Help › Settings
Booking rules
Set minimum notice, gaps between appointments, a daily limit, how far ahead people can book, and which services can be booked.
Booking rules control which appointment times your receptionist can offer and book. This tile only appears if your plan includes bookings. Anything left on its first option keeps the standard behaviour.
Most of these rules are enforced by the server, whatever the AI says. Your receptionist is only shown times that fit the rules, and a booking for any other time is refused.
The rules
Minimum notice
How soon the earliest bookable time can be: No minimum, or 1, 2, 4, 12, 24, 48 or 72 hours from now. Even with No minimum, nothing is offered less than 30 minutes ahead.
Gap between appointments
No gap, 5, 10, 15 or 30 minutes, or 1 hour. That much time is kept clear either side of each booking. If you use a calendar plugin, the same gap is kept around the busy times in your calendar.
Most bookings in a day
Leave it empty for No limit, or type a number. Once a day has that many bookings (cancelled ones don't count), no more times are offered that day. The highest limit you can set is 200.
How far ahead people can book
Standard, or 3, 5, 7, 10, 14, 21 or 28 open days. Standard uses the number of days your account was set up with, shown in brackets. Only days you're open with free times count, so "5 open days" can stretch over more than a week.
Same-day bookings
On by default: people can book for later today. Switch it off and the earliest bookings start tomorrow.
What your receptionist can book
If your services are listed, each has a tick box. Untick a service and your receptionist won't book it. Instead it explains that your team arranges those personally, and offers a call back (if your plan includes callbacks) or gives your phone number.
This one is an instruction to your receptionist, not a check by the server.
Saving
Click Save booking rules. You'll see "Saved. Your receptionist is up to date."
Good to know
- Opening hours come first. Times are only ever offered inside your Opening hours.
- Closed means closed, if you choose. Whether bookings can be made while you're closed is set in After hours.
- Existing bookings stay. New rules affect which times are offered from now on. Nothing already booked is moved or cancelled.
- Your receptionist can explain them. It's told about your notice period, same-day setting and services it can't book, so it can tell people why.
Still stuck? Write to hello@callscovered.ai with your business name and what you were trying to do, and a person will reply.