Online booking — turning it on and controlling what clients can book

There is no "enable online booking" switch. Your booking page is live from the day your account exists. What clients can book follows from how your business is set up.

Online booking settings live on Sidebar → Business Settings → Customer Portal. Owners and managers can change them.

What decides whether clients can book

Appointments can be booked once you have at least one active service that is not an add-on.
Boarding can be booked once you have active boarding capacity (set up under Facility Settings).
Daycare can be booked once you have active daycare capacity.

For a time slot to show up online, the day also needs:

Your business open. Set in Business Profile → Hours.
A groomer working. Staff need working hours for that day. See Staff hours, availability and time off.
A groomer who can do the service. If the service needs certain skills, someone must have them (Team & Payroll → Staff Capacity).

When there's nothing to offer, the booking page tells the client why: "closed this day", "Nobody is working this day", "No one here can take this service yet", or "This date is fully booked". Every one of these offers the waitlist.

Online bookings are requests

Every online booking arrives as Pending. The client is told it is "pending until you approve it" and gets a "request received" email, not a confirmation.

To approve one:

Find it on the calendar. Pending appointments have a dashed border, and online bookings show a small globe icon.
Open it and press Confirm.
Check the price in the box that pops up, then confirm.

The client then gets the confirmed email.

Choosing what appears

You control the booking page through your services. Open Sidebar → Services and edit a service:

Bookable online — turn off to keep a service staff-only. You can still book it from the dashboard.
Latest online booking time — the latest start time clients are offered. For example, baths until 1:30 PM.
Clients book a general time slot — clients pick a time without choosing a groomer. You assign someone later, for example at check-in.
Inactive services never appear online.

Add-ons can't be booked on their own. Clients add them to a main service. Prices and lengths shown online come from your services and pricing.

Online booking limits

On the Customer Portal page, the Online Booking Limits card adds rules for bookings clients make themselves. They are all off until you set them, and they never limit bookings your team makes.

Grace period — lets an appointment run into the next online time by up to this many minutes without blocking it. With 15 minutes, a 9:00 groom that ends at 10:15 still leaves 10:00 open online.
Overlapping online bookings per groomer — how many families' dogs one groomer can have at the same time from online booking. It can lower a groomer's Dogs at once, never raise it.
Online dogs per groomer per day — once a groomer has this many online-booked dogs that day, clients can't pick them. Cancelled and no-show visits don't count.
Press Save.

To give one groomer a different daily number, go to Team & Payroll → Team Members → Edit Profile and set Online dogs per day. Choose No limit to exempt them.

Cancellation notice

The Cancellation Notice card shows a short message next to the booking button, and again after the request is sent. Turn on Show a cancellation notice during online booking, type your message, and press Save. It appears for appointments, boarding and daycare. It doesn't charge a fee or block a booking.

If you set a cancellation fee under Payment Settings → Booking Policies, clients see that policy on the booking page too. See Rescheduling, cancelling and no-shows.

Other controls

Deposits. Under Payment Settings → Booking Policies → Deposit Settings. Reservation deposits are a percentage for boarding and daycare. Appointment deposits only apply to clients you flag, or who pass your no-show limit. See Deposits for repeat no-shows.
Vaccinations. Under Business Profile → Hours → Proof of Vaccination. "Ask for proof" reminds clients to bring records. Block online booking until compliant stops the booking until records are current. The block is off by default. Your team can always book from the dashboard.
One client. On the client's profile, edit them and turn on Block online booking.
New sign-ups. Require approval for new signups on the Customer Portal page makes you approve new clients before they can use the portal.
Hide prices. The pricing card on the Customer Portal page can hide prices from clients.

Sharing the link

Your links are in the Portal Links & Sharing card on the Customer Portal page. The Book Appointment link ends in /b/YOURCODE/book. There's also a QR code and code to add a booking button to your website.

Put the link in:

Your website's Book Now button
Your email signature
Your social profiles
Your voicemail greeting, spelled out

A booking page nobody can find takes no bookings. This is the most common reason a new account sees none.

Checking it works

Open your Book Appointment link in a private browsing window, where you aren't signed in. Walk through a booking as a client would. Then cancel the test booking from the calendar.