For a quick overview of business booking rules, watch this video:
You’ll notice that business and service booking rules have many of the same settings; this is intended. To understand how they interact, see here.
Below are all the business booking rules:
Enable Online Booking
Choose whether to make your Booxi booking page available to your clients to book from:
If disabled, your Booxi page will be inaccessible and lead to a 404 error page. However, clients will still be able to book through the booking widget integrated on your website (if you’ve done so).
Disabling online booking is useful if you prefer to create booking for clients instead of allowing them to create the booking themselves (e.g. clients call you to book the appointment, you then create it on their behalf).
Show Open Hours
Choose whether to display your business’ open hours on your Booxi booking page.
For more info, see here.
Limit Client Contact Access
Choose whether to hide client contact information from users with “Staff” and “Restricted staff” roles. The purpose of this setting is to limit staff access to client data to prevent its potential misuse. For more info, see here.
Reminder Delay
Determine how much time before a booking’s scheduled start time the booking reminder will be sent to clients. For more info, see here.
Enable additional reminder
Choose whether to send an additional reminder to the client before their booking time. For more info, see here.
Additional reminder delay
Determine how much time before the scheduled start time the additional reminder will be sent. For more info, see here.
Appointment Approval Modes
Choose whether new appointment requests will be approved manually, automatically, after a delay or automatically after online payment is provided. To learn more about approval modes, see here.
Appointment Approval Mode - Delay
Determine the length of the delay before the automatic approval of appointments (appointment approval mode must be set to “After a delay”).
Reservation Approval Modes
Choose whether group event reservation requests will be approved automatically, or automatically once online payment is completed.
Cancellation and Modification by client
Choose whether clients can modify or cancel appointments (or both) within a specific delay.
Options include:
Disable: clients will not be able to cancel or change their bookings
Enable Modify: clients will be able to change their bookings
Enable Cancel: clients will be able to cancel their bookings
Enable both (Modify and Cancel): clients will be able to cancel or change their bookings
Example of an appointment confirmation email with "Enable both" as the applied setting:
What the client sees when modifying a booking:
Cancellation and Modification Allowance Delay
Determine how much time before the booking clients can modify and/or cancel (*Note: the above setting must be set to either “Enable Cancel” or “Enable both (Modify and Cancel))”.
Custom Cancellation Policy Text
Choose whether to enter your own cancellation/modification policy text, or leave blank to use the default text. See below for an example:
Custom Payment Policy Text
Choose whether to enter your own online payment policy text, or leave blank to use the default text. See below for an example:
Auto-Cancel Unpaid Booking
Choose whether to automatically cancel online bookings if not paid within 15 minutes from when it was created.
This does not apply to rentals. In other words, rentals that are unpaid are not automatically cancelled and so must be manually cancelled.
Limit time before
Choose whether to enforce that bookings be requested in advance (i.e. before the scheduled start time) and if so, how much time before the start time the request must be made. For example:
It's currently January 1; your value is set to 15 days.
Result: clients will only be able to book services that begin January 16 onwards.
Limit time in advance
Choose whether to set a limit on the number of days before a booking’s scheduled start time a booking can be made and if so, how many days. For example:
It's currently January 1; your value is set to 30 days.
Result: clients will only be able to book services that occur no later than January 31.
If both settings are enabled, your "Limit time in advance" setting value must be greater than your "Limit time before" value, or else clients won't be able to book. See here for more info.
Complete Appointment
Choose whether to automatically complete approved appointments once the appointment time is past.
Completed appointments are colored grey in the calendar. Also, note that completion triggers the sending of thank you messages to clients (if the "Enable automated thank you message" setting is enabled).
Delay before automatic completion
Determine the amount of time that will pass before appointments will be automatically completed (the above setting must be enabled).
Appointment Recall
Choose whether to send clients a reminder to book a new appointment. This is especially useful for recurring appointments (e.g. haircuts, cleanings, etc.).
Delay for Appointment Recall
Choose how many days after the appointment the recall reminder will be sent to clients (the above must setting must be enabled).
Preferred Personnel Selection
Choose whether to add a star indicator to bookings where the client specifically requested a staff member.
If preferred personnel selection is ON:
A new option “Requested by client” will be displayed in the booking screen. This is to mark bookings where clients have specifically requested a staff member.
All bookings in which the client chose a specific member of staff will be starred (i.e. when the “Time selection mode” is set to “Personnel selection”), as well as those that have the option checked.
Client emails will NOT show the name of the staff member assigned to the booking, unless the "requested by client" option is checked.
This setting can be useful if you have a mix of bookings with staff automatically assigned (i.e. time selection mode set to one of the 2 “automatic dispatch” settings) and some with staff specifically chosen by the client; the star will help you differentiate between them.
If preferred personnel selection is OFF:
Client emails will show the name of the staff member assigned to the booking.
Enable the new client referral question
Choose whether to add a referral question shown to clients when booking for the first time. You can see their response either in the details of their first booking (Calendar tab) or by exporting the client list (make sure to check the "Include client referral question" option – see the "Referred By" column).
Customize the new client referral question
Enter the client referral question (the above setting must be enabled).
Languages
Select the default language of your business and add additional languages if applicable. The chosen languages here affect only the business-specific content shown in your account; see here for more info.
See here for the list of countries, regions and languages Booxi supports.
Enable automated thank you message
Choose whether to send an automatic thank you message to clients as soon as their appointment is completed.
Custom thank you message
Enter a custom thank you message or leave blank to use the default message. The default message is as follows:
Enable invoices and receipts
Choose to enable/disable the invoice and receipt feature, which allows you to create simple invoices and receipts, and print or email them.
You must enable this setting to make use of this feature; when enabled, the “Invoices & Receipts” tab will be displayed in the left menu.
You may configure the following fields:
Prefix
Starting receipt number
Invoice & receipt footer note
Mandatory Online Booking Information
Choose whether to require clients to enter certain information when booking online. Options include:
Email address
Client phone
Attendee email address
Attendee phone
Enabling this can be useful for cases where you need to contact a client or an attendee (e.g. a client cancelled an appointment).
Enable Online Payment via Shopping Cart
Choose whether to allow the capture of online payment using your e-commerce shopping cart. If enabled, services your clients book will be added to their shopping cart. To make use of this feature, you must enter a shopping cart callback URL. For more info, contact your Booxi representative.
Client Note Visibility
Choose whether to allow personnel to create private and/or shared client notes. For more info, consult these articles: