Availability controls when customers can book and when your team is expected to show up. Keep it accurate so booking pages reflect real capacity instead of optimistic or outdated schedules. Review it whenever hours, staff, locations, service durations, or seasonal demand changes.

What this guide helps you do

• Set working hours, service hours, buffers, and unavailable time.
• Match availability to staff, location, service duration, and capacity.
• Prevent customers from booking times your team cannot support.

Before you start

• Know staff schedules, service durations, locations, travel needs, and blackout dates.
• Decide whether availability is shared across services or service-specific.
• Confirm timezone and holiday rules.

Do it manually

1. Open Bookings and choose availability settings.
2. Set weekly hours for the workspace, staff member, service, or location.
3. Add buffers before or after bookings when preparation, travel, or cleanup is needed.
4. Block holidays, personal time, unavailable days, or special schedule exceptions.
5. Preview customer-facing availability for the services that use these rules.
6. Save and test a booking path before sharing new times publicly.

Ask Faster AI

• Review this availability setup for a mobile service team and suggest buffers, blocked times, and customer-friendly hours.
• Create availability rules for weekday consultations and Saturday workshops, then list what I should review.
• Find why customers cannot see times for this service and check duration, staff, location, and blocked days.

Review before customers use it

• Check that availability matches real staff capacity.
• Confirm buffers and travel time are realistic.
• Review exceptions after holidays, staffing changes, and seasonal schedule changes.
• Preview availability from the customer’s point of view for each important service, not only from the admin settings screen.

Common issues and fixes

• If customers see no slots, check service duration, assigned staff, blocked dates, and capacity.
• If bookings appear too close together, increase buffer time.
• If staff receive bookings outside working hours, review service-specific overrides.

Booking page best practices

For a practical explanation of why honest availability and buffers protect conversions, read the booking page best-practices article. Booking Pages That Don't Lose Customers.

Restaurant website paths

For a restaurant-specific example of matching reservations to real capacity instead of optimistic availability, read the restaurant website article. Restaurant Websites: Menus, Orders, and Reservations That Work.

Booking availability engine

For the engineering reason availability should be treated as real capacity, not just visible hours, read the booking availability article. Building a Booking Availability Engine.

Connected workflows

• Create a lead capture form
• Understand Customer 360
• Connect payments for your business
• Create a welcome journey

Placeholder media

• Screenshot placeholder: add an annotated screenshot of set availability for bookings with customer names, phone numbers, addresses, payment details, private notes, and calendar details blurred.
• Video placeholder: add a short walkthrough that shows the manual booking path, then shows how to ask Faster AI for the same setup or review before customers can book.

Related help

• Check booking availability
• Create a bookable service
• Create booking events and workshops