Booking Restrictions is a powerful tool that allows you to control and customize how online bookings are accepted for each service provider. With this feature, you can reduce manual work, prevent overbooking, and ensure that appointments match your staff’s real capabilities.

Important note:

The Magic Wand tool on the POS follows the same Booking Restriction rules that you configure for Online Booking. This allows you to fully automate in-store appointment creation using the exact same rules as online bookings.

Base Concept

Every groomer has different limits and specialties. For example:

• A groomer cannot lift large dogs
• A groomer should not perform more than 8 full grooms per day
• A groomer can handle only one XXL dog at a time

Booking Restrictions allow you to enforce these rules automatically during online booking, so customers cannot book appointments that your team cannot fulfill.

Prerequisites

• Online Booking must be enabled
• Employee schedules, services, and store hours must already be configured

Booking Restrictions work on top of your existing setup. They do not replace schedules or availability — they add intelligent limits.

Enabling Booking Restrictions

Navigate to:
Settings → Booking Settings → Online Booking

Enable the toggle:
Enable Restrictions

Once enabled, a new table will appear where you can create and manage multiple restriction rules.

How Booking Restrictions Work

You can:

• Create multiple rules per employee
• Apply rules to specific days of the week
• Define limits per day or per time period
• Combine multiple rules together

Rules are evaluated together, ensuring bookings always stay within allowed limits.

Pet Restrictions

Example 1: Limiting Large Dogs and Daily Appointments

Groomer Nikita:

• Cannot groom large dogs
• Can perform a maximum of 8 appointments per day

Setup:

• Select Nikita (or multiple providers if needed)
• Set Limit per period: 8 appointments per day
• Select all pet sizes except XL and XXL
• Apply the rule to all days of the week

Result: Customers will not be able to book large dogs or exceed 8 daily appointments for this groomer.

Example 2: Limiting Doodle Breeds

A new groomer:

• Can perform up to 10 appointments per day
• Can groom doodle breeds, but only one per day

Setup two rules for the same employee:

• Rule 1: All coat types except doodle — maximum 10 appointments per day
• Rule 2: Doodle coat type — maximum 1 appointment per day

Result:

• 10 regular dogs per day, or
• 9 regular dogs + 1 doodle per day

Example 3: Double Booking with XXL Limit

Some groomers can handle multiple dogs at the same time and allow double bookings. However, they cannot groom two XXL dogs simultaneously.

Setup:

• Enable Bookings per timeslot = 2 in the employee settings
  
• Create restriction rules for specific time frames (for example 9:00–12:00)
• Limit total dogs per time period (e.g. max 3)
• Limit XXL dogs to 1 per time period
  
  
  

Duplicate these rules for additional time frames as needed based on your XXL grooming service duration.

Result:

• 1 XXL + 1 regular dog, or
• 2 regular dogs

Service Restrictions

Service Restrictions work in the same way as Booking Restrictions, but instead of limiting pet size or coat type, they allow you to control how many times a specific service can be booked for a specific employee within a defined time frame.

This gives you precise control over high-effort, long-duration, or physically demanding services.

How Service Restrictions Work

With Service Restrictions, you can:

• Restrict specific services for selected employees
• Define how many times a service can be performed within a time period
• Apply restrictions to specific days of the week
• Apply restrictions to custom time frames
• Combine Service Restrictions with other Booking Restrictions

All rules are evaluated together to ensure bookings remain within safe and realistic limits.

Example Use Cases

Example 1: Limiting a High-Effort Service

A groomer can perform only 2 Full Groom (XL) services per day.

• Select the specific employee
• Select the Full Groom (XL) service
• Set the limit to 2 per day
• Apply the rule to the required days of the week

Result: Customers will not be able to book more than two Full Groom (XL) services for that groomer on the same day.

Example 2: Time-Based Service Limitation

A groomer can perform only 1 Hand-Stripping service between 9:00 AM and 12:00 PM.

• Select the employee
• Select the Hand-Stripping service
• Define the time frame (9:00–12:00)
• Set the maximum allowed services for that time period

Result: Only one Hand-Stripping appointment can be booked within that time window.

Combining Service and Booking Restrictions

Service Restrictions can be combined with:

• Pet size limits
• Coat type limits
• Appointment count limits
• Double-booking rules

This allows you to fully automate complex booking logic while preventing employee overload.

Conclusion

Booking Restrictions allow you to stack multiple rules per employee, per day, and per time frame. This gives you full control over online bookings and prevents customers from booking appointments that exceed your team’s capacity.

With proper configuration, you can fully automate online booking, reduce staff overload, and eliminate manual appointment adjustments.