How to manage your schedule with a rolling availability in Zoho Bookings?

Does your calendar look like this?

Barren on some days and flooded with appointments on others?

One of our customers was affected by the same.

He runs a photography business and opened his availability for the upcoming 8 weeks. He also preferred collecting his payments in person.

Since photography isn't the first thing that people had in their minds amidst their hectic days, people tried to book appointments as far away as possible. i.e., from weeks 6 through 8.

His calendar was sparsely booked during the first 5 weeks and jam-packed during the last few.

This indirectly caused a drop in his revenue. In such cases, this method goes a long way.

Why is this problematic?

1. You lose out on a ton of revenue during idle business time and during peak booking times, your staff are overloaded with appointments leading to burnout.

2. Customers book too far into the future and don't show up in the end.

All resulting in a loss of revenue and human effort.

So, let's settle this once and for all.

Introducing 'The Rolling Window'

Using this, you can
    1. Restrict customers from booking appointments based on your preferences
    2. Provide a short booking window (of 10 or 20-day duration) that you have complete control over

You achieve this by blending together the "Minimum and Maximum Booking Notice".

How to create a Rolling Window?

It helps you offer a restrictive way of availability to customers so that you have total control over your appointments.

Let's take a quick peek at minimum and maximum booking notice.

Minimum Booking Notice:

• Define when your customers should start booking appointments starting from the present day.
  
• For example, if today is June 6 and your minimum booking notice is set to 5, customers can start booking appointments only from June 11.
  

Maximum Booking Notice:

• Define until when customers can book appointments starting from the present day.
  
• For example, if today is June 6 and your maximum booking notice is 14, customers cannot book any appointments after June 20.
  

When you use minimum and maximum booking notice this way, you've enabled a 10-day rolling window.

With this, customers can book appointments only between June 11 and June 20.

On June 7th, customers can book appointments from June 12 to June 21.

On June 8th, customers can book appointments from June 13 to June 22.

Note - Holidays and Time-off work as usual within a rolling window. i.e., if you set up Sundays as holidays, they remain as holidays.

That's how easy it is. And the coolest part?

You need not lift a finger once you've set things up. The rolling fashion of availability progresses as the days pass.

You can set a 10, 20, 30, or any kind of rolling window of your choice that would suit your business style.

To set a minimum and maximum booking notice,

For one-on-one services - navigate to Service > Service Preferences > Booking Notice.

For group or resource bookings - Navigate to Settings > Workspaces > Choose a Workspace (where your group booking/ resource booking is present) > Policies and Preferences > Booking Notice.

In this tutorial, you've set up a rolling window by using both the minimum and maximum booking notice.

We hope you found the rolling window useful.

If you've any queries, feel free to reach out to us at hello@zohobookings.com. We'll be happy to help you out.

I want to try this!

• Topic Participants

• Siva

  

• Sticky Posts

• Zoho Bookings know-how: A hands-on workshop series

  Hello! We’re conducting a hands-on workshop series to help simplify appointment scheduling for your business with Zoho Bookings. We’ll be covering various functionalities and showing how you can leverage them for your business across five different sessions.

• Announcing: custom color palette + free workshop

  Hello everyone, We're excited to share new feature in Zoho Bookings—a color palette within booking page themes. You'll find this option under Manage Bookings > Workspaces > Booking Page Themes. You can customize the color of every element in your booking page and even alter the transparency of your background image. Please note that this is a paid feature included in the Basic and Premium plans. At the moment, it's available only under the Modern Web theme. This means you can create billions (7,

• Complete walk-through of Zoho Bookings (video)

  Save time for both you and your customers. Use Zoho Bookings, the appointment scheduling app from Zoho, to free yourself from email and paper-based scheduling. Zoho Bookings can give you a common calendar by syncing multiple calendars, including yours and your staff's. Your customers can book a time convenient for them, and pay for services, through your website or the customizable webpage features available in Zoho Bookings. They'll also get emails reminding them about their appointments and any

• New Features: Service Availability and staff booking page themes!

  Dear All,  Want a dedicated schedule for your one-on-one services? How would it feel to have one-on-one services open for consultations only during certain times? You need a superpower to make that happen and we give it to you - Service Availability is

• Zoho Bookings has a new pricing - Pay per user

  Dear customers, Businesses around the world use Zoho Bookings. Customers have booked 1.5 million appointments and over 200K online meetings using Bookings. We are only set to cross more milestones, thanks to your support. We are excited to introduce to

• Recent Topics

• How to display the CONTACT ID in the Contact page

  Hi, I've seen this conversation below and it is exactly the same question I'm raising now, but unfortunately the last message is not solved https://help.zoho.com/portal/community/topic/show-contact-id-while-editing-contact-form I need to show the ContactId and I don't know how to do this. The last message included in the conversaton shows the way but not it is not completed. "I am sorry by default we do not have the option to show the record ID for the contacts in the field in a record. When you

• How to change margins in templates

  Hi, I'm new to Zoho Campaigns, and am trying to figure out how to adjust the margins within an email template.  The default margins make the text go all the way to the edges of the page.  Please advise.

