Setting Up Activities

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An activity is the foundation of every booking. It represents the experience you offer — "Hair Salon," "Indoor Skydiving," "Bowling," "Yoga Class," or whatever your business provides. Before you can take bookings, you need to create at least one activity and configure how it handles scheduling and capacity.

Creating an Activity

To create a new activity, navigate to the booking settings area and select New Activity. You will need to provide:

• Name — A descriptive name for the activity, such as "Hair Salon" or "Indoor Skydiving." This is what staff and customers see.
• Slug — A URL-friendly version of the name, used in online booking links. For example, "hair-salon" or "indoor-skydiving." This is generated automatically from the name but can be customized.
• Description — An optional description that appears on the online booking page. Use this to tell customers what to expect.
• Image — An optional photo or graphic shown in booking interfaces.
• Location — Which of your locations offers this activity. If your activity is available at all locations, leave this blank.
• Timezone — The timezone used for scheduling. If the activity is tied to a specific location, it automatically uses that location's timezone. If the activity is available at all locations, you must set this explicitly.

Scheduling Strategies

The most important decision when setting up an activity is choosing its scheduling strategy. This determines how time slots are generated and how booking durations work. There are three options:

Fixed Slots

Use fixed slots when every booking has the same duration, and customers book into predefined time blocks.

Best for: Group classes, guided tours at set times, wind tunnel sessions, escape rooms.

How it works: You set a single slot duration (for example, 60 minutes). The system generates evenly spaced time slots throughout your operating hours. A customer booking into the 10:00 AM slot always gets 10:00–11:00 AM, regardless of what product they purchase.

Configuration:

• Slot Duration — The length of each time slot in minutes (for example, 30, 60, or 90).

Example: A yoga studio with 60-minute classes. Slots are generated at 8:00, 9:00, 10:00, 11:00, and so on. Every class is the same length.

Variable Duration

Use variable duration when you offer the same activity at different session lengths, and the customer chooses how long they want.

Best for: Bowling, batting cages, meeting rooms, spa treatments with multiple duration options.

How it works: You define a list of allowed durations (for example, 30, 60, and 90 minutes). The system generates starting time slots at a regular interval, and the customer picks both their start time and their preferred duration. The slot interval controls how frequently start times appear.

Configuration:

• Slot Interval — How frequently start times are offered in minutes (for example, every 15 minutes or every 30 minutes). This does not need to match any of the allowed durations.
• Allowed Durations — The list of session lengths customers can choose from. Each duration can have a label (like "Half Hour" or "Full Hour") and a price modifier (see Bookable Products for details on how pricing works with variable durations).

Example: A bowling alley with 30-minute slot intervals and allowed durations of 30, 60, and 90 minutes. Start times appear at 10:00, 10:30, 11:00, 11:30, and so on. A customer starting at 10:30 can choose a 30-minute session (10:30–11:00), a 60-minute session (10:30–11:30), or a 90-minute session (10:30–12:00).

Resource-Driven

Use resource-driven scheduling when the duration of the booking is determined by the specific service being purchased, rather than by the activity itself.

Best for: Hair salons, spas with varied services, any business where different services take different amounts of time and each booking ties up one resource.

How it works: Each product defines its own duration. A haircut might be 30 minutes while a color treatment is 90 minutes. The system checks resource availability based on the product's duration rather than a uniform slot length.

Configuration:

• No slot duration or interval is set on the activity itself. Duration comes from each product's configuration.

Example: A hair salon where "Haircut" takes 30 minutes, "Color" takes 90 minutes, and "Blowout" takes 20 minutes. When a customer books a haircut with Sarah at 2:00 PM, the system blocks Sarah from 2:00–2:30 PM. If another customer books a color treatment with Sarah, the system looks for a 90-minute window in Sarah's schedule.

Capacity

You can set a maximum concurrent participants limit on the activity. This is a hard safety cap on how many people can be booked into the same time across all resources. For example, if your facility can safely hold 50 people at once, set this to 50. This cap is checked in addition to any resource-level capacity limits.

If you do not need a facility-wide cap, leave this blank. Resource-level limits (covered in Resources) will still control availability.

