When clients can't see your availability or book sessions, a few common settings might be causing the issue. This guide walks you through testing your availability and checking the most frequent culprits so you can get your schedule back on track quickly.
- Testing Your Availability
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Common Availability Issues and Solutions
- Have You Added Availability for Clients to Book?
- Do You Have an External Event Blocking Your Availability?
- Do you have Buffer Time included in session bookings?
- What are your Booking Restrictions settings?
- How have you set up Availability Increments?
- Do you have Rolling Start Times enabled?
- Do You Have Session Limits Enabled?
- Is Your Client Booking a Session Through the Client Portal?
Testing Your Availability
Practice Better gives you two ways to verify that your availability displays correctly for clients. Testing helps you confirm your setup works as expected and troubleshoot any booking issues clients might encounter.
Testing a Specific Time Slot
When you need to check if a particular date and time is available for booking, the specific time slot test shows you exactly what's preventing availability (if anything).
- Go to My Schedule > My Availability.
- Click the Test availability icon in the top-right corner.
- Fill out the following fields:
- Select service
- Service method
- Session date
- Start time
- If you'd like to test in another time zone, adjust the Time zone dropdown menu.
- Click the Test button.
The window will update to show you whether the selected time slot is available for your service. If the time slot is unavailable, you'll see a detailed list of settings, existing sessions, or external calendar events that are blocking availability. This information helps you pinpoint exactly what needs to be adjusted.
💡 Tip: The test results show you specific conflicts like overlapping sessions, buffer time adjustments, or calendar sync issues that might not be immediately obvious when viewing your availability calendar.
Viewing the Service's Bookings Page
To see the complete picture of what clients experience when booking, you can preview your bookings page directly. This gives you a client's-eye view of your availability across different service methods and dates.
- Go to My Schedule > My Availability.
- Click the Test availability icon in the top-right corner.
- In the Select service dropdown menu, choose the service you'd like to test.
- Click the Test as Client button in the bottom-left corner.
This opens your service's bookings page, where you can review availability for:
- Different service methods (In-person, By Phone, Online/Video chat)
- Specific dates and times displayed on the calendar picker
If your expected dates and times don't appear on the bookings page, use the specific time slot test to determine what's blocking availability.
Common Availability Issues and Solutions
When clients report they can't book with you, work through these checkpoints systematically. Most availability problems stem from one of these five areas.
Have You Added Availability for Clients to Book?
It sounds simple, but sometimes availability slots haven't been properly enabled for the services clients want to book. Double-checking your service toggles ensures clients can actually see your available times.
- Go to My Schedule > My Availability.
- Click on your available time slot.
- Check that you've toggled on the services you want to offer during this time slot (the toggle should be green and positioned to the right).
Service Method Restrictions
If you offer services through multiple methods (in-person, by phone, or online/video chat), verify you've enabled the correct methods within your availability slot restrictions. For example, if you only want to accept virtual appointments on certain days, make sure the in-person option is disabled for those slots.
Location Settings
When you work from multiple locations, confirm you've selected the correct location where the service will be offered. Clients won't see availability if the service is restricted to a location that doesn't match their booking preferences.
Do You Have an External Event Blocking Your Availability?
If you've connected Google Calendar to Practice Better, events marked as "Busy" in Google will block your Practice Better availability. The platform respects your Google Calendar commitments to prevent double-bookings.
You can review the status of these synced events in your Practice Better schedule.
- Go to My Schedule > My Calendar.
- Click once on a synced event, and you will see either “Available” or “Busy” in the information pop-up.
If you have a full-day external event marked as “Busy,” you can still make this day bookable through your Practice Better settings.
- Go to My Schedule > Booking & Cancellation Settings.
- Under the Availability Options heading, click the checkbox to enable Exclude external calendar all-day events.
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Click Save Changes near the top-right.
📍 All-day events like birthdays and holidays can inadvertently affect your availability if your calendar does not allow you to mark these events as "Free/Available". Enable this setting to ignore all-day events when determining your availability for sessions.
Alternative resolution: In Google Calendar, you'll need to either:
- Mark the event as "Free" instead of "Busy"
- Remove the event from your calendar
This allows clients to book sessions during that time in Practice Better while still keeping the event visible in your Google Calendar for reference.
📍 Please note: Only events syncing back to Practice Better from Google Calendar will block availability. Events you create directly in Practice Better won't conflict with your availability settings.
Do you have Buffer Time included in session bookings?
Buffer times, booking restrictions, and availability increments work together to control when and how often booking slots appear. Understanding how these settings interact helps you create the right spacing for your practice.
Buffer time adds breathing room before or after sessions, giving you time to prepare, take notes, or simply rest between clients. However, buffer time counts against your total availability window.
You can set a buffer time for individual services by navigating to My Practice > My Services and locating the Booking Options section when editing your service.
How buffer time affects availability:
If you have a 1-hour session with a 30-minute buffer time and only 2 hours of availability, you can only see one client. Why? Because the session blocks 1 hour and 30 minutes total.
To accommodate more clients: Either extend your availability window to 3 hours, or decrease your buffer time. This ensures multiple sessions fit within your available hours.
💡 Example: With 3 hours of availability (1:00 PM - 4:00 PM), a 1-hour session, and 30-minute buffer, you could fit two client sessions comfortably with proper spacing between them.
What are your Booking Restrictions settings?
Restrict clients from booking determines how much lead time is allowed when clients schedule a session through your booking page.
For example, if this is set to "Less than 2 days before," the booking page will display available times starting two days from today.
Allow clients to book determines how far into the future clients can schedule a session.
This can be set either as “no restriction” or “within a rolling date range.” For example, if this is set to a rolling date range of 14 days, the booking page will display available times within the next 14 days and none after.
