Self-booking (your customers)
Share a booking link and customers book themselves — pick a day, pick an open time, fill in only the details you ask for, and confirm. No app, no account. This page is what they see, screen by screen.
How they book
- 1Pick a day
- 2Pick a time
- 3Fill in the fields you've switched on
- 4Press Confirm booking
The page opens with your business name and logo. The heading, colours and text size are yours to set in Visitor pages — see Design your visitor pages.
It comes in six languages and picks one on its own — see which language visitors see.
Which days and times they see
This is where nearly every "why can't they book that?" question comes from, so here is the whole rule.
| Rule | What it means |
|---|---|
| The earliest day is your today | Worked out in the shop's own time zone. The page says so: "You can book from today onwards." A customer whose phone has already rolled past midnight still sees your today. |
| The latest day is your Booking horizon | 365 days ahead out of the box (a year). You can shorten it to as little as a single day. Beyond it, the date box won't go. |
| The times offered come from your opening hours | Narrowed to your self-booking window (Self-booking opens and Self-booking closes — 9 am to 5 pm unless you change them), then cut into slots. The slot size is your Booking slot length, or the length of the service the visitor picks. A lunch break, split shift or holiday closure removes times automatically. |
| Each slot holds as many bookings as you allow | Bookings per time slot ships at 1, goes up to 99. When the last place in a slot goes, that time leaves the grid. |
Every time on the page is in your shop's clock, and it says which one — for example, "All times are GMT+8 — the shop's local time." That line repeats on the confirmation, because it's the screen a customer screenshots.
What you ask them for
Out of the box a booking asks for three things, and all three are required: their name, a phone number or email, and what they need (your service list).
You can switch each one off or make it optional, and add a vehicle or plate box and a note box, in Visitor pages → What you ask for. Party size is not offered on a booking page.
The contact box
| Situation | What happens |
|---|---|
| Line uses both phone and email | One box, labelled Phone or email |
| Line uses only one channel | Labelled just Phone, or just Email, for that one channel — typing the other kind is refused on the spot, not silently dropped |
| Phone number with no country code | Caught before they press anything: "Add your country code — the bit that starts with + (for example +1, +44 or +234)." |
Under the contact box, once they've typed something, a tick box offers the confirmation and reminder. It's off until they tick it — an untouched box means no messages at all, however good the contact details are.
Confirming, and what arrives
Confirm booking stays dead until a time is picked, so it can't be pressed too early.
On success the form is replaced by a green tick and "You're booked!", with the date and time written out in full, the time zone, which branch it's at, and a link reading Reschedule or cancel this booking.
That link is the customer's own booking page — see managing a booking. It's worth telling people to keep it, since it's how they move or cancel without telephoning you.
Closed, full and taken
The page never pretends. Each of these is a different screen, and knowing which is which turns a confusing customer phone call into a ten-second answer.
| Situation | What the page shows |
|---|---|
| Shut right now, still taking bookings | The form works normally with a note on top: "We're closed right now — you can still book an appointment for later." The expected state for most evening visits to your booking link. |
| Line not taking bookings | The whole form is replaced by "Not taking bookings right now." Covers a paused line, a retired line, and a lapsed subscription — it appears instead of the form, not after somebody has filled it in. |
| That day has nothing free | Instead of a blank grid, it names the next day that does: "No open times that day. The next one is Thursday 18 September.", with a Show that day button that jumps straight there. |
| Somebody took the slot while they were typing | "That slot was just taken — please pick another." The grid stays live and the taken time disappears, so the next tap works. |
| The link is wrong or out of date | "That link isn't valid" and "Ask staff at the venue for the current QR code or link." This is a link problem, not an outage — the fix is to hand over today's QR code. |
When something goes wrong
Three failures look similar to a customer and are quite different underneath.
| What happens | What the page says | Why |
|---|---|---|
| The page won't load | "Can't load this booking page", with a Try-again button | Deliberately gives no instruction to check their connection — the usual cause is a busy shared shop wi-fi hitting our own traffic limit, and telling twelve café customers to reboot their router would be both wrong and unhelpful |
| They're offline | The page says so | A tap on Confirm is held rather than lost — it goes through the moment the signal returns |
| The booking couldn't be confirmed | "Couldn't confirm your booking — please check your messages before booking again." | The Confirm button is switched off for good on that screen — after this failure we can't be certain the booking did not save, and a second press could leave two appointments for one person at two different times |
If two people press Confirm on the last free place in the same second, one wins and the other is told the slot was taken.
Nobody is double-booked, and a customer who presses twice by accident gets the booking they already have, not a second one.
Related: Turn on appointments · Managing a booking · How bookings are called · Which language visitors see