Setting your availability

As you setup your booking page on YouCanBook.me you'll want to consider how do you want YouCanBook.me to display your availability for booking:

In this article:

Set repeating availability
Set custom availability

Repeating Availability

This setup is recommended if you offer standard working hours week by week, and want to fill your calendar and free time with bookings from clients. Any time within these standard hours can be blocked off with a busy event in your linked calendar. 

Under Times & Availability > select Repeating Availability and you'll set standard work hours for each day, unchecking any day you'll never offer a time slot for booking. These set days/hours will be applied to your booking page week by week. YouCanBook.me will scan your linked calendar during your set work hours and display any time for booking where we don't find a conflicting event.

A conflicting event is any event set to  busy on your linked Google or Outlook calendar. To block out a day or time for booking, add busy events to your linked calendar. 

Video: Setting up Repeating Availability

Setting up availability for your team? These hours will apply to every team member on your booking page - they'll need to block out time they're not available for booking between the set working hours by adding busy events to their calendar. Learn more about setting up availability for your team. 

Need to make changes to your schedule? Adjusting these hours on your booking page will not affect any bookings you've already received, but will change future availability for bookings. 

Custom Availability

This setup is recommended if you don't work a standard schedule from week to week, you want to limit the times your clients can book with you, or you have specific start times you want to offer on your booking page.

Custom Availability gives you the flexibility to change the times you offer for booking from week to week, or limit the times YouCanBook.me will display for booking on a booking page. The setup requires that you add events to your linked calendar on the day and times you want to be available for booking, using the key phrase you've designated on your booking page. Once you have set it up, you can add or remove availability by simply adding or removing the events on your linked calendar - no need to adjust any settings within YouCanBook.me. 

Under Times & availability > Availability, select Custom Availability. Click  Edit and set the widest range of working hours you might possibly take a booking. Make sure to check every day you may possibly offer a booking, even if it's just one Saturday a month. Set a keyphrase you will use to identify times you're available for booking.

When you first turn on Custom Availability, the booking page preview will show "No Availability." It will show this message until you've added blocks of time you're available for booking to your linked calendar. Refresh the preview once you've added blocks to your calendar. 

Under Duration & Display, adjust your Grid display and Booking duration to reflect your desired meeting times. More information on how the grid display plays a part in the availability displayed can be found here. 

For more flexibility on start times, set a smaller grid display.

To complete setup, open your linked calendar and create blocks of time when you want to take bookings. Each block of time will be titled with your selected keyphrase, and changed to status of Free (instead of the default Busy). The times where YouCanBook.me finds blocks of time on your calendar that meet the criteria will be displayed for booking. 

Setting up availability for your team? Each team member will add these events to their calendar on the days and times they want to be available to take bookings. More about setting up team availability here. 

Need more help? Check out this troubleshooting guide. 

Managing Custom availability

  • Taking a vacation? Delete the availability block from your linked calendar, and that time will no longer be available for booking
  • Want multiple breaks in a day? Add several Custom Availability blocks to your calendar, with a desired break in between
  • Need to add availability for a certain day? Make sure you've set that day as available for booking in YouCanBook.me, and add a new block on your calendar. 
  • Need availability all day? Add an all-day event to your calendar with the same title - your entire working hours that day will display for booking, until conflicting events are added to your calendar. 
  • Have multiple booking pages? Each booking page can carry it's own unique Custom Availability events, allowing you to designate different availability for different appointments or different locations.
  • How do new bookings appear? New bookings will appear on top of your Custom Availability block. You can delete the Custom Availability block from your calendar once you've received a booking, but if that booking cancels, the time will not re-open for booking until that block is added back to your linked calendar. 
  • Any busy events you add during the length of your Custom Availability block will act as a conflict and prevent you from being booked.