• Create Canvas list view templates from images powered by Zia

  Currently available for all paid editions of Zoho CRM in the US, EU, IN, JP & CN DCs. Designing a personalized CRM interface just got even easier. In today’s fast-evolving digital landscape, AI is transforming the way we work by automating complex tasks

• Painfully Slow Zoho mail

  Since yesterday Zoho Mail seems to have starting functioning very slowly and having a few bugs. It's slow to open mails, slow to send, slow to change between email accounts. Sometimes clicking on a particular folder (eg Sent folder) stops working and

• "Wrong password or login" Problem to configure Zoho on MAIL App on my Macbook

  Hi, I'm having problems to configure my e-mail on my MAIL App(Macbook pro). My e-mail is hari@trespontoum.net Actually was working perfectly, and still working on my Iphone. My MAIL App prompt me that my login or password is wrong. I tried to change 3

• "User already exist in your org"

  Hello, I've just read a discussion about this issue, which didn't solve my problem. I'm trying to add the following emails: sales@kiss-my-boutique.co.uk returns@kiss-my-boutique.co.uk orders@kiss-my-boutique.co.uk I'm getting an error message each time I try and add them. None of them are primary or secondary emails and none of them have been created as users before. I know this as when I try and login and do 'forgot my password' all I get is an error message saying 'user invalid'. Please advise.

• Operation Not Permitted

  Hi, I have problem in adding user after verifying the domain but it seems like error appeared which is "operation not permitted". For your information, I had delete other domain before did it.

• Email forwarding setup fails

  I'm trying to set up email forwarding from my Zoho email to my gmail address. I followed the directions to set up email forwarding here: https://www.zoho.com/mail/help/email-forwarding.html. I did only steps 1-6. After doing this, rather than setting

• Shopify store email issues- Not getting emails

  Hi We have migrated from Microsoft outlook to Zoho back in March, we have a shopify store, the domain is hosted on namesilo, not shopify, I have seen some people here complaining about not getting emails from customers who fill out the contact form on

• How do I fix this? Unable to send message; Reason:554 5.1.8 Email Outgoing Blocked.

  How do I fix this? Unable to send message; Reason:554 5.1.8 Email Outgoing Blocked.

• Invoice Discount Account

  Is there a way to change the account used for Discounts applied to an invoice? The current Discount account (ZB native account) type is an "Income" type. I would like to change it to "Other Income", but that is not possible, I am assuming because it contains

• Need Inactive accounts to be visible in Reports in Zoho Books

  I N=need Inactive accounts to be visible in Reports in Zoho Books to do recons of the accounts but when i see the same they are not visible in the Accountant - Account Transactions report

• API Support for Creating Invoices with Batch-Tracked Items

  Hi Zoho Community, I am working on an integration where we create invoices in ERPNext and push them to Zoho Books. I need to send batch-tracked items (batch numbers) when creating invoices. I could not find any reference in the Zoho Books API documentation.

• javax.mail.authenticationfailedexception 535 authentication failed

  Hi, I am facing 535 authentication failed error when trying to send email from zoho desktop as well as in webmail. Can you suggest to fix this issue,. Regards, Rekha

• Phantom Opening Balance

  While experimenting w/ creating a composite item, Zoho added funds to Petty Cash and added Bank Account equal to previous day's balance. I'm unable to undo the adding of funds. Attaching screenshots of both bank account and petty cash transactions.

• Importing customer comments and multiple shipto addresses

  I am evaluating Zoho Books and have most of my data imported with two exceptions: (1) Import customer comments - in my current system I have several comments of different types, and I need to bring these into Zoho. Preferably Books customer records, but

• Detailed Account Reports - Add Running Balance

  When one clicks into an account from a report (say P/L or Balance Sheet), the default reports have the Debit, Credit, and then the Amount. The Amount column (last one) is duplicate information. It would be far better and fit more peoples' use cases if

• How to Billed from two different GST Numbers

  How to Billed from two different GST Numbers. Suppose ABC & Co had GST registration in Delhi and Haryana and Zoho account is created with Delhi GST Registration number. Now i also want to issue invoice from Haryana GST Registration number. How can i proceed ?

• Payment system for donations management

  I manage an organization where we receive donations from payers. Hence, there is no need to first create invoices and then create payments received against the invoices. What are the recommended best practices to do this in ZohoBooks?

