Online booking page. Live availability.

How your booking page decides what is free

Three things decide every open time: your working hours, any time you have blocked out, and the bookings that already exist. The page works them out fresh each time it loads, so if you shorten Thursday, block out an afternoon or take a booking over the phone, the next person who opens your booking page sees the change. There is no stored list of available times sitting in the background waiting to be refreshed.

Your booking rules then shape those times:

• Minimum notice, from none up to 30 days, so nobody books a slot you cannot prepare for.
• How far ahead people can book, from 1 day to a year, or no limit.
• Closed days and special hours, such as a public holiday.
• For appointments: the length of the service, only the team members who do it, and slots every 5 to 60 minutes (30 by default).
• For restaurants: your service periods and last seating, how long a table is kept for each party, table sizes and the most covers you take in a service.

How double bookings are stopped

The times a customer sees are a snapshot of the moment the page loaded. While they fill in their details, someone else might be looking at the same slot, or a booking might come in from your desk. So the slot is checked again, against the same hours, rules and bookings, right before it is confirmed.

That second check lives in the database that stores the bookings. An exclusion constraint there refuses to save two overlapping bookings for the same team member or table, whichever way the request arrived and however many arrived at once. It covers the cases a check in the booking form can miss:

• Two customers with the same page open, picking the same time
• A booking that comes in while another is halfway through confirming
• A request sent twice after a dropped connection

In each case one booking is saved for that slot, and the other customer is told it was just taken and asked to pick another time.

Table bookings and reservations for restaurants

For a restaurant or venue, an open time means a free half hour with an actual table behind it. Hours, blocked time and existing bookings decide what is really open on the floor, and tables you have combined for a big party or are holding for a function count as taken.

A table that looks free when a guest starts booking is checked again before the reservation is confirmed, with the same database rule that stops two appointments landing on one stylist or practitioner.

Why real-time booking needs a check in the database

A booking system that only checks availability in the page tends to fail at the worst moment: two people booking the last table on a nearly full night, or a booking landing just as another is being confirmed. The rule here sits in the database, where the booking is actually written, so that split second is covered.

For you, that means the times on your booking page can be trusted without a manual double check, however many people are looking at your calendar or trying to book at once.

Your booking page, in your look

Your booking page carries your logo, your photo and your name on every plan. Your own colours and fonts come from Growth up, along with a choice of two looks for the whole page.

• Classic: flat and quiet, with outlined time buttons and dropdowns to pick the date and party size
• Raised: softly raised buttons, a row of dates to tap through and party sizes as one-tap chips
• The date picker can be chosen on its own too, if you like one look with the other way of picking a date
• Light or dark, to suit your brand

Everything a guest asks, one tap from the booking page

The menu button at the top of your booking page opens your business profile, so nobody has to leave the page to find out where you are or when you open. It is on every plan.

• Call and directions, one tap each
• Your opening hours, with today marked and whether you are open now
• Photos of your place
• Your website, social profiles and a link to share the page

Your booking link, Book now button and QR code

Your booking page has its own link, showing your logo and colours, to put wherever customers find you. The Link Generator makes links that open on a particular service, team member or date for appointments, or a date, party size and time for a restaurant. There is also a Book now button to copy onto your own website and a QR code to download and print.

For a salon, clinic or spa on Pro, or with the own web address add-on (A$14.99 a month on Solo and Growth), the booking page can also sit on your own domain.

The booking form can also sit inside your existing website, on the page or behind a Book now button, so guests book without leaving your site. Paste one line of code into WordPress, Squarespace or your own HTML. On Wix, add the Gaplessly Booking app from the Wix App Market, with no code to paste.