Allow multiple concurrent bookings, but only 1 per interval start time

Feature Requests
1

Hi, we’ve been using YouCanBookMe premium for some time now and it’s been working great. We are looking to change how we manage our bookings though and want to check if the following is possible/likely to be implemented. I’ve looked at a few threads and can’t see much on the topic - apologies if I’ve missed the discussion.

Summary:

We want to be able to allow 3x 90-minute bookings to run at the same time per advisor, but prevent those 3 bookings from all being booked at the same start time; we want to stagger the start times every 30 minutes. Therefore there could be 3 appointments ‘active’ at any one time, but never more than 1 at any specific time.

More detail:

Our company offers appointments that last 90 minutes total, but our advisors only need to be present for the final 30 minutes - the first 60 minutes is completed solo by the client. For the benefit of the clients’ diaries we need to keep the bookings as 90 minutes, but we want our advisors to fill their diaries with one booking every 30 minutes.

Currently to do this we have a booking duration of 90 minutes, with a 30-minute calendar interval, and we allow 3 ‘units per slot’ per advisor. The issue we have is that these 3 units can either be neatly booked one after the other, or be booked simultaneously, meaning our advisor is triple-booked for the final 30 minutes of all 3 appointments. Ideally we would have an option that only allowed one booking to be made at every half-hour interval.

Examples:

Ideally we would have this scenario every time:
Client A books 9:00am for 90 minutes
Client B books 9:30am for 90 minutes
Client C books 10:00am for 90 minutes
Advisor 1 sees Client A at 10:00am for 30 minutes
Advisor 1 sees Client B at 10:30am for 30 minutes
Advisor 1 sees Client C at 11:00am for 30 minutes

(the advisors usually see the clients for 25 minutes or less, allowing them a break between each booking; we just say 30 minutes due to the calendar interval. I have seen threads about having padding after bookings which I’m watching closely!)

What can currently happen:
Clients A, B, and C all book 9:00am for 90 minutes
To see all clients promptly, Advisor 1 has to request additional support from our team

Hopefully that explains in sufficient detail, although I can provide more info if helpful.

Thanks!

2

@NC-CB welcome to the Forum! Thank you for the thorough explanation.

The only way to have overlapping bookings would be to use the units feature, but as you mention we can’t then specify a start time within the 90 minute window. I think in this case.

If your advisers only need to be there for thirty minutes then maybe the option is to setup the 30 minute bookings with a bit of padding to give the advisor time to jump between. Then in the follow up emails you can explain that the meeting is actually 60 minutes longer?

Unless I am missing another resource constraint in the remaining hour.