Wix Bookings: Understanding Availability for Appointments

Understanding what affects your availability for appointments is important for keeping your business running smoothly. Wix Bookings uses your settings and schedules, including existing bookings, to continuously calculate all the available time slots. Since several factors can determine when your clients can book an appointment, it's important to make sure you configure your availability correctly.

By recognizing these factors and setting up your availability, your live site can accurately show your business's available appointment times. If you're having trouble setting appointment availability as needed, you can check out the troubleshooting steps that help resolve most issues.

What factors affect appointment availability

Here is a list of the main factors which affect if you or your staff are available to accept appointments.

Default business hours

Your default business hours, or your opening hours, determine when your staff are available to take appointments. Once you set your default business hours, you can then customize your staff members' working hours to offer services outside your normal business hours (see below).

Learn more about adding your business information, including your default business hours.

Staff working hours

The availability of appointments largely depends on the working hours of your selected staff members. When you create an appointment, you decide who provides the service. Staff hours are based on your default business hours. You can also customize each staff member's hours individually.

Customers can't book an appointment that ends after the relevant staff members' hours. So, for example, if you work until 6:00 PM, and offer a two-hour-long service, clients can't book it at 5:00 PM.

Learn how to set a staff member's available hours.

Adding one-time changes to staff hours

You can set custom hours for your staff, either as one-time or recurring appointments from your Work Schedule dashboard. These custom hours override the default ones and can affect availability, especially if multiple staff members have custom schedules. Making one-time changes can help accommodate your staff's schedules while making sure your business is not affected.

Learn more about editing your staff members' working hours.

Default work hours

Your default work hours determine the available hours during which clients can book appointments. Make sure to update your default hours so clients know when they can book their appointments. These hours automatically apply to all new staff members.

Learn more about setting your default work hours.

Blocked time

You can manually block any day or part of a day in your Wix Bookings calendar for you or for a staff member. The times you block are not available for bookings. This feature is useful for scheduling holiday, personal time off or any other periods you or your staff are unavailable.

Learn how to block time on your calendar.

Synced calendars

To avoid conflicts and double bookings, you and your staff members can sync your personal calendars with the Wix Bookings calendar. Events synced from these personal calendars block off the time on the Wix calendar, preventing clients from booking during these periods. Syncing your calendars helps manage availability and prevents any double bookings from outside commitments.

We recommend you read the important information on how synced calendars work.

Appointment time slots

Appointment time slots control how often available hours appear on your calendar. You can set them at specific intervals or based on the duration of a service, plus any time buffers you add between appointments. For example, if you set a time interval at 30 minutes with a 15 minutes time buffer, clients see appointments listed every 45 minutes on your live site (see image below).

Time intervals allow you to effectively manage your schedule. You can decide if you want all appointments to have the same time interval on the calendar or if the interval should be based on the service duration plus an additional buffer time.

Learn how to set your time slot durations.

Time buffer

Set a time buffer between sessions to make sure client sessions aren't booked back-to-back, to allow staff to prepare, and to provide necessary breaks. Time buffers also help manage the appointment flow.

For example, if you provide a 1-hour service, you can add a 15 min buffer so if a client books from 9:00 - 10:00, the next available slot will be from 10:15 - 11:15.

Learn how to set a time buffer between sessions.

Your booking windows

Booking windows let you set limits on exactly how far in advance and how close to your sessions clients can book. For example, you can prevent clients from booking too far in advance (e.g. more than 2 months before the session). You can also prevent clients from booking last minute (e.g. less than 3 hours before the session starts). Setting these windows helps manage expectations and ensures your schedule stays manageable and predictable.

Learn how to set your booking window.

Troubleshooting availability issues

Click an issue below to learn how to resolve it.

There are no available time slots on my Calendar page on my live site.

If no available time slots appear for one of your services on your site, check to make sure the following:

• The service duration does not exceed the staff member's working hours or your default working hours. For example, if a staff member's shift is only 4 hours long and they offer a 6-hour event planning service, clients can't book that service with this staff member.

• The staff member's location matches the service location.

• There are no other events in the calendar blocking the availability. These events could be work-related or personal events that the staff member has blocked off in their synced personal .

My available time slots are not showing properly.

You choose how to display your appointment slots to clients, either based on the service duration or using fixed intervals. You can also add a time buffer between appointments, so your staff have enough preparation time for the next client.

• Offering time slots based on service duration can result in irregular time slots but maximizes the number of bookings you can take in a day.

• Offering time slots based on fixed intervals (e.g. every 15 minutes) makes appointments appear more orderly on the calendar but may reduce the total number of bookings you can accomodate in a day.

Service duration example:

You offer a service lasting 30 minutes with a 10-minute buffer starting from 9:00AM, your available appear as follows: 09:00, 09:40, 10:20... etc.

Fixed interval example:

You offer a service lasting 30 minutes with a 10-minute buffer, but clients can only book at fixed 30-minute intervals, the available slots would be: 10:00, 10:30, 11:00... etc. In this case, if a client books the available slot at 10:30, the slots at 10:00 and 11:00 won't be bookable with the same staff member due to the session duration and buffer time.

My staff member does not appear as available for a specific time slot in the Calendar page.

If your staff member does not appear as available for a specific time slot, check if:

• The staff member was assigned to that service when you created it.

• The staff member's working hours are set up incorrectly.

• The staff member already has a class/course session assigned for that specific time.

• You offer the appointment in a custom location, and the staff member's availability has not been set up to "All locations".

• You made one-time changes to the staff member's availability.

Tip: Manually schedule an appointment and test how it appears on your Booking calendar. Check how soon before and after the appointment you can add another appointment at the same location with the same staff member. You can then delete the test appointment.

My staff member has more availability than is displayed, or some time slots are missing for a specific staff member.

Check your booking window in Booking Policies for the affected service. Double-check that the staff member's working hours are set up correctly.

Also, check if:

• The staff member was assigned to that service when you created it.

• The staff member's working hours are set up incorrectly.

• The staff member already has a class/course session assigned for that specific time.

• You offer the appointment in a custom location, and the staff member's availability has not been set up to "All locations".

• You made one-time changes to the staff member's availability.

My service is not available in a specific location.

Make sure the selected staff member's availability is correctly set for the specific location.

Adjust the location settings as necessary to reflect the staff member's availability.

When clients try to book a session, there's a message saying that "Bookings will open X days before the session starts".

Check your booking window in Booking Policies for the affected service. Adjust these settings to align with your preferred booking timeline.

Still need help?

If the problem persists, contact us, and we will be happy to help.