You can set Booking Restrictions:
- For individual services: Go to My Practice > My Services and Edit one of your Services.
- Globally for all services set to use default: Go to My Schedule > Booking & Cancellation Settings > Booking Restrictions.
The global Booking Restrictions settings will be used by your Services when you have selected the option to Use Default in each service’s settings.
How have you set up Availability Increments?
Availability increments (also called slot increments) determine at what intervals your booking times appear to clients. This setting controls the granularity of your schedule.
You can set availability increments:
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For individual services: Go to My Practice > My Services and Edit one of your Services.
One Service’s availability increments, set to every 15 minutes. -
Globally for all services: Go to My Schedule > Booking & Cancellation Settings > Availability Display.
Global availability increments settings, set to every 15 minutes.
How availability increments work:
With a 15-minute service and 1-hour availability from 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM:
- 15-minute increments show booking times at: 1:00, 1:15, 1:30, 1:45
- 30-minute increments show booking times at: 1:00, 1:30
- 60-minute increments show booking times at: 1:00
If clients can't see all your expected time slots, check your availability increments settings. Larger increment values show fewer booking options, which might make it seem like you have less availability than you actually do.
Do you have Rolling Start Times enabled?
Rolling start times create flexible booking options by showing clients every possible start time within your availability window, based on your availability increment setting.
With rolling start times enabled:
For a 30-minute service with 15-minute availability increments, clients see overlapping time slots like:
- 10:00 - 10:30 AM
- 10:15 - 10:45 AM
- 10:30 - 11:00 AM
- 10:45 - 11:15 AM
This gives clients more scheduling flexibility to find times that work perfectly with their day.
Managing Rolling Start Times
- Go to My Schedule > Booking & Cancellation Settings.
- Scroll to the Availability Display section.
- Check or uncheck the Display rolling start times checkbox.
- Click Save Changes near the top-right to confirm your settings.
When to Use Rolling Start Times
Rolling start times work beautifully when you want to offer maximum scheduling flexibility and aren't trying to maximize the number of sessions in a given window. This feature puts client convenience first, allowing them to book at times that truly fit their schedule.
⚠️ Important: Rolling start times may limit the total number of bookings available if a client books a session in the middle of your availability period, as subsequent slots must account for the full service duration after each booking.
Do You Have Session Limits Enabled?
Session limits control how many one-on-one sessions clients can request within specific time periods. While helpful for managing your workload, these limits may prevent clients from seeing your availability if you've already reached your set thresholds.
To check your session limits:
- Go to My Schedule > Booking & Cancellation Settings > Session Limits.
You can adjust the Maximum sessions per day setting to increase your limit or remove restrictions entirely. This controls the total number of group and one-on-one sessions allowed per day.
Service-Specific Limits
Service-specific limits offer even more granular control, enabling you to restrict the number of sessions of a particular type that can be booked per hour, day, week, or month.
How service limits affect availability:
If you've set a limit of 2 discovery calls per day and clients have already booked 2 discovery call sessions, your availability for this specific service won't display to other clients, even though you have general availability set up.
To adjust or remove service-specific limits:
- In the Session Limits section, find the service with restrictions.
- Click Edit next to the service limit to update the number of allowed sessions.
- Alternatively, click the Trash Can icon to completely remove the restriction for that service.
- Click Save Changes near the top-right.
✅ All set! After adjusting your session limits, test your availability again to confirm clients can now see your open time slots.
Is Your Client Booking a Session Through the Client Portal?
When clients book sessions through their client portal, additional settings may affect what availability they see. Two common scenarios can limit or change the booking options displayed to specific clients.
Package Booking Limits
If your client is booking as part of a Package they've purchased or been assigned, the Package's booking restrictions may be controlling their available dates.
Packages can include weekly or monthly booking limits that restrict how many sessions clients can book within those time periods. For example, if a Package allows 2 bookings per month and your client has already booked 2 sessions in the current month, their booking page will only display availability starting next month.
Check and adjust Package booking limits
- Go to My Practice > My Services and open your Package template to review the default Booking Restrictions settings.
- For an existing client Package, go to the client's record and open their Bookings & Packages section.
- Click Manage next to the client's Package.
- Select Edit Package.
- Review the Maximum per week and Maximum per month settings under booking limits, and update or remove the limits as needed.
- Click Save Changes near the top-right.
📍 Please note: The system doesn't display a message to clients booking from their Package explaining why dates are unavailable. The booking page simply shows future available dates based on when their booking limit resets.
Custom Booking Pages with Client Tags
If you've created custom booking pages visible only to clients with specific tags, different clients will see different booking pages in their portal based on their assigned tags.
When you set up a custom booking page with the option Allow clients with specific tags to view this page (client portal only), only clients with those designated tags will see that particular booking page. For example, this means Client A with a "VIP" tag might see premium services on their booking page, while Client B with a "Standard" tag sees a different set of services entirely.
💡 Tip: You can preview any custom booking page using its public link to see exactly what clients with specific tags will see in their portal. This helps you verify that the right services and availability are displaying for each client segment.
Verify client tags and associated booking pages
- Check which tags are assigned to your client in their client record.
- Review your custom booking pages to see which tags are related to each page.
- Confirm that the client's tags match the booking page they should be accessing.
📍 Note: When a client's tags match multiple custom booking pages, they'll see the booking page that's positioned highest in your Public Bookings Pages list.
If your client isn't seeing the expected availability or services, verify their tag assignments match the intended booking page configuration. Adjusting their tags or the booking page settings will update what they see in their portal.
Still experiencing issues? Our support team is here to help you get your availability working smoothly. We understand how important it is for your clients to book with you easily, so don't hesitate to reach out if these troubleshooting steps don't resolve your issue.