At Waitwhile, we understand that every business has unique scheduling needs. That's why we've made our booking system highly customizable, including the ability for staff members to override availability, set manual booking durations, and also set flexible start times for staff bookings.
What are flexible booking start times?
This feature allows your staff to schedule appointments at 5-minute intervals, ignoring current slot sizes and providing more precision and flexibility than standard time slots. While guests will still book according to your regular slot duration, staff members can fine-tune appointment times to better accommodate specific situations.
This configuration comes with a number of benefits, including:
Greater scheduling flexibility for staff members
Ability to optimize appointment scheduling
Maintain standard booking rules for guests while giving staff additional control
How to enable and use flexible start times
To start using flexible booking start times:
Navigate to Location Settings > Bookings > Availability
Under Options, check the box for Enable flexible booking start times (The feature is disabled by default)
Click Save
Navigate to the Visits page or the Calendar and create a new booking
In the Start time dropdown, toggle the Flexible start times
Now, you can select any start time (within five-minute increments), while the duration will remain the same
Please note that you will need to enable this option in the dropdown for each new booking that you're adding.
Note: Leveraging flexible start times will allow staff to create bookings that partly occupy multiple slots, which can lower overall location booking availability.
For example: A location has slots at 10:00-11:00 and 11:00-12:00. If a staff member creates a booking at 10:30-11:30, it will occupy both slots.