Services · Reference

How services work

Everything a client sees on the booking page — which services appear, which dates are highlighted, which times are available — is driven by the rules described in this guide.

10 min read Services Availability

Visibility rules

A service only shows if it is active and has at least one active staff member assigned with availability.

Real-time availability

Available dates and times are calculated live from staff schedules, exceptions, bookings, and holds.

Location-aware

Services only appear at locations where an assigned, active staff member actually works.

What a service is

A service in Beautay represents a single bookable treatment or appointment type — for example, "Anti-wrinkle consultation" or "Filler top-up". Each service has a name, duration, price, payment policy, and a list of staff who can perform it.

Services can be grouped into categories, offered individually or as part of a package, and made available online or kept internal to the business.

Key fields on a service

FieldWhat it controls
NameShown on the booking page and in appointment confirmations.
DurationUsed to calculate which time slots are long enough to fit the appointment.
BufferExtra minutes reserved after the appointment (setup/cleanup). Hidden from clients but blocks the next slot.
Total priceDisplayed at checkout.
Payment policyWhether the full amount or just a deposit is collected at booking.
Active statusInactive services are hidden from clients entirely.
Staff assignmentWhich staff can perform this service — directly controls when and where it is bookable.
Waitlist enabledWhether clients can join a waitlist when this service is fully booked.

When a service is visible to clients

A service only appears on the public booking page if all of the following are true:

Service is active

Setting the service to inactive immediately hides it from all clients.

At least one active staff member is assigned

A service with no assigned staff, or where all assigned staff are inactive, is invisible to clients regardless of its active status.

Assigned staff have availability at some location

At least one active assigned staff member must have a recurring weekly schedule block (or a future one-off availability) at a location. If no location has any coverage, the service is hidden.

Visibility is checked each time the booking page loads Changes to staff status or schedule take effect immediately — there is no manual publish step. If you deactivate a staff member, any services they were solely responsible for will disappear from the booking page at once.

Staff assignment rules

Staff assignment is the bridge between a service and its bookable availability. When a client selects a service, Beautay only looks at staff who are assigned to it.

  • A staff member can be assigned to multiple services.
  • A service can have multiple staff members assigned.
  • Removing a staff member from a service does not affect existing bookings — only future availability.
  • If a staff member is deactivated, they are automatically excluded from all availability calculations even if they are still listed as assigned.

What happens when "Any available" is selected by a client

If the business allows clients to choose a specific staff member, a client can also choose "Any available". In this case, Beautay checks all active assigned staff and shows the union of their availability — a time slot appears as bookable if at least one assigned staff member is free for it.

When the booking is placed, Beautay assigns the most appropriate available staff member according to the business's routing strategy (most free time, fewest bookings, or custom ranking).

How availability is calculated

For each staff member on a given date, Beautay builds their available time windows by layering three things in order:

  1. Weekly schedule (recurring) — The staff member's normal working pattern: which days they work and their start/end times. Recurring break or unavailability blocks within the week are subtracted from working hours at this stage.
  2. Date exceptions (one-off overrides) — Specific dates where the normal pattern does not apply. An all-day unavailability blocks the entire day. A partial unavailability (e.g. 14:00–16:00 off) is subtracted from the day's windows. A one-off availability block (e.g. working an extra Saturday) adds new hours.
  3. Existing bookings and slot holds — Confirmed appointments (not cancelled) and active waitlist slot holds are subtracted from the remaining windows. The result is a precise set of free time that can accommodate the service duration.

Time slots are then generated from the free windows at intervals set by the business (the slot interval, typically 15 or 30 minutes). A slot is offered only if the full service duration (plus any buffer) fits within a free window.

The minimum notice period is also applied — slots that start too soon relative to the current time are removed from the results even if the window is technically free.

How weekly schedules are stored The recurring schedule is stored as a simple pattern (e.g. "Monday, 09:00–17:00") — not as individual dated records. This means a schedule added once applies to every future Monday automatically, with no data growing over time. Date exceptions are the only date-specific records and are created manually when the pattern needs overriding.

Location filtering

When a client selects a location on the booking page, only services where at least one active assigned staff member works at that location are shown.

A staff member "works at a location" if they have:

  • A recurring weekly schedule block at that location, or
  • A one-off future availability exception at that location (within the business's advance booking window).

If neither condition is met for any staff member assigned to a service, the service is hidden when that location is selected — even if it shows when no location filter is applied.

Single-location businesses

If a business has only one location, no location filter appears. All services with active, assigned staff are shown. The location is inferred automatically.

Calendar day highlighting

The booking calendar highlights dates that have at least one available slot. Greyed-out dates have no slots and cannot be selected.

A date is highlighted when:

  • At least one active assigned staff member has a recurring weekly schedule block on that day of the week at the selected location, and
  • Not all of those staff members are marked as entirely unavailable (all-day off exception) on that specific date, and
  • At least one staff member still has some working time remaining after any partial unavailability exceptions are subtracted.

Dates from one-off availability exceptions (staff working on normally-off days) are also highlighted, even when there is no recurring schedule for that day of the week.

