The waiting list
Fill cancellations automatically: offer the slot to whoever has been waiting longest.
Somebody looks for an appointment, finds nothing that suits, and leaves. Meanwhile three people cancel that week and those slots go to nobody. The waiting list closes that gap: it takes the name of the person who could not find a time, and offers them the next slot that frees up.
Settings › Waiting list. A list nobody is watching just collects people who are never contacted, so it stays off until you decide to run one.
What a customer sees
When a day has no times, a line appears under the empty day: “Nothing suitable? We will let you know if something frees up.” They open it, give their name and email, and can narrow it down — between two dates, only certain weekdays, mornings or afternoons only. A mobile number is optional and only used if you have texting switched on.
What happens when a slot comes back
- A booking is cancelled or movedBoth count. Moving an appointment to Thursday frees the Tuesday it was in.
- The longest-waiting match is foundLongest wait first, not closest match. Somebody who has been waiting three weeks should not lose a slot to somebody who joined this morning because their preferences happened to be tighter.
- They are offered it — one person at a timeAn email with a link, and a text if you have that on. Not a first-come-first-served blast to everybody: that wins the slot ten minutes sooner and annoys the eight people who lost the race.
- They have an hour to take itOne tap books them in and sends the confirmation. If they do nothing, it passes to the next person and they stay on the list for the next one.
What you can set
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Hold the slot for | 60 minutes | How long one person has before it moves on. Shorter fills the slot faster; too short and people miss it because they were driving. |
| Offer at most | 4 times | How many times one person is contacted before you leave them alone. Being texted about every cancellation for a month is not a service. |
| Drop people after | 60 days | When an entry lapses. Somebody who wanted an appointment in March does not want one in July. |
| Text them as well | Off | Gets a much faster answer. Each text is charged at your usual rate, and only goes to people who gave a number. |
Seeing who is waiting
The same screen lists everybody, in tabs: Waiting, Offered a slot, Booked in, Lapsed and Removed. Each row shows who they are, what they want and what they said suits them. You can take somebody off the list, and put them back on.
The rules it follows on its own
- A slot less than two hours away is not offered — nobody can get there.
- Somebody already on the list for the same service is updated, not added twice, so they are never offered the same slot twice over.
- Before anybody is booked in, the slot is checked again. Somebody may have taken it through the normal form in the meantime, and if they have, the person is told plainly and stays on the list.
- A group booking is never offered to somebody bringing more people than the slot was sized for.
The slot is offered, never booked automatically. Booking somebody because they once expressed an interest is how you end up with a room full of people who had forgotten they asked.
Getting the most out of it
Two things make a real difference. Turn texting on if you can — an email sent at 2pm on a Tuesday is often read at 7pm, by which time the slot has gone to somebody else. And keep the hold short-ish: an hour is a sensible default, but a busy clinic filling same-week cancellations might drop it to twenty minutes so a slot moves through the list quickly.