Buffer Times

Buffers are gaps of time inserted before and/or after each booking. They give you time for cleanup, setup, travel between locations, or simply a breather between appointments.

• Buffer Before — Minutes of blocked time before the booking starts (for example, 10 minutes to set up equipment).
• Buffer After — Minutes of blocked time after the booking ends (for example, 15 minutes for cleanup).

Individual products can override the activity's default buffer times if certain services need more or less setup time. See Bookable Products.

Buffer Scope

You can choose how buffers are applied:

• Per Resource — The buffer blocks the assigned resource only. Other resources remain available during the buffer. Use this when your cleanup time is specific to the resource (cleaning a lane, resetting equipment).
• Per Activity — The buffer applies to the entire activity. No new bookings can start during the buffer for any resource. Use this when the whole facility needs time between sessions (clearing participants, resetting the space).

Booking Lead Time and Advance Limits

Control when customers can book:

• Minimum Lead Time — The shortest notice required for a booking. For example, if set to 60 minutes, a customer cannot book a slot that starts less than an hour from now. This gives your staff time to prepare.
• Maximum Advance Days — The furthest into the future a booking can be made. For example, if set to 90, customers can only book up to 90 days ahead. Leave blank for no limit.
• Online Booking Cutoff — Similar to minimum lead time but applies only to online bookings. You might allow walk-ins up to the last minute but require online bookings at least 2 hours in advance.

Online Cancellation and Reschedule Cutoffs

If you allow customers to cancel or reschedule their own bookings online (see Online Booking), you can set a cutoff window that prevents last-minute changes:

• Online Cancellation Cutoff — How far before the booking start time online cancellation is blocked. For example, if set to 24 hours, a customer cannot cancel online when the booking starts in less than 24 hours. They would need to contact staff instead.
• Online Reschedule Cutoff — Same concept but for rescheduling. For example, if set to 2 days, a customer cannot reschedule online when the booking is less than 2 days away.

Cutoffs can be set in minutes, hours, or days. If no cutoff is set, customers can cancel or reschedule online at any time (subject to the activity's Allow Online Cancellation and Allow Online Reschedule settings).

Staff-initiated cancellations and reschedules are never affected by these cutoffs.

Calendar Display

Choose how this activity appears on the staff booking calendar:

• Time Block — Bookings appear as colored blocks on a timeline. Best for simple schedules.
• Resource Columns — Each resource gets its own column, so you can see at a glance which resources are free and which are occupied. Best for businesses with many individual resources (salon chairs, bowling lanes).
• Slot Grid — Time slots appear as a grid that fills as bookings are made. Best for fixed-slot activities where you want to see capacity at a glance.

Calendar Interval

The calendar interval controls the time granularity of the calendar grid — how finely the timeline is divided. For example, a 15-minute interval means the calendar shows rows or divisions every 15 minutes, while a 60-minute interval shows hourly blocks.

Set this based on the smallest meaningful time division for your business:

• Wind tunnel with 30-minute sessions: set to 30 minutes so each grid row matches a session.
• Hair salon with services of varying lengths: set to 15 minutes so short appointments (like a 20-minute blowout) align neatly on the grid.
• Yoga studio with 60-minute classes: leave blank — it defaults to the slot duration (60 minutes).

If left blank, the calendar interval defaults to the slot duration (for fixed and variable strategies) or the individual product duration (for resource-driven strategies). Setting it explicitly is recommended for resource-driven activities where services have different durations, so the calendar has a consistent grid regardless of which service is booked.

See The Booking Calendar for more on working with these views.

Activating and Deactivating

Activities can be marked as active or inactive. Inactive activities do not appear in availability searches and cannot accept new bookings. Existing bookings for the activity are not affected.

This is useful for seasonal activities (deactivate surfing lessons in winter) or when you are still setting up and not ready to accept bookings.

Deleting an Activity

Deleting an activity removes it from active use. Existing bookings are preserved for historical records. The activity's URL slug is freed up so it can be reused if you create a new activity with the same name later.

TIP

If you only need to temporarily stop accepting bookings, deactivate the activity instead of deleting it. This preserves all your configuration for when you reactivate.