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

• Email Alias: To keep emails flowing without disruption

  Email Alias acts like a nickname for a user’s primary email address, allowing multiple email addresses to deliver messages into the same mailbox. Consider the scenario where an employee manages multiple responsibilities, such as responding to sales inquiries,

• Inventory "Bulk Actions" button - add more fields to "Bulk Update > Select a field"

  Can we not get a lot more actions that are commonly used by customers into the "More Actions" button on the Inventory list? More fields listed in the Bulk Update > Select A Field? Possible Bulk update Fields Preferred Supplier ( to quickly move items

• Function #11: Apply unused credits automatically to invoices

  Today, we bring you a custom function that automatically applies unused credits from excess payments, credit notes, and retainer payments to an invoice when it is created. Prerequisites: Create a Connection named "zbooks" to successfully execute the function.

• Tip #60- Exploring Technician Console: Screen Resolution- 'Insider Insights'

  Hello Zoho Assist Community! Have you ever started a remote session and felt the screen quality wasn’t sharp enough for detailed work? A new user recently explored Zoho Assist after installing the trial version and running a few initial tests. While the

• Right Moment, Right Message, Right Operator: Never Miss a High-Intent Lead

  Ever been on a website or app, thinking “Should I buy this or not?” and suddenly a friendly message “Hi! How can I help you?” pops up at the perfect moment? That’s not luck. That’s timing done right. Engaging right visitors at the right moment, with the

• Zoho CRM Workflow Automation: Activate & Deactivate Workflows Using API

  Zoho has now enabled: ✅ Activate / Deactivate workflows using API ✅ Schedule workflow activation & deactivation This is extremely useful for real-world automation use cases 💡 🧩 My Use Case I created a scheduled automation that: ☀️ Activates workflows

• Function #53: Transaction Level Profitability for Invoices

  Hello everyone, and welcome back to our series! We have previously provided custom functions for calculating the profitability of a quote and a sales order. There may be instances where the invoice may differ from its corresponding quote or sales order.

• [Free Webinar] Zoho RPA - OCR, PDF Automation, & More

  Hello Everyone! Greetings from the Zoho RPA Training Team! We’re excited to invite you to our upcoming webinar on the latest release updates for Zoho RPA, where we’ll unveil powerful new capabilities designed to make your automation journey smarter, faster,

• Zobot Execution Logs & Run History (Similar to Zoho Flow)

  Dear Zoho SalesIQ Team, We would like to request an enhancement for Zoho SalesIQ Zobot: adding an execution log / run history, similar to what already exists in Zoho Flow. Reference: Zoho Flow In Zoho Flow, every execution is recorded in the History tab,

• Global Search Settings

  I'd love a way to remove some modules from being included in the global search. This would allow use to provide a better user experience, limiting the global search to only those modules that are regularly used removing any models used for background

• Card Location in Zobot

  Hello, when using the “Location” card in a codeless builder Zobot, the behavior in WhatsApp is inconsistent. When asking the user to share their location, they can type a message, which will return the message “Sorry, the entered location is invalid.

• Automation Series: Auto-create Dependent Task on Status Change

  In Zoho Projects, you can automatically create and assign a dependent task when a task’s status is updated. This helps teams stay aligned, ensures reviews happen on time, and reduces manual effort. In this post, we’ll walk through an easy setup using

• Languages in Zobot

  Hello, I have found a list of supported languages for the Zobot. The information specifies the languages are supported in the following 3 features: SalesIQ supports 34 different languages in the following features. Resources (Articles, FAQs, Small Talks)

• Function #6: Calculate Commissions for paid invoices

  Zoho Books helps you automate the process of calculating and recording commissions paid to sales persons using custom functions. We've written a script that computes the commission amount based on the percentage of commission you enter and creates an

• Action required: Reauthorizing your Google account in Zoho Sign for automatic cloud backup to Google Drive

  This is applicable to users who have already configured automatic cloud backup to Google Drive. Hi there! Google has mandated reauthorization of all preconfigured third-party integrations to ensure only the necessary scopes are shared as an improved security

• Zoho CRM Layouts

  I have customised all our modules, Leads, Contacts and deals, and within them, I have created lots of different layouts depending on the type of Lead or contact, for example. Since the new Zoho UI came out, they have all disappeared. I have gone into

• WhatsApp IM in Zoho Desk always routes to Admin instead of assigned agent

  Hello Zoho Experts, I connected WhatsApp IM to my Zoho Desk account. I only assigned my Customer Service (CS) agent to the WhatsApp channel, and I did NOT include Admin in this channel. However, every new WhatsApp conversation automatically gets assigned

• hide resolution from help centre

  to my surprise, i just found out that the resolution text is public in the helpcenter, even if 'notify customer' is off. is there a workaround to that? how do others deal with this? How zoho support does this and I don't think its used by Zoho in the first place. the resolution is meant to be private, not public

• Zoho Analytics + Facebook Ads: Performance Alerts for Active Campaigns

  Is it possible with integration of Zoho Analytics with Facebook Ads and set up alerts or notifications for active campaigns when performance drops? For example, triggering a notification if CTR goes below a defined threshold or if other key metrics (like

• Multiple upload field CRM

  I desperately need the functionality to add more than one upload field to web to contacts form. How can I do this?

