How do I stop clients booking at the last minute or too far ahead?

All of these apply to clients booking online. Staff booking from the calendar is never limited by them; you can always place an appointment wherever you like.

Availability & Rules

Open Schedule › Online Booking › Settings and find Availability & Rules.

• Maximum Advance Booking (days): how far into the future clients can book. Blank means no limit.
• Minimum Advance Notice (hours): how close to a time a client can still take it. Blank means none; even then, times already past today are never offered.
• Cancellation Window (hours): how close to the appointment a client can still cancel without acknowledging your late-cancellation policy. Inside the window they can still cancel, but Woof flags it to you as a late cancellation.
• Let clients book outside your posted business hours: off by default, so a groomer scheduled past closing time is not bookable online after close.

Click Save. The rules are enforced when the client picks a time and again when they book, so a stale page cannot slip through.

Booking Approval

• Auto-accept on: the appointment is created the moment the client books, and they get a confirmation email.
• Auto-accept off: the booking becomes a request. The client sees "Request submitted" and waits. Requests appear on the Requests tab with a Pending Requests count on the page and in the sidebar.

To resolve a request: open the Requests tab and click Approve or Decline. Approve re-checks that the time is still free, creates the appointment and emails the client a confirmation. Decline asks for an optional reason and emails them that the request was not accepted. If the slot was taken while the request waited, Approve tells you so the row stays for you to offer another time.

Tick Alert me about new bookings under Booking emails to get an email for every online booking, whether it was auto-accepted or needs your review.

New clients

Someone who has never been to you can create an account and book from the same page. Schedule › Booking Flow controls how new clients join: open signup, or a review of new online clients before their first visit. Those reviews live under Clients › New Client Queue.