Availability
Accurate availability is the cornerstone of effective reservation management. TheBooking ensures you have the tools to set precise and flexible availability, catering to diverse operational needs.
TheBooking's approach to availability revolves around the creation of Availability Plans. These plans dictate when services are available for booking.
Each availability plan can be associated with one or more services, allowing you to tailor the availability settings according to your specific service offerings. For instance, if you offer different services with distinct operating hours, you can create separate availability plans for each service to reflect their respective schedules.
How to create a plan
To create an availability plan, follow these steps:
- Go to Availability > Availability Plans
- Click on
New plan. - Provide a name for the plan, and then create it.
A new record appears in the table.
Set up available times
Based on your business needs, each availability plan offers you the flexibility to either set schedules using its internal working hours planner, integrate with Google Calendar through the 3-way integration mode, or combine both methods. This versatility ensures you can customize your availability management to align perfectly with your operational preferences.
Working Hours Planner
This approach is suitable for businesses with consistent operating hours or those that require a straightforward way to define their service availability.
Click on the Settings icon to access to the plan settings, then open the Schedule tab. Here, you can define the available times for each day of the week, specifying the intervals during which your services are available. Intervals can be added/removed with the plus and minus buttons to the right of each day. Scrolling down, you can also see a date picker where to specify the activity period of the plan and a calendar where you can select your * *day-offs**.
It's important to note that the availability intervals set for a given day should not be confused with the bookable timeslots that users will see when making a reservation. The availability intervals determine the overall operating hours or windows of availability for your services on a given day. However, the actual bookable timeslots presented to users may vary based on the configured service slot duration.
The plugin intelligently divides the available time within the defined availability intervals into appropriate timeslots based on the service slot duration configuration.
Hit the Save button when done!
Google Calendar 3-way
TheBooking offers a unique and powerful feature called Google Calendar 3-way integration. This mode leverages the capabilities of Google Calendar to provide a flexible and dynamic way of managing availability. With this integration, you can convert your Google Calendar events into available times for booking.
To help you make the most of this feature, visit the dedicated chapter that provides detailed instructions and guidance on setting up the Google Calendar 3-way integration.
Assign services to the plan
Once you have set up the availability plan, you can associate it with the corresponding services. Within the plan settings, open the Services tab to select the services that must observe this availability plan.
Assign a provider to the plan
Requires the Service Providers feature to be activated. To enable the Service Providers feature, go to Settings > Business Model > Service Providers.
When the Service Providers feature is enabled, you must link the availability plan to a specific service provider. Within the plan settings, simply navigate to the Providers tab and select the appropriate provider to associate with the plan.
Service providers may or may not have the ability to add and manage their own availability plans based on your configuration. To adjust this capability, navigate to Settings > Business Model > Service Providers and find the Enable Service Providers to manage their own availability option.
If service providers are granted permission to manage their plans, they can do so by accessing Availability > Availability Plans.