There are a number of factors that can cause a service to not display during your expected available times. First, we recommend you check the configured Availability for the affected service as well as the associated staff members to verify there is no scheduled date-specific availability.

Availability

The first thing that you will want to check is if your Business/Staff availability is open for appointments. 

If you're a single user then this can be found under Settings > Availability & Calendar.

For accounts with multiple staff, you will need to check the availability of all of the staff members that offer the service in question. To do this you will need to navigate to Settings > Staff > Select Staff > Advanced > My Schedule.

While you're in this section checking the availability for yourself or a staff member you will also need to check Date Specific Availability as well. This can be found right below your availability/business hours and is used to change your availability for specific dates for a single date or recurring instances. Below is an example of Date-Specific Availability set up outside of the general business hours;

Service Specific Availability

It is important to note that there is also Availability on the Service Level. To check this you will need to navigate to Settings > My Services > Select a Service > Scroll To "Duration & Availability."

If your service uses your default availability then you won't need to check this. However, if you have selected "Service has different availability" then there will also be an option here to review/edit date-specific availability. 

Date-Specific Availability is also available on the service level from this section as well.

Calendar Bookings / Synced Events

Oftentimes, if there is no availability showing, you may already be booked during that time. A common occurrence that can affect your availability is a multi-day/all-day event that is being synced from a personal calendar to your vcita Calendar. If an event is synced to the vcita calendar, that event may be marked as "Busy" on your personal calendar. These "Busy" events will block the calendar, and prevent your clients from booking during those time frames.

All-day/multi-day events, when synced, will display at the top of the vcita Calendar under the "all-day" section as shown below:

They may appear as large sections of blocked time in the calendar like so;

To free up these timeslots, the events must be updated from "Busy" to "Free" in your personal calendar or removed completely. Once updated, the new data will sync to your vcita account automatically. 

After verifying the staff/service availability, there are some other features that can affect how your service displays for Online Scheduling:

Additional Features

Advance Notification Limitations

If you have an open timeslot on your calendar but it is not available as an option when booking then we also recommend checking your Advanced Notification settings. This helps you avoid 'last minute' appointments by defining some time before the appointment after which the appointment cannot be scheduled. For example, if the service is available to be booked tomorrow, but not today, as desired, yet there are available time slots in today's calendar, you will need to adjust the advance notification limitations. 

The default is set in your Online Booking Options, but can be customized for each Service individually. 

To view/edit customized Advance Notification for a service, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to Settings > My Services

2. Click on the service to edit it

3. Scroll down to Booking Options and check your Advanced Notification setting

   • If "Use default settings" is selected, the advanced notification follows the default set in Settings>Online Booking Options

   • Selecting "Customize" allows you to set the advanced notification to your desired time frame for only that service

     • Please Note: when selecting day long intervals, such as "72 hours in advance", this time frame will include non-business days.

4. Once the service is updated, click on "Done" at the top of the page

 

Future Booking Limitations

Another setting that is similar to Advanced Notification, is Limit future bookings. The default is also set in Settings > Online Booking Options and can also be customized for each Service individually. Limit future bookings allows you to set a limit to how far ahead a client can set an appointment with you. If your available timeslots don't go far enough into the future then this setting may be the reason why. 

To edit/view the Future Booking Limitations, do the following:

• Navigate to Settings > Online Booking Options

• Limit future bookings is in this first section

To edit/view the Limit future bookings for a service do the following;

• Navigate to Settings > My Services > Select a Service

• Scroll down to Booking Options and check the Limit future bookings setting

  • If "Use default settings" is selected, the limit follows the default set in Settings > Online Booking Options

  • Selecting "Customize" allows you to set the limit to future bookings to your desired time frame for only that service

    • Please Note: when selecting day-long intervals, such as "72 hours in advance", this time frame will include non-business days.

• Once the service is updated, click on "Done" at the top of the page

 

Preparation Time

Services can also have a set amount of prep time before each appointment. This needs to be considered when determining if there is enough room in the calendar for the service to be available.

For example, a 1 hr. service with a 10 minute prep time will not be allowed to be booked during an open 1 hr. block of time in the calendar as it is now 70 minutes in total. Here is an example:

Here are the steps to view/edit Preparation Time for an individual service:

1. Navigate to Settings > My Services

2. Click on the service to edit it

3. Navigate down to Duration & Availability

4. The "Preparation Time" field, displays under Duration next to the "Hour" and "Minutes" fields

   1. To remove preparation time click on the field, a drop down menu will open. Scroll to the top and select "None"

5. After editing the service, click the "Done" button at the top of the page to save your settings 

 

Online Booking Calendar Intervals

The booking interval you set will affect the frequency that the service will display during the available times. For example, if a 30 min. service is available for booking, and the booking interval is set for "1 Hour," the slots available be at the top of every hour, as shown below.

It is worth noting that the default setting maximizes your availability giving you the highest number of available appointment slots per day. 

If you want to change the frequency that the service shows as available, follow these steps:

• Go to Settings > My Services
• Click on the Service to edit it
• Navigate to the section Duration & Availability 
• Under the Online booking calendar Intervals adjust the frequency to the desired amount
• Click on "Done" to save your changes