One of Waitwhile's major perks is its versatility; there are loads of options to customize your customer's reservation and waitlist experience to cater to your business's customer flow. Sometimes these options can conflict with each other, especially if they aren't set up correctly. Check out this step-by-step guide to troubleshooting why your booking slots may not be showing for your customers!
1. Check your general & bookings opening hours
In order to confirm that all the hours have been set correctly, you will have to check both your opening hours and the hours that you have set up for your bookings. You can check your hours under Location settings > Location details.
Note: Your hours will also appear under Location settings > Customer journey > Bookings.
Next, check to ensure that your booking hours have not been modified for a specific date or date range. Go to Location settings > Bookings > Edit > Hours by date and check if you have specific dates that have been set differently.
Example configuration
✅ CORRECT configuration:
General opening hours: 9:00am - 8:00pm
Booking hours: 10:00am - 8:00pm
❌ Potential configuration that could cause a problem:
General open hours: 9:00am - 8:00pm
Booking hours: 10:00am - 8:00pm
On August 14 general hours are set to CLOSED
In this example, booking availability would not appear on August 14, because the the opening hours are closed for the day.
2. Check your service booking hours
In additional to opening hours, each service can have their own hours of availability. If your time slots do not appear, check that your service general & booking hours are correct and do not conflict with your normal booking hours
Example configuration
✅ CORRECT configuration:
General opening hours: 9:00am - 8:00pm
Booking hours: 10:00am - 8:00pm
Service "A" booking hours: 12:00pm - 2:00pm
❌ Potential configuration that could cause a problem:
General opening hours: 9:00am - 8:00pm
Booking hours: 10:00am - 8:00pm
Service "A" booking hours: 11:00am - 7:00pm
In this example, booking availability would not appear for Service A from 10:00am - 11:00am, because the Service is not available per the service booking hours.
3. Check your resource booking hours
Each resource can have their own hours of availability so check that your resource booking hours are correct and do not conflict with your normal booking hours or your service hours
Example configuration
✅ CORRECT configuration:
General opening hours: 9:00am - 8:00pm
General booking hours: 10:00am - 8:00pm
Service A booking hours: 12:00pm - 2:00pm
Resource 1 booking hours (which can serve Service A): 12:00pm - 1:00pm
Resource 2 booking hours (which can serve Service A): 1:00pm - 2:00pm
❌ INCORRECT configuration
General opening hours: 9:00am - 8:00pm
General booking hours: 10:00am - 8:00pm
Service A booking hours: 12:00pm - 2:00pm
Resource 1 booking hours (which can serve Service A): 8:00am - 1:00pm
Resource 2 booking hours (which can serve Service A): 2:00pm - 8:00pm
In this example, booking availability would not appear for Service A from 1:00pm - 12:00pm, because there is not a resource available to serve this service.
4. Check if your resources/services are enabled.
If you do not have resources or services in your account but you have the fields enabled that can cause availability issues. Make sure to confirm that if you have Resources enabled under Location settings > Location > Resources that you also have added resources for your account. The same applies for Services.
5. Confirm that your booking time-slot is not longer than the business hours.
If you have set up a booking time-slot for your business, you need to make sure that the duration of the time-slot does not exceed the business hours.
❌ INCORRECT configuration
Booking timeslots: 45 minutes
Service duration: 30 minutes
Business/booking hours: 30 minues
Didn't fix the problem? Try these tips!
Check your buffer time for resources. If you have set up a 30 minute timeslot for example but the buffer time that you have set for your resource is set to 5 minutes and the service duration is 30 minutes then it will result to no slots appearing. Check the resource's buffer time under Location settings > Location > Services.
Example configuration
✅ CORRECT configuration:
Booking timeslots: 30 minutes
Service duration: 25 minutes
Service buffer time: 5 minutes.
❌ INCORRECT configuration
Booking timeslots: 30 minutes
Service duration: 30 minutes
Service buffer time: 5 minutes.
Check to make sure the Spots per time slot setting is correct. This can be found under Location settings > Bookings > Availability.
Check that the Resource Max simultaneous served visits setting is set correctly (i.e. how many guests a resource can serve at any given time). This will multiply the spots per slot setting under Location settings > Customer journey > Bookings based on how many resources are available at any given time. If you need help finding it, check under Location settings > Location > Resources.
Check to see that the Services provided for the resources are correct; this will ensure that when your customer selects the right service there is a specific Resource available to serve them. You can verify the services a resource can provide under Location settings > Location > Resources.
Check that the services and resources are not set to Private or Waitlist only.
Check that the resource category is not set to Private or Waitlist only.
Check that the Resource category is NOT set to Required if it is only a category that should be displayed for one or a few services (not all).
Verify the Booking lead time or Scheduling Window are set correctly (i.e. how far in advance or into the future a booking can be made) This setting can be found under Location settings > Customer journey > Bookings
Check that Every resource has a separate calendar is properly enabled or disabled. When this configuration is enabled, every resource will act as an available spot, having their own calendar rather than being shared.
Make sure there are no calendar blocks that would prohibit availability for the day, time, service, etc.
Have additional questions or need assistance? Reach out to us via chat or at support@waitwhile.com.