Set maximum group size per slot

You can have up to 50 people book in the same time slot. 

Follow this guide to setup up the maximum group size on your booking page, learn how to control how many spots each of your bookers can reserve, and how group bookings affect existing events on your calendar. 

Activate Group Bookings

For the booking page where you want to offer group bookings, Navigate to Times & Availability > Duration & Display, and click Group Bookings.

In the pop-up modal decide if you would like to add a question to your booking form so your bookers can reserve more than one spot in a single reservation. 

Set the number of bookings you want to take in each available time slot, and save your changes. 

Allow your booker to reserve more than one spot at a time

When you activate units per slot on your booking page, you're prompted to add a question to your booking form that allows your booker to reserve more than one spot at a time.

The question can be found under Booking form > Questions, with the label "How many would you like to book?" You can modify this label to make the question more relevant to what your booker is reserving, ie "How many in your group?"

The number of slots available to your booker will depend on the number of bookings you've already received, along with other existing busy events on your calendar in that same time slot. 

The number they select from this dropdown will adjust any set price for bookings. 

Delete the question from your booking form using the trash bin icon 🗑 and each booker will only be to reserve a single slot. 

If you've deleted the question from your booking form, but would like to re-add it, navigate to Booking form > Questions, and click Add question. Under Question Type select Units per slot, and modify the label if needed. 

How group bookings work with your calendar

When you set up a booking page for group bookings, you'll need to think about how existing events on your calendar affect your availability. 

Existing events

Existing events (meetings & appointments added to your calendar outside of YouCanBookMe) will take up one of your available booking slots. 

That means if you set units per slot to 5, and you have a pre-existing team meeting on your calendar Wednesday at 11:00, that event is taking up 1 of the available 5 slots. YouCanBookMe will still allow you to be booked on top of your team meeting. 

To avoid being double booked, you'll either need to fully block time on your calendar so YouCanBookMe won't display that time for booking, or use Calendar Managed Availability to define your availability just when you're free on your calendar. 

Checking multiple calendars for conflicts

In the opposite way, If you are checking multiple calendars for mutual availability, busy events across all those calendars will take up available booking slots and affect how many bookings you can take. 

That means if you've set units per slot to 5 and you have 2 busy events across two of your calendars, YouCanBookMe will only allow a total of 3 bookings in a time slot, as the other 2 slots have been taken by your busy events. 

How group bookings appear in your calendar

As you receive each booking in that your open time slot, it will appear as an individual event in your calendar. After your set number of bookings has been received, that time will no longer be available for booking in YouCanBookMe.

Share a static video link for group bookings

The integrations with Google Meet, Zoom and Microsoft Teams do not currently support group bookings

You won't be able to generate a unique meeting link for your group bookings. To have everyone appear in the same room at the same time, share a static video conference link that everyone can join. You can add this link to your calendar event location, and in your confirmation & reminder emails. 

Use {UNITS} in emails to you and your booker

Using the shorthand code {UNITS}, you can reference the number of slots a booker has reserved in a single booking. Use this shorthand code anywhere you want to display the number of slots booked.

For example:

• Your confirmation email can include the line "You've reserved {UNITS} spots for the training on {START-DATE}."
• The calendar event title can say "{FNAME} booked {UNITS} spots" to show at a glance how many spots have been booked on your linked calendar.

Adjusting available booking slots

You can adjust the number of slots a single booking has taken on your bookings page. 

Click Details for the booking you'd like to adjust, and click Edit below the Units per Slot field. You can adjust the number of slots booked to be any number between 1 and 50. 

Editing the number of slots booked will not change the price the booker paid if you are charging for bookings.

Want to take less bookings in a certain time slot? Add YCBM-UNITS-X to the event title any busy event on your calendar where X is the number of slots you want to block from being booked. 

Completely block time slots

When using units per slot, your booking page will only show a time as unavailable for booking if all of those possible slots have been filled with bookings or other busy events on your calendar.

That means it is possible to take bookings on top of existing busy events in your calendar. To prevent this and fully block out a time when you have another meeting and can't take any bookings, add  YCBM-OVERRIDE-UNITS into the event title of the busy event on your calendar.

Use Calendar Managed Availability to define open slots

Instead of adding YCBM-OVERRIDE-UNITS to all of the busy events in your calendar to prevent yourself from being double booked, use Calendar Managed Availability. Calendar Managed Availability allows you to define exactly when you're available for bookings, and only that time is displayed for booking. When you want to remove a time slot from being booked, just delete that Calendar Managed Availability event from your linked calendar.