By default your booking page offers a start time every 15 minutes: 1:00pm, 1:15pm, 1:30pm, 1:45pm. Some businesses want fewer, tidier options. If you run hour-long appointments and want customers to pick 1:00pm, 2:00pm or 3:00pm and nothing in between, that's what start time intervals do.
Changing it
Go to Settings, open Booking page, and find Start time intervals in the Booking rules card. Choose the spacing you want, from every 5 minutes up to every hour, and save.
Underneath the setting you'll see the actual times a customer would be offered, worked out from your own opening time, so you can check it reads the way you expect before you save.
What it's counted from
Your interval starts at your opening time each day, not at the top of the clock hour. Open at 9:00am on hourly intervals and customers see 9:00, 10:00, 11:00. Open at 8:30am and they see 8:30, 9:30, 10:30. That's deliberate: if we rounded everyone up to the clock hour, a business opening at 8:30 would lose its first half hour every single day.
If your team work staggered shifts, everyone shares the same set of start times, so a 9:00am starter and a 9:30am starter don't between them offer half-hourly times to a business that asked for hourly.
Giving one service its own start times
Your business setting covers every service by default, which is right for most menus. When one service needs a different rhythm, open it from Catalogue, Services and use its Start time intervals field. It offers Follow business setting (where every service starts) or its own spacing.
This is what makes a mixed menu work. A 15-minute brow tidy can keep quarter-hourly starts while a two-hour colour only ever starts on the hour, instead of forcing one rhythm on both and losing bookable time.
If a customer books two services in one visit, the visit is offered at times that suit every service in it, and never less often than once an hour. See when a customer books two services at once.
What a wider interval costs
This is the trade worth understanding before you change it. A wider interval buys you predictable times, and it pays for them in bookable hours.
Say you're on hourly intervals and a customer books a 60-minute service at 1:00pm with a 15-minute add-on. Their appointment now runs to 2:15pm. The 2:00pm slot is gone, because the chair is still busy, and the next time offered is 3:00pm. That 45 minutes between 2:15 and 3:00 stays empty.
The same happens after a break that ends at an odd time, or after any service whose length doesn't divide into your interval. We don't shift the rest of the day's times to close the gap, because that would slide every remaining slot off the hour and undo the very thing you set the interval for.
Cleanup time counts towards fitting, because it blocks your calendar just like the appointment does. A 45-minute service with 15 minutes of cleanup fills a whole hour, so on hourly starts it wastes nothing at all.
So the rule of thumb: the wider your interval, the more your service lengths, cleanup and add-ons should add up to it evenly. If a service doesn't fit, we'll tell you which one right under the setting.
FAQs
Does this change bookings I already have?
No. Existing bookings keep their times exactly as they are, even if those times are no longer offered. The setting only changes what new customers are offered from now on.
Can I still book any time I like myself?
Yes. Start time intervals shape what customers can pick online. At the desk or on the phone you can book any time you choose.
Does a service's own setting override the business one?
Yes, in both directions. A service set to every 15 minutes keeps quarter-hourly starts even when your business is on the hour, and the other way round. Only a visit combining several services works differently: it is offered at times that suit every service in it, and never less often than once an hour.
My customers see times I didn't expect. What now?
Start with why a time isn't showing on your booking page, which walks through every setting that changes the times on offer.