A service isn't on the booking form

Why a service you created never appears for customers.

A service can look completely correct in the admin and still be invisible to customers. Booked does not warn you — one that fails any of its conditions drops off the booking form quietly, with nothing flagged in the Services list.

Check these in order

Work down the list. Most missing services are found by step three.

1. Status is ActiveOnly Active services are sent to the booking form.
2. At least one branch is tickedOn the service’s Locations tab, under Available at.
3. At least one member of staff is tickedOn the Staff tab — and that person must work at that branch too.
4. No availability window is in the wayWeekdays and seasonal date ranges both narrow when it can be booked.
5. The category is what you think it isNo category, or an inactive one, files the service under Other.
6. You are looking at the right formOne form’s settings can hide a service that is fine everywhere else.
7. Somebody is actually workingOpening hours and working hours decide whether any times appear.

Is the service Active?

Go to Booked › Business › Services — the Status column tells you straight away. Click the row and set Status to Active on the General tab. All six tabs share one form, so switching tabs saves nothing: press Save service before you leave.

• 1Status — only Active services reach customers. This column prints the stored value in lower case, so it reads active / inactive rather than the Active / Inactive of the dropdown. Same setting.
• 2Category — a dash means no category. The dropdown inside the service calls that Uncategorised. It does not hide the service, it moves it: customers find it under an automatic category called Other.

Is there a branch, and someone to deliver it?

A service reaches the booking form only when three things are true at once: it is Active, it is linked to at least one location, and at least one member of staff is linked both to the service and to that same location.

The third is the one people miss. Ticking a pharmacist on the Staff tab is not enough — that person also has to work at the branch, set at Business › Employees › (the person) › Locations under Works at, with their Status Active.

• 1Staff — the card Delivered by. Nobody selected means nobody can be booked for this service, at any branch.
• 2Locations — the card Available at. An in-person service with no branch ticked never appears. Inactive branches are offered as chips here too, and they do not count either.
• 3The chips — one per member of staff, click to select. Inactive people are listed here too and ticking one counts for nothing. None is selected at all here, which makes this service invisible whatever else is set.

Saving a service replaces its whole staff and location list. The same links can be edited from Employees › Services and Locations › Services, so whichever screen is saved last wins — two people tidying up at once will overwrite each other.

Is an availability window hiding it?

The Availability tab holds a card called When can this be booked? with two restrictions: certain days of the week, and one or more times of year. Both only narrow availability — neither can open a day the branch is closed.

• 1Available on these days — highlighted days are bookable, Monday first. Read the hint, not the buttons: All days can be booked. means no restriction at all, even though every button looks switched on.
• 2Only available on certain dates — month and day only, so the range repeats every year. One running backwards, like 1 October to 31 March, is understood as crossing New Year.

A range is thrown away on save unless a month and a day are chosen on both sides, so half-finished ranges disappear with no message. And if your window opens further ahead than the customer’s date picker looks — the Week picker fetches seven days at a time, Next free a fortnight — every day it checks comes back empty, which on Next free reads No availability in the next two weeks. Please contact us.

It’s on the form, but filed under “Other”

With Service picking set to Category then service, customers first see What are you booking? — one card per category. Three kinds of service get swept into an automatic category called Other: those with no category, and those whose category is Inactive or deleted.

Making a category Inactive does not take its services off sale — they stay bookable and only move. To stop selling them, set each service to Inactive. The category step also disappears when only one category has bookable services, and the customer’s Search box matches the service name only. Switching Service picking to Single list is the quickest way to confirm a service is there.

It’s missing on one form but fine on another

If a service appears on one page and not another, the form is the difference. Check these at Booked › Customisation › Booking Form:

• Show location step switched off (Layout › Steps & order) never asks which branch. Every service stays on the form, but Booked books them into the first branch that offers the one they chose — so a multi-branch shop gets the lot at one site, and a service with no branch ticked shows up yet never offers a time.
• A form can be pinned to one service with the shortcode attribute service, which skips the picker. That form will only ever show that one service. It takes the service’s numeric id, which Booked does not print anywhere in the admin — and on a variant shortcode the attribute is ignored altogether.
• If the form is missing altogether, check Booked › Settings › Your plan. Without an active licence visitors see nothing at all — only logged-in administrators see the note about activating Booked.

It shows, but the price or payment is wrong

A blank Price saves as £0.00, and the customer’s service card then prints £0.00. A service priced at zero also never asks for a deposit, whatever your deposit settings say. The symbol beside the box comes from Settings › Region & currency › Currency.

Deposits resolve from the service, then its category, then your global default; the first level not set to inherit wins, and the hint under the Deposit dropdown tells you what it would otherwise inherit. None of it applies until Booked Payments is set up.

The service is listed but no times appear

If customers can pick the service and then find no slots, the service is fine and the hours are the problem.

• A new branch or member of staff has no hours at all, which means closed every day. Set Opening hours on the branch and Working hours on each person, both under Times. This is the single most common cause of no times showing.
• Staff hours are cut down by branch hours, not added to them. Someone on 08:00–16:00 at a branch open 09:00–17:30 is bookable 09:00–16:00 only — and if the two never overlap, nothing.
• Pending, Completed and No-show bookings all hold their slot. Only Cancelled frees the time, so an abandoned card payment leaves a Pending appointment sitting on a slot.