Booking rules

Booking rules are the guard rails on your booking form. They decide how soon a client can book, how far ahead they can go, how much room sits between sessions and how much work you will take in a day. Maelo puts them all under Settings, Scheduling, Booking Rules, and every change saves as you make it.

Minimum notice required to book is the first one, set in hours. It stops somebody booking you for this afternoon while you are mid-session. Set it to 24 and no client can take a slot in the next 24 hours. On the booking form, days swallowed by the notice period are greyed out, and a partly eaten day loses only the hours that fall inside it.

How far into the future can clients schedule? is set in days and closes the far end of the window. At 60 days, nobody can pick a date more than two months out. It is the setting to reach for when you do not want your diary committed a year in advance, and it is what keeps your booking form honest about how much you can actually see.

The two ends have to leave a gap in the middle. If your minimum notice is longer than your booking window, there is no time left that anyone can book, so Maelo blocks the change, shows you a Booking Conflict banner explaining which two numbers disagree, and puts the field back rather than letting your form quietly go dead.

Buffer between appointments is set in minutes and adds unbookable time around anything already on your calendar. Set 30 and a session finishing at 4pm keeps 4pm to 4:30pm closed, so you get to clean down, take a break and set up without a client landing on top of you.

Start time intervals controls what a client is offered: 15 min, 30 min or 1 hour. On 30 minutes, slots read 2:00pm, 2:30pm, 3:00pm. On an hour they read 2:00pm, 3:00pm. Wider intervals give you a tidier day. Narrower ones fit more small pieces in.

Under Appointment Limits you can cap bookings per day, per week and per month. Once a cap is reached, that day, week or month shows as unavailable and no more bookings come in. Leave a field empty for unlimited.

A switch called Include touch-up & consultation appointments? decides whether those two count towards the caps. Left off, a short touch-up does not eat one of your three slots for the day, which is usually what you want.

If you set caps that disagree, for example a weekly cap lower than the daily one, Maelo points it out so you know which one is really doing the work.

Touch-ups and consultations do not really deserve a whole day, so they get their own rules. Restrict to days with other appointments? only lets clients book them on days you already have a tattoo booked, which keeps them from dragging you in for a fifteen minute chat.

Touch-up hours and Consultation hours pin them to particular times of day. Type them the way you would say them, and use a comma for more than one window, such as 11am-1pm, 5pm-7pm. Leave a field blank and there is no restriction on that type at all.

If you do not offer consultations, switch Do you provide consultation appointments? off and the consultation hours field goes away. Your hours are kept, so switching it back on brings them with it.

The last two groups decide what a client can do to a booking after it exists. Both are switched off until you turn them on, so by default clients contact you.

• •Allow client rescheduling lets clients move their own appointment. Reschedule notice sets how many hours ahead they can do it, and Max reschedules per booking stops the same session being pushed back forever.
• •Allow client cancellation lets them cancel and leave a note. Cancellation notice sets how far ahead that has to happen.
• •Inside either notice window, the client is told to contact you instead. You can still move or cancel anything yourself at any time.

Cancelling is not refunding. A client cancelling does not send their deposit back, and Maelo reminds them of that and points them at your booking policies. Refunds stay your call, and you issue them from the Financial Hub or the appointment's payments section.