Configuring a location

Services

A service is one thing a customer can ask for, and how long it takes. Durations are what make wait estimates honest and bookable slots real, so this is the page that turns a guess into a number.

Where they live

Services, in either view. Services belong to the organisation, so a chain defines a haircut once — but each one can be limited to the branches that actually offer it.

Needs the permission services.create (create services) and services.update_all_settings (update all service settings). Owners and Admins have every permission by default.

Your account was seeded with a few matched to the industry you chose at signup. They are ordinary rows: rename them, change the durations, delete the ones that do not apply.

What a service holds

Name and description — what the customer sees when choosing.
Duration — how long the work takes. This is the number everything else is built on.
Buffer — extra time after it, before the next booking can start. For cleaning down, writing up, or simply breathing.
Price — optional, shown to the customer when set.
Available for — waitlist visits, bookings, or both.
Notice rules — the least notice a booking needs, and the furthest ahead it can be made.
Daily limit — a cap on how many of this service you will take in a day.
Category— for grouping in the customer's list.
Locations — everywhere, or named branches.

Getting durations right

Be honest rather than optimistic. An under-stated duration produces bookable slots that do not exist and wait estimates that are always wrong in the direction customers notice.

A reasonable way to set them

Time the work itself for a week, honestly.
Use the typical figure, not the best one.
Put the reset and write-up time in the buffer, not in the duration.
Revisit after a month against what actually happened.

Buffers are invisible to the customer

A forty-minute service with a ten-minute buffer books as forty minutes and blocks fifty. The customer sees the appointment they are getting, and you get the gap you need.

Notice and booking windows

Minimum notice stops somebody booking a two-hour treatment for ten minutes from now. Maximum notice stops the diary filling up eighteen months out.

Service rules narrow what the branch already allows and never widen it. A service can demand more notice than the location does; it cannot be booked outside the location's booking hours because the service is more relaxed.

Waitlist, bookings or both

Waitlist only — quick things nobody plans. A prescription collection, a return, a pickup.
Bookings only — long or specialised things where an unannounced arrival is a problem.
Both — the usual answer for anything of moderate length.

Which branches offer what

By default a service is available everywhere. Pin it to particular branches for anything only some of them do, so a customer is never offered a treatment the shop they picked does not provide.

Branch restrictions on staff do not apply here

Somebody restricted to one location can still edit services and resources, because those belong to the organisation rather than to a branch. Bear that in mind when deciding who gets permission to change them.

Retiring a service

Deactivate rather than delete anything with history behind it. A deactivated service stops being offered and stays attached to the visits that used it, which keeps your reports honest.

Services need resources to become slots

A service says what is wanted and how long it takes. It does not say who can do it — that is a resource, and without them nothing limits how many bookings can exist at the same moment.