Calendar is an approximation The calendar highlighting is designed to be fast rather than perfectly precise. It confirms that a staff member has remaining available time on that day after accounting for schedule exceptions — but the exact slots only appear once a date is selected, at which point Beautay runs a full calculation including live bookings, slot holds, and minimum notice. A highlighted day can very occasionally show no slots if, for example, all remaining slots were booked by someone else in the moments between the calendar loading and the date being selected.

The booking window

Businesses set a maximum advance days limit that controls how far into the future clients can book. Dates beyond this window are always greyed out regardless of staff schedules.

A minimum notice hours setting controls the earliest a booking can be made — for example, if set to 4 hours, a client at 10:00 could not book a slot starting before 14:00 today.

SettingEffect on clients
Max advance daysCaps how far into the future dates are highlighted and slots are offered. Also limits how far ahead one-off availability exceptions can make a service visible at a location.
Min notice hoursRemoves today's slots (and sometimes tomorrow's) that are too close to the current time.
Slot intervalSets the spacing between offered start times — 15, 30, or 60 minutes typically. Does not affect duration.

Pricing & payment policies

Each service has a base total price. The business can choose one of three payment policies:

PolicyWhat the client pays at booking
Full paymentThe full service price is charged immediately at checkout.
DepositA fixed deposit amount is charged. The remainder is collected at the appointment.
Pay in clinicNothing is charged at booking. Payment is taken in person.

Dynamic pricing rules

Businesses can layer pricing rules on top of the base price. Rules can increase or decrease the effective price based on:

  • Day of the week (e.g. lower prices on Mondays).
  • Time of day (e.g. peak-hour surcharge for evening slots).

When a rule applies to a slot, the adjusted price is shown at checkout alongside the original price and a label (Peak or Off-Peak). Only one rule applies per slot at a time — if multiple rules match, the first matching rule wins.

Packages

A package bundles a service into a pre-paid session credit deal — for example, "5 sessions of Anti-wrinkle consultation". Packages are purchased once and each appointment redeems one session credit.

  • Packages are linked to a single underlying service; the service's duration and staff assignment govern booking availability exactly as normal.
  • Packages have an optional expiry (in months) after which unused credits cannot be redeemed.
  • The package price is paid in full at purchase, regardless of the service's payment policy.
  • If the linked service is deactivated, the package is also hidden from new purchases but existing credit holders can still book.

Resources

Some services require a physical resource to be available alongside the staff member — a treatment room, a piece of equipment, or a consumable. When a service has required resources configured, Beautay checks resource availability as part of the slot calculation.

A slot is only offered if:

  • At least one staff member is free for the full duration, and
  • The required quantity of each resource type is also free (not booked for another appointment at the same time and not in a maintenance exception window).

Resources are managed in the Resources section of the admin. They are tied to a location — a resource at one location does not satisfy a requirement at another.

Multi-service checkout

If the business enables multi-service checkout, clients can add multiple services to a basket and book them as a single consecutive appointment block.

  • Services in the basket are booked back-to-back in the order they were added.
  • The total duration is the sum of all individual durations.
  • A slot is only offered if a single staff member (or a combination of different staff, one per service) is free for the full combined block.
  • If a single practitioner can cover the whole basket, the booking is treated as one continuous appointment. If multiple practitioners are needed, Beautay splits the block accordingly.
  • Resources are checked independently for each service segment.
Each service still needs its own staff assignment Adding a service to a basket does not change its individual staff requirements. If service A and service B have no staff member in common, a slot is only offered when each service has at least one free staff member simultaneously.

Troubleshooting

A service has disappeared from the booking page
The most common causes are: the service was set to inactive; all staff assigned to it were deactivated; or the last assigned staff member no longer has any schedule blocks at any location. Check each of these in your admin.
A service doesn't appear when a specific location is selected
No active staff member assigned to that service has a recurring schedule or upcoming one-off availability at the selected location. Add the relevant staff schedule blocks at that location and the service will appear automatically.
A date looks highlighted but shows no available slots
The calendar confirms at least one staff member has some availability that day, but the full slot calculation — which subtracts existing bookings, slot holds, and all exceptions — runs only when a date is clicked. A highlighted day can show no slots if: all remaining windows have just been booked by another client, the minimum notice period has removed today's last slots, or the service duration is too long to fit in any remaining gap. If a partial unavailability exception covers the entire working window, the day is now greyed out automatically.
Today shows no slots even though the staff member is working
The business's minimum notice hours setting may be removing today's remaining slots. For example, if 4 hours' notice is required and it is 16:00, any slot before 20:00 is hidden — and if the working day ends at 18:00, no slots remain for today.
The service price shown at checkout is different from the listed price
A dynamic pricing rule is likely active for the selected time slot. The adjusted price will be shown alongside the original price and a "Peak" or "Off-Peak" label. If this is unexpected, review your pricing rules in the service settings.
A resource-dependent service shows no availability even when the staff member is free
Beautay requires both the staff member and the required resources to be free simultaneously. Check whether the resource has existing bookings, is in a maintenance exception window, or has been set to inactive. Resources are location-specific so also confirm the resource is assigned to the correct location.