• Sort by age

  It would be very helpful if there was a way to sort by age in the Age column. Please add this function if possible. Thanks!

• Lookup Field Option Not Available in Customization

  Hello, I am trying to customize different modules (e.g., Work Orders, Systems, and others), but I am unable to find the Lookup field option in the layout customization. When I go to: Setup → Customization → Modules and Fields → Add Field The Lookup field

• Scheduled sending of a poll and its results

  Is there a way to schedule sending a poll to all my users and have the results sent separately to the team?

• Integrating Zoho Suite and apps more with Linux

  I just got introduced with Zoho just couple of months ago, and I've already planned to contribute to it, even though it's not an open-source software. Still I have found it's potential to beat the tech giants and still being respective towards data privacy

• Store Submitted Forms as PDF

  Hi there, Is there a method to store Form submissions as a PDF in workdrive for archival? I set the form to email the submission to the user and an internal inbox but I'd really love to store the final form as PDF in workdrive automatically. I can't seem

• Separate Items & Services

  Hi, please separate items and services into different categories. Thank you

• CRM->INVENTORY, sync products as composite items

  We have a product team working in the CRM, as it’s more convenient than using Books or Inventory—especially with features like Blueprints being available. Once a product reaches a certain stage, it needs to become visible in Inventory. To achieve this,

• Add an option to disable ZIA suggestions

  Currently, ZIA in Zoho Inventory automatically provides suggestions, such as sending order confirmation emails. However, there is no way to disable this feature. In our case, orders are automatically created by customers, and we’ve built a custom workflow

• Feature Request - Gift Cards or Gift Voucher Capability in Zoho Commerce

  Hi Zoho Commerce team, I'm comming accross more and more retail businesses who sell gift cards. As there is currently no way to manage this in Zoho Commerce, it is a blocker to addoption. This is particularly popular in Europe and North America. I recently

• Highlight a candidate who is "off limits"

  Hello: Is there a way to highlight a candidate who is "off limits"?  I would like to have the ability to make certain candidate and / or Client records highlighted in RED or something like that.   This would be used for example when we may have placed a candidate somewhere and we want everyone in our company to quickly and easily see that they are off limits.  The same would apply when we want to put a client or former client off limits so no one recruits out of there. How can this be done? Cheers,

• Closing off tasks automatically based on project status

  Is there a way to close off all open tasks when a project is set as Cancelled?

• [Free webinar] Understanding connections and datasources in Zoho Creator - Creator Tech Connect

  Hello everyone, We’re excited to invite you to another edition of the Creator Tech Connect webinar. About Creator Tech Connect The Creator Tech Connect series is a free monthly webinar featuring in-depth technical sessions designed for developers, administrators,

• UK payroll entries

  Hey guys, Nett payroll payments are imported direct into the bank, using an external payroll system (will be glad for Zoho to have a UK payroll app) At present I have monthly recurring bills for HMRC which are auto entered & paid when due. This seems

• Bridge the Gap Between your Service and Finance Teams

  In field service, the most expensive distance isn’t the drive to a customer’s home—it’s the gap between a finished job and a paid invoice. Zoho FSM leverages the power of Zoho Invoice to handle and manage billing operations. It enables you to: Instantly

• Direct URL to "View Record"

  I would like to create a button (Deluge Script) to jump to the "view record" without passing by the record menu, but I can not aford to find the right url. I don't want the "view record" as a single page. I want the "view record" in the application like the picture below: Thanks in advance for your help

• Live Chat for user

  Hi everyone, I’m new to Zoho Creator and wanted to ask if it’s possible to add a live chat option for all logged-in portal users so they can chat internally. I’m trying to create a customer portal similar to a service desk, but for vehicle breakdowns,

• SalesIQ Chat Owner to CRM Lead Owner Mapping

  There is no proper mapping between the SalesIQ chat owner and the CRM lead owner. When a chat is assigned to an agent, the lead created in CRM is often assigned to a different user, forcing admins to manually change ownership every time. This creates

• Product line search in quotes

  Is there a way to change the search setting when you add a product line to a quote. We have created a field in products called 'Part Number' and I would like when I'm adding a product line to the quote that I can search on that field. At the moment it only searches on product description. In products I can search on the 'Part Number' field Any help welcome.

• Storage Limits

  Hello, What is the storage limitations for each user on professional edition?  Thanks, Mekki

• Power Pivot and Data Modeling functionality in Zoho Sheet

  When will MS Excel functionalities like Power Pivot and Data Modeling functionalities be available in Zoho Sheet?

• Next Page