• Zoho IP blocked by SpamHaus

  ERROR CODE :550 - 5.7.0 Your server IP address is in the SpamHaus SBL-XBL database, bye

• IMAP Communication Problems - IMAP Down Again

  We are experiencing the same problems over the last week or so that were supposedly 'solved' according to this thread. Zoho Imap Down Again This is affecting attempts to use IMAP on multiple ISPs and users so is definitely narrowed down to Zoho problems.

• Can't login to Zoho mail

  I'm logged into Zoho but when I try to go in zoho mail I get: Invalid request! The input passed is invalid or the URL is invoked without valid parameters. Please check your input and try again. I just set up my mx records and stuff with namecheap a few

• Hotmail is STILL blocking the zoho mail IP

  Greetings, as I already mentioned in my last message, my Zoho IP has been blocked by Hotmail for more than 15 days. Although someone said that the issue was "solved," it still isn't, and this amount of time seems neither normal for a "serious" company,

• Keyboard shortcut M key

  I'm trying to customize my keyboard shortcuts and assign the "m" key. But it says the key is already assigned. I've looked through all my shortcuts and can't see any assigned "m". When I select an email and press the M key, nothing happens. What is the

• Manage customer access across multi-brand help centers

  Hello everyone! Managing customer's access across multiple brands has been streamlined with the ability to invite, reinvite, approve, reject, and deactivate contacts individually for each help center brand . This enhancement gives administrators precise

• White Label certificate

  Hi all, About 72 hours ago, we fulfilled all steps for white labeling (CNAME to point to mail.cs.zohohost.eu), but since then the configuration page is now stuck at "generating certificate" since 3 days. When I execute an NSLOOKUP mail.webfoundry.be it

• Unusual activity detected from this IP. Please try again after some time

  When i try to create new addresses on my account i am getting this error, it has been 24 hours now and i am still getting this error can anyone help

• How to add a new domain in my account?

  Probably zoho has the worst UI in the market. Cannot add a new domain to manage a new email address.

• Ability for admin to access or make changes in zoho form without asking for ownership

  Currently in zoho form only form owner can make the changes in the form and if someone else has to make changes then we have to transfer the ownership to them and even admin also cant access it . So i think admin must have the ability or option to access

• Report sorting not working

  I make extensive use of Summary reports and Pivot Tables. Most of these reports are structured such that I have several columns of "information" data that I want displayed, followed by one or more "Data" summarizations. For example, I have the following

• New Enhancements in Wizards

  Dear All, Wizards help you break a long form into a series of smaller forms on different screens, making it less overwhelming. We are thrilled to introduce a couple of enhancements to wizards in Zoho CRM: Enhancements for conditional rules in Wizards

• Microsoft Teams now available as an online meeting provider

  Hello everyone, We're pleased to announce that Zoho CRM now supports Microsoft Teams as an online meeting provider—alongside the other providers already available. Admins can enable Microsoft Teams directly from the Preferences tab under the Meetings

• Find and Merge Duplicates to trigger webhook

  My sales team uses the Find and Merge Duplicates feature often to cleanup records in the CRM. We use webhooks to signal to our internal tools database when new Contacts are created, updated, or deleted, in order to keep our DB in sync with Zoho CRM. However,

• Charting the 2025 Voyage: Zoho Invoice's Year in Review

  2025 has been a year of progress, productivity, and purposeful growth for Zoho Invoice. From expanding into new regions to refining everyday workflows, each update was designed to help businesses stay compliant, get paid faster, and work with confidence.

• How to Hide System-DefinedTemplates in Service Report

  Is there any option available to hide system-defined templates? these templates are causing confusion for field users.

• WhatsApp Report in Bigin CRM

  Reporting feature for Bigin CRM’s integrated WhatsApp that provides insights such as: Number of WhatsApp conversations closed Number of messages sent and received Number of conversations replied to Response and closure metrics for WhatsApp chats More

• Issue with Azure DevOps Integration in Zoho Flow

  Hello, All workflows between Zoho Flow and Azure DevOps have stopped working for several days now. Upon further investigation, it seems that the connection to Azure DevOps is no longer directly supported. Indeed, Microsoft has deprecated the Azure DevOps

• Narrative 16: Simplify with workflows

  Behind the scenes of a successful ticketing system: BTS Series Narrative 16: Simplify with workflows What is a workflow? A workflow organizes business tasks in a defined sequence that makes each step clear to all participants. This ensures work is completed

• Zoho Invoice Customer Login Portal

  Are there any plans for a customer portal to Zoho Invoice, ala Freshbooks?  I would like customers that I invoice to be able to login to review invoices and invoice history.  I have not switched from Freshbooks for this very reason.

• Random Leads are being created

  Hi, Every few days I am getting random leads that are being created with no form interactions at all. The email addresses are from obvious spam, such as 'Easymerchantsx'. When I look at the timeline, there is a Visit record and then a Lead Created record,

• Next Page