Settings > Duration & Timing controls how far ahead a pet owner must book and which start times they are offered. It also holds the buffer either side of an appointment and how Petboost schedules a household that books several pets at once.
Every setting on this page is the business default, marked Default for new services. Each one can be overridden on an individual service. When services already differ, a badge beside the field reads N services use their own setting; open it to see which ones and jump to each service.
If you have not touched this page, Petboost offers a starting point. Select Apply recommended on Start with recommended settings to take 24 hours' advance notice, which suits most pet businesses, or I will configure manually to dismiss it.
Booking Notice Period
Minimum advance notice required for bookings is the gap between now and the earliest slot a pet owner can take. Set it to 24 hours and a slot at 9:00 tomorrow stops being bookable at 9:00 today.
Open Settings > Duration & Timing.
Under Booking Notice Period, set the weeks, days, hours and minutes.
Select Publish Changes.
Notice period only governs self-service booking. You and your team can still create a booking for any time.
Booking Interval
Allow Booking of Appointments Every: decides which start times appear to a pet owner. On a 15-minute interval, slots appear at 9:00, 9:15, 9:30 and so on. Petboost fills the gaps from there, so an appointment that ends at 11:10 puts the next slot at 11:15.
The choices are 5 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes and 1 hour.
Most businesses sit on 30 or 15 minutes. A 5-minute interval shows a pet owner a start time every five minutes, which is a long scroll on a busy day and makes booking feel clunky. Stay on 5 only if you genuinely work to 5-minute precision.
Petboost rounds every session start up to your booking interval. If that would squeeze a team member's or a resource's session, an amber panel lists the affected sessions before you publish, with a link to each one. Read it: a service that no longer fits the leftover time is not offered online at all.
Appointment padding
Padding sits inside Advanced options on this page, with Which times we suggest first and Multi-Pet Scheduling.
Buffer time before appointments and Buffer time after appointments reserve time around each booking for setup, cleaning or notes. The options are No padding, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 1.5 hours and 2 hours.
Padding is held on the calendar but is not charged and is not shown to the pet owner as part of the service length.
Multi-Pet Scheduling
Multi-Pet Scheduling decides what happens when one household books several pets in one go. Pick one of three:
Best Fit puts each pet wherever your capacity allows. It offers the most slots and never blocks a booking, but the owner may be given a scattered set of times
All Pets Together starts every pet at the same time. Clear drop-off and pick-up for the family, at the cost of fewer available slots, because you need capacity for all the pets at once
Clustered Start keeps the pets inside a window you set with Set Maximum Duration. It is the middle ground: more slots than All Pets Together, with a capped wait for the owner
Timing rules that live elsewhere
Rule | Where it is set |
Change and cancellation notice period | Settings > Policies & Paperwork, as part of your cancellation policy |
Reminder send times | Settings > Notifications, on each reminder |
Working hours and sessions | Schedules & Sessions |
Service duration | On each service, under Duration & Timing |