Lesson 4

Bookings and the calendar

Why can't they book? Diagnosing no availability

Six settings cause almost every empty calendar. Looking at it as the client narrows it to one in about a minute.

2 min read · Owner or manager · Running day to day

Start by looking at it as the client. The screen they are stuck on names the cause, and it is one of six:

CauseWhere it shows
The service is not on a session or resourceTimes grid
Capacity is fullTimes grid
The pet fails a weight, age or breed ruleTimes grid
An advance-notice or blocked-day ruleTimes grid
A prerequisite has not been doneService tile
A card or terms requirementReview step

The last two never reach the calendar, which is worth knowing before you spend an afternoon on the roster.

See it as the client

Open the pet's profile, choose Simulate, then Booking Experience. You get the client's booking form for that pet against your live settings, and it writes nothing.

  1. Open Customers & Pets and select Manage on the pet.
  2. Select Simulate, then Booking Experience.

Services come before times, so a service missing from this list, or carrying a blue Prerequisite First badge, never gets as far as the calendar.

Tip

Scroll the service carousel. Petboost pushes whatever unlocks a blocked service to the front, so the assessment appears ahead of the thing it gates.

Read the headline, not the body

Pick a date with nothing on it. The card below is what the client sees.

The body text is the same whatever went wrong, because the booking form does not show a customer your roster. The headline is the part that moves.

Check

is fully booked means every reason the engine returned was a capacity reason. has no available times means a rule or a roster gap. That split is half the diagnosis.

Get the engine's own answer

On the same empty date in Booking Experience, select See Full Breakdown under the calendar. Why No Availability? names the setting, and the button on its card, such as Edit Schedule Services or View Working Hours, opens it.

  1. Open Customers & Pets, select Manage on the pet, then Simulate and Booking Experience.
  2. On the date with no times, select See Full Breakdown.
  3. In Why No Availability?, select the button on the card, which names what it opens, and fix that one setting.
  4. Run Booking Experience again for the same pet and date.

If the slots come back, you are done. If they do not, the next blocker was sitting behind the first one, and the card will now name that instead.

Tip

Your own booking form opens the same dialog. With Magic Availability Check on, select See Availability Reasons under the calendar. There the card describes that day, with a link such as Edit notice period or See service rules.