
This handy feature allows you to set a limit on how many times a service can be booked. Once the limit is reached for a given day, the service will no longer appear in the Booking Widget. That means customers won't be able to schedule it online anymore.
However, it's still possible to add additional bookings for the service via the calendar. To facilitate this, we added an additional setting, "allow calendar override" to the feature. Read on to learn more.
How is the Daily Booking Limit applied?
The limit itself is applied per resource on a daily basis and is based on the service configuration. For example, suppose you have a service where two resources need to work in parallel, and the Booking Limit for that day is 3. In that case, you can get a maximum of 3 bookings for that service.
Let's take the same example, but this time, the resources can perform the service independently. Then, you can receive a maximum of 6 bookings for the service (2 resources * 3 bookings each).
How will the process look like for your clients?
The customer begins by selecting the service they wish to book from the list of available services in the Booking Widget.
After selecting a service, the customer chooses a preferred date and time for their appointment.
The system checks the availability of time slots for the chosen service on the selected day. If the booking limit for that service on that day has already been reached, the Booking Widget simply displays that there are no available slots for that day.
Smart resource suggestions
If you're adding a booking to the calendar and a resource has reached the daily booking limit, you will see a suggestion to pick a different resource that hasn't reached this limit and is available.
2. How to set it up
You can activate the "Booking Limit" feature by going to Management > Services, then edit the service you wish to use and go to the Availability tab. From there, simply toggle the Enable switch for the feature.
After enabling the setting, you will see the addition options for configuration:
Resource working hours (daily average) - represents a resource's typical, full working time within the branch.
Max bookings per resource - define the maximum number of bookings allowed for a service on each weekday.
Allow calendar override - this setting allows you to schedule additional calendar booking(s) that exceed the daily limit. You'll be notified each time you add a booking to your calendar, warning you that you are exceeding the limit.
When you're done, click on save. The Daily Booking Limit is now applied for this service.
3. Daily Booking Limit in the Branch Manager
You need to enable Global Services globally to use the "Booking Limit" feature globally across all branches within a Branch Manager account.
Then, by going to Global Management > Services in the Branch Manager, you can edit an existing service or create a new one. Within the service form, you can navigate to the Availability tab, where the "Daily Booking Limit" feature can be activated by simply toggling the switch labelled "Enable".
After this step, the process is the same as the one described in step 2 of this article - just fill out the settings and click save.
ℹ️ If you log into a company from the Branch Manager using the 1-click access button in the branch, you won't be able to exceed the daily booking limit even if the "Allow calendar override" option is selected.
4. FAQ
Q. What happens when I schedule a series of bookings? Are they affected by the Daily Booking Limit?
Yes, the Booking Limit affects series bookings as well. If there are no issues for the selected dates and the Booking Limit hasn't been reached, you can proceed with your booking.
However, if the Booking Limit has been reached for one or more dates in the future, then you have two options. In case you have turned "Allow calendar override", then you can exceed the limit if you wish to. If you haven't, then you can create the series only for the days when there aren't any booking conflicts.
Q. Is the "Allow calendar override" setting available for the Call Centre?
No, the setting doesn't apply to the Call Centre. If you reach the limit there, you will not be able to make a booking.
Q. I have selected "Max bookings per resource" to be 4, but my resource can only get 2 bookings per day (e.g.). Is something wrong?
This situation can happen because the Max bookings per resource are adjusted based on the average working hours and the resource working hours.
Let's say you've set your Max bookings per resource to 4, and the Resource working hours are equal to 8h.
If you have a resource who works 8 hours a day, then this is in line with the average working hours, and he will be eligible to receive a maximum of 4 bookings per day.
However, if another resource is not a full-time employee and works only 4 hours, they will be eligible to receive a maximum of 2 bookings per day, even though we set the limit to be 4 in the settings.
If they worked 6 hours, that would be 75% of the average working hours, which means their Max bookings per day would be 75% of the limit we set - in this case that is equal to 3.